Powerful performance
Today Lisbon’s Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology opens to the public with a comprehensive 12-hour programme to mark the occasion. The new museum, built on the site of the former Tejo Power Station, was funded by the EDP Foundation and designed by Amanda Levete’s architecture firm ALA with the goal of regenerating and reconnecting the city’s riverfront Belém district. “An idea that drove our thinking was the increasing need in modern life for places where people can congregate so we designed the building in such a way as to create new public space as well as gallery space,” Levete told the press. Led by Pedro Gadanho, the former curator of contemporary architecture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the establishment will merge art, architecture and technology, while supporting Portuguese talent. The opening week will see works by artists such as Ryoji Ikeda and Haroon Mirza fill the galleries of the new Kunsthalle – whose tiles echo the country’s traditional ceramic culture – followed by the large group exhibition Utopia/Dystopia part II, which will open in March next year.