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RARE EARTH

Tony Cragg

2023-10-26
2024-02-25
Curatorship: Emília Ferreira

Rare Earth

October 26, 2023 – February 25, 2024

Curator: Emília Ferreira

Tony Cragg (Liverpool, 1949) is one of the most analytical, playful, persistent and innovative sculptors of the last 50 years. Based in Wuppertal, Germany, since 1977, he has a studio there and established the basis of his international career that spans between drawing and sculpture, with several public works around the world. 

Rare Earth exhibition, by Tony Cragg, brings, for the first time, to Lisbon, a significant set of around 5 dozen works by the artist, including sculpture and drawing, from 1979 to 2023, in a revealing perspective of his work.  In addition to the sculptures and drawings on display at the National Museum of Contemporary Art from October 26, 2023 to February 25, 2024, the dialogue with the works also extends to the public space, in an unprecedented partnership between MNAC and Lisbon City Council. 

The published catalog (bilingual Portuguese/English) will feature a curatorial text by the director of MNAC and an interview carried out by the specialist connoisseur of Tony Cragg's work, Jon Wood. 

Tony Cragg, one of the most analytical, playful, persistent and innovative sculptors of the last 50 years, understands the artistic discipline he has practiced for half a century, defining it as a rare material: the pincer of the soul with which the poet chooses the word and the The sculptor analyzes, redefines and reorganizes the form and its intrinsic energy, taking himself, and taking us with him, to unsuspected places, new landscapes, populated by new beings and new ways of relating ourselves to the world around us . 

This exhibition brings, for the first time, to Lisbon, a significant set of sculpture and drawing works by Tony Cragg, from 1979 to 2023, in a perspective revealing the seduction that the visible and, in particular, the invisible — subcutaneous, structural, cellular or monadic — has exercised in this “radical materialist”, as he defines himself.  

Emília Ferreira (From the catalog text)

On Exhibition

The c(AI)rcles’s Pentagon

By Gencork | Sofalca

2025-05-28
2025-06-26
Curatorship: Portugal Faz Bem
The design/art installation - The c(AI)rcle´s pentagon, which explores the connection between artificial intelligence, (re)generativedesign, art, and sustainability
Solo show

Caminhos

Millennium bcp Collection

2025-05-16
2025-08-24
Curatorship: Emília Ferreira, Regina Branco e Joana d’Oliva Monteiro
he vital need for contact with nature, also advocating movement as the essence of life, inspired by the thought of the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau
Temporary Exhibition

THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

João Fonte Santa

2025-04-10
2025-07-03
Curatorship: Lúcia Saldanha e Rui Afonso Santos
With an extremely relevant body of work in painting, drawing and illustration, João Fonte Santa analyses and dissects the heavy legacy of European colonialism, particularly in the case of Portugal.
Solo show

ALDEBARAN FALLEN TO THE GROUND

2025-03-13
2025-06-22
Aldebaran Fallen to the Ground is a series of shaped paintings, with irregular, organic contours. The intensity and incidence of light intrude on the viewing of those (most of them) faces, painted in oil pastels.
Solo show

Impressões Digitais. MNAC Collection

2024-12-12
2026-12-30
Curatorship: Ana Guimarães, Emília Ferreira, Maria de Aires Silveira e Tiago Beirão Veiga
Consisting of founding works of contemporary Portuguese art historiography, from 1850 to the present day, the MNAC's collection holds several national treasures.
Permanent Exhibition

Since 1911

2022-05-26
2026-05-26
An intervention that celebrates 110 years of the MNAC.
114 years