On Saturday, the City Council of Coimbra inaugurates the exhibition of contemporary art “Light and Memory”, with works from the AA Contemporary Art Collection, a private collection of collectors in the city.
In a statement sent to the Lusa agency, the municipality of Coimbra revealed that the exhibition, which will open at 4:30 p.m. in the Sala da Cidade (Old Refectory of the Santa Cruz Monastery), presents works by three “internationally recognized” artists. contemporary visual artists: the French Christian Boltanski, who died in 2021, the Pole Miroslaw Balka and the Portuguese Francisco Tropa.
Promoted by the Coimbra Contemporary Art Center (CACC), an organization created in 2020 to receive part of the State Contemporary Art Collection, the exhibition brings together works owned by collectors Ana Cristina and António Albertino, who, in 2015, developed AA Identity Contemporary Art Collection.
“CACC, for the first time, expands its activity beyond its place of origin, to show this set of works from the AA Contemporary Art Collection (Coimbra), thus fulfilling one of its various missions: to show private collections in the city. the region”, pointed out the City Council of Coimbra.
“This gesture seeks to recognize the importance of private collecting as one of the essential engines for the development of contemporary creation in the field of art, while establishing a substantive link between the city and its citizens.”
The Chamber added that the exhibition “Light and Memory” is curated by António Albertino and stage design by the architect João Mendes Ribeiro.
“Patent until August 20, this exhibition is of great importance for the municipality, not only because of the meeting of these unique authors, but, above all, because the materiality of their works evokes the memory of a time not too distant in history that the tragic events of the Ukraine war brought her back to the present.”
According to the website of the design company FBA, responsible for the creation, in 2015, of the AA Contemporary Art Collection brand, at the time of its public presentation, contemporary art collectors reveal that, in recent decades, “bring together a set of works for the pure pleasure of living with them”.
“Collecting has become a way of conjugating the first person plural”, argue the owners of the collection, quoted on the FBA page.
According to the City Council, still on Saturday, at 10:30 p.m. and with free admission, a guided tour of the exhibition is planned, led by António Cerdeira (Coordinator of the National Plan for the Arts), “who coordinates with the municipality the interpretive program of the exhibition, within the framework of the European Night of Museums”.
Source: Observadora
