The Armando Martins Museum of Contemporary Art

Armando Martins Museum launches award for the purchase of works at ARCOmadrid 2025

The Armando Martins Museum of Contemporary Art will bring together hundreds of works by the collector and businessman of the same name and is scheduled to open on March 22.
The Armando Martins Museum of Contemporary Art (MACAM), which opens in March in Lisbon, is launching this year, at the ARCOmadrid contemporary art fair, an award with which it will select a work to purchase and include in its permanent collection.

“The 1st MACAM Acquisition Prize will select a work at ARCOmadrid 2025 to incorporate it into its permanent collection,” announced this Wednesday the organization of the Madrid fair, the largest in the Iberian Peninsula and one of the most visited in the world (more than 95 thousand people in 2023).
In the press release it released, ARCOmadrid recalls that MACAM “will be the first five-star museum hotel in Europe”, installed in the Palácio Condes da Ribeira Grande, on Rua da Junqueira, in Lisbon “where the Armando Martins collection will be exhibited, with more than 600 works”.

ARCOmadrid 2025 takes place from March 5 to 9 and the MACAM award will be revealed on the opening day.

The Armando Martins Museum of Contemporary Art will bring together hundreds of works by the collector and businessman of the same name and is scheduled to open on March 22.

Initially scheduled to open in 2021, the opening was postponed to the first half of this year, a delay justified by constraints dictated by the covid-19 pandemic and aggravated by the war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the complexity of the rehabilitation and adaptation project of the historic building where the museum will be located, which dates back to the beginning of the 18th century.

MACAM will have a total area of 13,000 square meters, with around 2,000 square meters of exhibition space, in a project led by the Portuguese architecture studio MetroUrbe that rehabilitated the palace for its new functions.

Three artists were invited to the MACAM space to develop ‘site-specific’ works: the Spaniard Carlos Aires, the Portuguese José Pedro Croft and the Canadian Angela Bulloch.

Art historian and curator Adelaide Ginga will take over as director of the museum.

Armando Martins' personal art collection brings together works from the end of the 19th century to the present day, including names such as Paula Rego, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, José Malhoa, Amadeo Souza-Cardoso, Almada Negreiros, Eduardo Viana, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Julião Sarmento, Rui Chafes, José Pedro Croft, Lourdes Castro, among others.

Foreign artists are represented in the collection, among others, by Gilberto Zorio, John Baldessari, Albert Oehlen, Olafur Eliasson, Marina Abramovic, Antoni Tàpies, Antonio Ballester Moreno, Juan Muñoz, Santiago Sierra, Carlos Aires, Pedro Reyes, Carlos Garaicoa, Ernesto Neto, Marepe, Rosângela Rennó, Vik Muniz and Isa Genzken.

Some of the works in the collection have already been loaned for exhibition in spaces such as the Soares dos Reis National Museum and the Serralves Museum, in Porto, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, the National Museum of Contemporary Art and the former Berardo Collection Museum, in Lisbon, and the Reina Sofia Museum, in Madrid.

In 2018, Armando Martins' collection was distinguished with a prize in the area of collecting, by the ARCO Foundation in Madrid, Spain.

The 2025 edition of the ARCOmadrid Contemporary Art Fair features 214 galleries from around the world, including 15 Portuguese ones.

This is the 44th edition of ARCOmadrid and the general programme will feature 14 Portuguese galleries: 3+1 Arte Contemporânea, Balcony, Bruno Múrias, Cristina Guerra Contemporary Art, Foco, Francisco Fino, Jahn und Jahn, Madragoa, Miguel Nabinho, Monitor, Pedro Cera and Vera Cortês, all from Lisbon, and also Kubikgallery and Lehmann, from Porto.

The NO-NO gallery, from Lisbon, will be, for the second consecutive year, in the “Opening” section, dedicated to new galleries.

In addition to the “Opening” section, the 44th ARCOmadrid will have two more curated sections: “Wametisé: ideas for an amazofuturism” and “Profiles / Latin American Art”.

The “Wametisé: ideas for an amazofuturism” section gives substance to ARCOmadrid’s “central project for 2025”, the Amazonas, according to a statement from the fair’s organizers.

This section is curated by Denilson Baniwa and María Wills in collaboration with the Institute of Post-Natural Studies, an organization founded in 2020 that is based in Madrid and defines itself as “a center for artistic experimentation from which post-nature is explored and problematized as a framework for contemporary creation”.

This section aims to reflect “on new modes of creation that represent hybrid existences between human, vegetable, physical and metaphysical bodies”.

There will be 24 artists represented in this section, including Brazilians Frederico Filippi (Athena gallery, Rio de Janeiro); Uyra Sodoma (Aura Galeria, São Paulo); Naine Terena and Coletivo Mahku (Carmo Johnsons Projects, São Paulo); Anna Bella Geiger (Danielian, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro); Dhiani Pa’saro, Duhigó and Paulo Desana (Manaus Amazónia, Manaus); Gustavo Caboco and Daiara Tukano (Millan, São Paulo); and Claudia Andujar (Vermelho, São Paulo).

As for the “Profiles / Latin American Art” section, it aims to “continue to strengthen the historical link” between ARCOmadrid and Latin American art and is curated by José Esparza Chong Cuy.

This section features 10 galleries, three of which are Brazilian: A Gentil Caricoca, Cerrado Galeria and Martins&Montero.

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