Serralves Foundation is an art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 foundation

Foundation (charity)

A foundation is a legal categorization of nonprofit organizations that will typically either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the source of funding for its own charitable purposes....

 whose mission is to raise the general public's awareness concerning contemporary art and the environment. The foundation is located in Porto

Porto

Porto , also known as Oporto in English, is the second largest city in Portugal and one of the major urban areas in the Iberian Peninsula. Its administrative limits include a population of 237,559 inhabitants distributed within 15 civil parishes...

, Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

.

Casa de Serralves

The building of the Serralves Foundation is a project designed by the Portuguese architect José Marques da Silva

José Marques da Silva

José Marques da Silva was a portuguese architect .-Training:José Marques da Silva was born at 113 Rua de Costa Cabral, in Porto, on 18 October 1869. His architectural training began at the Porto Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were, among others, António Geraldes da Silva Sardinha,...

. The House of Serralves is considered to be one of this architect's greatest achievements. It is an elegant Art Déco building with magnificent gardens surrounding it, one of which was designed by French architect Jacques Gréber

Jacques Gréber

Jacques-Henri-Auguste Gréber was a French architect specializing in landscape architecture and urban design. He was a strong proponent of the Beaux-Arts style and a contributor to the City Beautiful movement, particularly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Ottawa, Ontario.-Early life and...

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Museum

The Museu Serralves, the first large-scale contemporary art museum in Portugal, is located in the Quinta de Serralves; a large property close to the center of Porto that includes a main house built in the 1930s for the Count of Vizela. The public access to the museum's ground is made at the highest level of the terrain through an opening in the existing wall that surrounds the property.

In pursuit of its statutory objectives, the Serralves Foundation signed a contract in March 1991 with the architect, Álvaro Siza Vieira

Álvaro Siza Vieira

Álvaro Joaquim de Melo Siza Vieira, GOSE, GCIH, is a Portuguese architect, born 25 June 1933 in Matosinhos a small coastal town by Porto. He is internationally known as Álvaro Siza .-Life and career:...

, in order to draw up an architectural project for the museum. Construction began five years later on the former vegetable gardens of the Serralves Estate. The new 13,000-square-meter building, which includes 4,500 square meters of exhibition space in 14 galleries, opened its doors to the public in 1999, with the old Casa de Serralves

Casa de Serralves

Casa de Serralves is a house and museum located in Parque de Serralves in Porto, Portugal.Owned by the Serralves Foundation, the house was built by the second Conde de Vizela, Carlos Alberto Cabral and designed by the architect José Marques da Silva...

 serving as the foundation’s head office. In 2000, an auditorium was added. As in most of Siza’s buildings, the furniture and fittings were also designed by the architect, including lighting fixtures, handrails, doorknobs, and signage. Materials include hardwood floors and painted walls in gesso with marble skirting in the exhibition halls, and marble floors in the foyers and wet spaces. Exterior walls are covered with stone or stucco.

Collection and exhibitions

From the beginning, the collection and the various exhibitions have focussed on the period following 1968. There are no permanent exhibitions, but the museum hosts five exhibits from invited artists every year. In recent years, the museum has organized exhibitions by Franz West

Franz West

Franz West is an Austrian artist.-Work:His art practice started as a reaction to the Viennese Actionism movement has been exhibited in museums and galleries for more than three decades...

, Roni Horn

Roni Horn

Roni Horn is an American visual artist and writer. Horn's oeuvre, which spans almost four decades, encompasses sculpture, drawing, photography, language, and site-specific installation. The granddaughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, she was born in New York and lives and works in New York...

, Claes Oldenburg

Claes Oldenburg

Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...

 and Coosje van Bruggen

Coosje van Bruggen

Coosje van Bruggen was a sculptor, art historian, and critic. She collaborated extensively with her husband, Claes Oldenburg.-Biography:...

, Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton (artist)

Richard William Hamilton, CH was a British painter and collage artist. His 1956 collage, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?, produced for the This Is Tomorrow exhibition of the Independent Group in London, is considered by critics and historians to be one of the...

, Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool is an American artist residing in New York City. Since the 1980s, Wool's studio practice has incorporated issues surrounding post-conceptual ideas - moving beyond theoretical readings...

, and Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans

Luc Tuymans is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Tuymans is considered one of the most influential painters working today. His signature figurative paintings transform mediated film, television, and print sources into examinations of history and memory.-Life:Tuymans...

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Park

The landscaped gardens designed by João Gomes da Silva, on the approximately 18 hectars of land, preserved the most important species already existing on the site. The new Serralves Park opened to the public in 1987, and was subject to a recovery and enhancement project initiated in 2001 and concluded in 2006. Currently on display in the park are sculptures by Claes Oldenburg, Dan Graham

Dan Graham

Dan Graham , is a conceptual artist now working out of New York City. He is an influential figure in the field of contemporary art, both a practitioner of conceptual art and an art critic and theorist. His art career began in 1964 when he moved to New York and opened the John Daniels Gallery....

, Fernanda Gomes, Richard Serra

Richard Serra

Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...

, and Veit Stratmann.