Lisbon’s “sleeping beauty” awakens

Isabel Carlos, the new director of the Centro de Arte Moderna, on revitalising the Gulbenkian’s modern art museum

Isabel Carlos, the new director of the Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM) in Lisbon, compares the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s modern art museum to a “sleeping beauty”. Carlos, only the third director of CAM since it opened in 1983, talked to The Art Newspaper about her plans to reinvigorate the museum. Her inaugural show is “Jane and Louise Wilson: Suspending Time”, until 18 April.

The Gulbenkian Foundation’s modern art collection includes many works by British artists ranging from Henry Moore and Peter Blake to Gilbert and George alongside their Portuguese contemporaries. There is also a small collection of work by artists of Armenian origin, including Arshile Gorky. This reflects the life story of Calouste Gulbenkian, the Armenian businessman and philanthropist who bequeathed his fortune to the Anglo-Portuguese foundation.

This year Carlos is a member of the Tate’s Turner Prize jury. She was artistic director of the 2004 Sydney Biennial and curated the Portuguese pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Carlos also co-founded Lisbon’s Instituto de Arte Contemporânea and was its deputy director from 1996 until 2001.

The Art Newspaper: CAM was Portugal’s first museum of modern and contemporary, but it has been rather overshadowed by newer museums.
Isabel Carlos: Thankfully it lost visibility [because] we have more museums in Portugal working with contemporary art. I would like CAM to be a reference to something that these museums don’t do, which is show art from the early 20th century. We have the best collection of art until the 1950s. On the other hand, it must be an active space in terms of showing contemporary artists who work with major issues.

TAN: Is that why you wanted to work with the Wilson twins?
IC: The reason we started with Jane and Louise Wilson was precisely because it is embedded in CAM’s identity and its special relationship with the UK. We have here a British art collection that is a treasure. The Wilsons were a good reason to look again at the works we already have.
Their work is about ideas of abstraction and human figuration. With these two ideas we chose works to create “Abstraction and the Human Figure in CAM’s British Art Collection" [Until 18 April].

TAN: In what other ways do you plan to draw upon the collection?
IC: The permanent collection is important as CAM has an educational duty. It is important to show works from the collection for a long period so that schools throughout the year can work with the multiple ideas that derive of art of the 20th century, particularly in Portugal. The proposed programme is designed so that when walking through CAM visitors can always see an Amadeu de Sousa Cardoso or a Paula Rego: the biggest names in 20th-century Portuguese art.
Essentially, I want a balance between international and Portuguese art, whether it is in the collection or in a temporary exhibition. The Ana Vidigal retrospective [later this year] is an example of that line of planning.

TAN: How do you want to CAM be a more “active space”?
IC: Because of its scale, it allows artists to experiment. It can have an almost laboratory side. It is no coincidence that this exhibition by the Wilsons has five new sculptures that were created specifically for this space, and which were produced by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s technicians. This is a real asset.
CAM will never be a MoMA, or a Tate, but it can be a contemporary art museum that allows contemporary artists to research, and to create experimental exhibitions. These are not Jane and Louise Wilson's first sculptures, but it is something that they haven’t explored much, and this exhibition has allowed them to deepen that aspect of their work.

TAN: Do you want to support Portuguese artists in the same way?
IC: In their case, there is another strand of the programme. The centre should be a space for Portuguese artists to mount their first retrospectives. I’m thinking of mature artists. Today we have a lot of spaces for young artists, and we have museums that organise retrospectives for artists who are 60 or 70 years old. What is missing are mid-career retrospectives for 40- to 50-years-old artists not yet fully established. Because of its size, CAM is the perfect place to do such shows. Of course, the centre should also allow more senior Portuguese artists, such as Ana Vieira or Carlos Nogueira, to show their work.

TAN: Do you intend to work in partnership with other institutions and spaces?
IC: The Jane and Louise Wilson exhibition will go to the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea in Santiago de Compostela. I’m interested in collaborations and partnerships. In our first year, I am happy to have an exhibition produced here travelling to another international museum right next door in Spain. Next we will receive an exhibition by the Galician artist Jorge Barbie, produced by Marco [Museo de Arte Contemporáneo], Vigo, also in Spain. Following this, our Vasco Araújo and Javier Téllez exhibition will go to Marco. Merely importing exhibitions is something that can happen, but it’s not something that I would prioritise.

Because our collection begins in 1913, we are constantly lending works. Soon we will lend a series of works to a retrospective of [Madeira-born artist] Lourdes Castro at the Serralves Museum [in Porto]. We are also lending to museums abroad.

Another program that I want to start in 2011 will be called “Arte Itinerante”, taking the idea from the Gulbenkian’s old “Bibliotecas Itinerantes” [mobile libraries]. Instead of books, there will be works of art. Or rather, a programme of exhibitions with works from our collection shown in several places across Portugal.

Building the Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM) in the park that surrounds the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian along with the Gulbenkian foundation's concert hall and offices was controversial, leading to a debate in the press and parliament in the early 1980s. British architect Leslie Martin designed CAM in a brutalist style, but the building partially succeeds in blending with its surrounding thanks to its roof gardens, low profile and well tended soft landscaping. CAM has promoted dance, poetry and music as well as visual art, and overlooks a concert bowl used for jazz. However, it has tended to play second fiddle to the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, which opened in 1969 and contains the oil tycoon's eclectic collection of art, archaeology and jewellery.

Published at Museum (18), The Art Newspaper - International edition Vol. XVIII No. 211, March 2010. Jane and Louise Wilson, Songs for My Mother (video still), 2009 Courtesy : Centro de Arte Moderna/Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon