The MAAT Marks Ten Years With Free Entry on Republic Day, Three Million Visitors Behind It and Christian Marclay Booked for 2027

The MAAT, Lisbon's Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology on the Belém riverfront, turns ten today, and is marking the date with free entry to all its exhibitions on this Republic Day holiday, as it did on Sunday. The anniversary weekend, which began on Saturday, ends today with guided tours, workshops, an opera performance and a charity market, among other events.

Since it opened in October 2016, the museum has received more than three million visitors, including more than 357,000 school pupils, according to figures its director, João Pinharanda, gave the Lusa news agency for the anniversary.

What is on now

Three new exhibitions opened for the anniversary:

• "VENUS: Valentino Garavani through the eyes of Joana Vasconcelos", in which the Portuguese artist shows iconic and new works inspired by the late Italian fashion designer, made for the MAAT's spaces;
• "New Age", by João Pimenta Gomes;
• "Expor, publicar: o MAAT impresso (2016 to 2026)", more than 300 books, catalogues and other publications from ten years of the museum's exhibitions.

They join a large show of new painting, drawing and sculpture by Pedro Cabrita Reis, and "Turn Around", the biggest presentation yet of the Fundação EDP art collection, with about 90 works by 58 Portuguese artists from the 1960s to today, which runs at the MAAT Central until January 2027.

What comes in 2027

Pinharanda has announced two headline exhibitions for next year. One is devoted to the Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay, whose work crosses sound and image, and will start from the relationship between the city, urban life and music. The other is a group show on artificial intelligence, provisionally titled "Energias da IA" and curated by Antonio Somaini, a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris. It will look at what powers AI (electricity, water, critical minerals, computing, human labour and capital) and at its effects on society and the environment, with recent works by contemporary artists including Portuguese ones.

The 2027 season will also include the Fundação EDP New Artists Prize exhibition, whose finalists are due to be announced soon, and the director wants to bring in more artists from Brazil and from Central Europe, particularly Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as more major projects by artists of African descent.

A building and a power station

The MAAT is two buildings joined by a garden. The curving, tiled gallery on the riverbank was designed by the British studio AL_A, led by Amanda Levete. Beside it stands the Central Tejo, a power station built in 1908 that once supplied Lisbon with electricity and now houses the old Electricity Museum's machinery, including boilers the director says draw many foreign visitors, British ones in particular. The garden linking the two was designed by the landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic.

The museum belongs to the Fundação EDP, the foundation of the Portuguese energy company, whose collection holds about 2,500 works, mostly by Portuguese artists. Pinharanda, director since 2022, said the aim of the last few years has been for people to know the museum by what is inside it, not only by its shape.

Today is also an open day elsewhere in Lisbon: Parliament is opening São Bento for Republic Day, and the President has opened the gardens and museum of the Belém Palace, further along the same riverfront.