The CIAJG gathers pieces from different times, places and contexts in conjunction with works by contemporary artists, proposing a (re) assembly of art history, as a succession of echoes, and a new design for the museum, as a place for astonishment and reflection.

O Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães é uma estrutura dedicada à arte contemporânea e às relações que esta tece com artes de outras épocas e diferentes culturas e disciplinas. Partindo de uma conceção da arte como espaço de experiência e de liberdade, não submissa à categorização da história, da forma ou do estilo, tem um particular interesse em questões que se tornaram importantes conceitos operativos na arte contemporânea e no mundo atual, tais como: energia vs. forma, conceção circular vs. linear do tempo, arqueologia do saber, nomadismo, migração – de formas, motivos, ideias, pessoas, bens –, memória individual e coletiva, hospitalidade, comunidade, troca, miscigenação, antropofagia cultural, utopia, entre outras.

At CIAJG we gather objects and images from very distant times and places, sometimes with no apparent connection, as if they were brought to us by the wind, as if they were flying seeds. We want to re-found the museum as a place of wonder and reflection, as a draft and as a mirror, as a horizon as far as the eye can see. For this, we cross different languages ​​and methodologies, from archeology to ethnology, through the history of art; we try to live together dimensions as often irreconcilable as the popular, the ancestral, the artisanal, the vernacular, the knowledge transmitted through orality or gestures; we propose to take a look at the place and time in which we find ourselves on the most diverse manifestations and material and immaterial survivals of our culture. Return to the visitor the space between the objects, the pauses to inspire.