A working group made up of three art specialists will update the evaluations of the Ellipse collection, seized after the bankruptcy of the Banco Privado Português (BPP), until the end of June, a source from the Ministry of Culture said on Tuesday.
Contacted by the Lusa agency about the mission and composition of the working group, the press office of the Minister of Culture, Pedro Adão e Silva, indicated that the working group was constituted within the scope of the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage (DGPC). .
The group is made up of the curator of the State Collection of Contemporary Art (CACE), Sandra Vieira Jurgens, and “two personalities of recognized merit in the area”, the historians and professors Pedro Lapa and Luís Urbano Afonso, the same source indicated.
“Until the end of June, this working group, based on existing evaluations, specifically from Sotheby’s and Christie’s (the most recent), must update these evaluations and also evaluate the conservation conditions of the collection,” the official source added. about the mission assigned to the specialists.
According to the Ministry of Culture, “it will be based on this exercise that the General Directorate of the Treasury and Finance will exchange credits that it has with the liquidation commission of the Banco Privado Português for the Ellipse Collection.”
“In recent weeks important steps have been taken, in particular an understanding has been found around the methodology to establish the value of the Ellipse collection”, also pointed out the guardianship over this stage, which will contribute to the creation of a new contemporary country art museum Centro Cultural de Belém (CCB), in Lisbon, from January 2023.
The Minister of Culture, Pedro Adão e Silva, announced last week that the Government denounced the protocol between the State and the collector and businessman José Berardo, on the collection created by that museum, and that it would be automatically renewed at the end of the year.
At the same time, it announced the acquisition of the Ellipse Collection, in a process that includes the extinction of the Fundação de Arte Moderna e Arte Contemporânea — Berardo Collection and the creation of a contemporary art museum “that values various collections” at the CCB.
After the decision to terminate the loan contract and the creation of a contemporary art museum — whose creation is planned in the General State Budgets for 2022 —, the State hopes “very soon” to acquire the Ellipse Collection and deposit it in the CCB.
Pedro Adão e Silva revealed, at the time, that the collection “is in good condition” and has around “800 pieces”.
The Fundação Ellipse collection was created in 2004, initially as an international investment fund representing around 20 million euros, sponsored by a group of thirty Portuguese and foreign investors.
However, João Rendeiro, former president of BPP, the main promoter of the project, ended up transforming the fund into a private center for contemporary art, in Alcoitão, at that time open to the public from Friday to Sunday.
The former banker was found dead on May 13 in a South African prison – after a judicial process, escape and arrest – and his personal art collection, with some 120 works, was in the possession of his wife, declared trustee by the Portuguese. authorities.
In 2011, during a press visit to the annual exhibition of works from the Ellipse Collection, in the Alcoitão exhibition space, Alexandre Melo, then curator and consultant for the Ellipse Foundation, told the Lusa agency that most of the works there presented, almost exclusively from the 20 XXI, had not yet been shown to the public.
At the time, Alexandre Melo added that the exhibition was based entirely on the Ellipse collection, which at the time numbered about a thousand works.
The exhibition organized by the Ellipse Foundation Contemporary Art Collection was entitled “The Last First Decade” and aimed to revisit the historical avant-gardes based on works from the first decade of the 21st century.
Artists included Pedro Cabrita Reis, David Claerbout, Nick Oberthaler, Rodney Graham, João Onofre, Steven Shearer, Julião Sarmento, Dash Snow, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tatjana Doll, Sophie Calle, Glenn Ligon, Mona Hatoum, Catherine Opie, Gonzalo Puch, Wolfgang Tillmans, Júlia Ventura, Kiluanji Kia Henda, José Iraola and the duo João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva.
Lusa has tried to contact the curator Alexandre Melo, but has not yet received a response.
Source: Observadora
