Art on Display 1949-69

8 November 2019 - 2 March 2020
 
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum | Lisbon, Portugal
 
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. Islamic East gallery, 1970
© Mário de Oliveira

A classic almost before it was inaugurated, the Gulbenkian Museum opened in 1969 and was quickly recognized as a successful model of a museum.

Marking its 50th anniversary, this exhibition takes as its starting point the display solutions found at the time of its opening such as: allow the visitor to look at art in isolation, in mass, standing up or lying down; paintings shown in daylight and in strong artificial illumination; sculptures reclining on beds of rubble or on plinths of concrete bricks; regular, angled, rectilinear or curved walls.

Confronting different exhibition design ideas developed in the same years by Franco Albini e Franca Helg, Carlo Scarpa, Lina Bo Bardi, Aldo van Eyck and Alison and Peter Smithson, the exhibition demonstrates how these architects responded to the new opportunities of the 60's and new challenges of mass cultural consumption.