The Creation of the CAMJAP in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

"Art – and Gulbenkian knew it well – is not a stable product of the creation of mankind; in another manner history it teaches us that it is an activity in constant evolution or transformation and, this precisely one of the motives of its great interest."

José de Azeredo Perdigão, in his speech on the occasion of the opening of the CAM

To create a Museum of Modern Art
Created in 1956, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation has had an important role in the visual arts in Portugal by implementing several study programs abroad and so giving innumerable artists the necessary exposure to develop their work. Since this date the Foundation has organized exhibitions, conferences, and lectures, edited art books, and connected the general public with national and international modern art. The support given to artists through the acquisition of works, scholarship programs and travel grants was fundamental for making contact possible between Portuguese creators and more advanced artistic milieus.

For a long time, certainly for more than twenty-five years, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation was the cultural center of Lisbon. Between 1970 and 1984 more than four hundred and fifty exhibitions were produced, which were visited by approximately three million people.

The Gulbenkian Museum, instituted in accordance with Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian’s will and inaugurated in 1969, holds the art collections acquired by its founder. Early on a need was felt to create another museum to exhibit and preserve the art works that the F.C.G. would acquire as a result of its intense activity in the sphere of art.

CAM's project
In 1977 the President of the F.C.G. gave the Exhibition and Museum Studies Department, directed at the time by the Architect José Sommer Ribeiro, the responsibility for finding a program and site for a Museum/Center of Modern Art. The British architect Sir Leslie Martin was consulted and, together with a Portuguese team, he developed a preliminary plan.

On the 22nd of August of 1979 the Foundation unanimously decided that it should “construct, equip and maintain, with essentially pedagogical and cultural aims, a Center for research and divulgement for the different spheres of Modern Art. This center, which will be built in the Calouste Gulbenkian park, will have as its base a permanent exhibition of works, the property of the Foundation or that will be acquired by the Foundation, through purchase or donations, and will organize temporary exhibitions of other works by national and international artists or belonging to private collectors that will cede them to the Foundation temporarily as a loan.”

The building
The new building was inaugurated in 1983 and named the Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM) with the architect José Sommer Ribeiro as Director.

CAM was the first permanent exhibition space for modern and contemporary art in Portugal, and similar to the way that the F.C.G was already functioning, it developed an intense program of temporary exhibitions. In order to produce this vast program, three exhibition areas were made available with a total of 3.400 m2. An important storage space was also provided, which is essential for a growing collection. It is divided into three areas: the “visiting storage”, equipped with 78 sliding net panels, each of 18 m2; the “non-visiting storage” of 760 m2, reserved for diverse material (sculpture, objects, works on paper, large framed formats); and a 800 m2 space to store of exhibition materials, electronic devices, packaging, etc. Similarly the landscaping of the park bring together the ideal conditions for the exhibition of outdoor sculpture.

The construction of the CAM building in the gardens was created polemic creating debates in The Assembeleia de Républica (National parliament), newspapers and ecology campaingns, that are documented photographically.

On the opening day, June 20th of 1983, the President of the Foundation, José de Azeredo Perdigão, and the Director of the CAM, The architect José Sommer Ribeiro, made reference in their discourses, to the stages and difficulties in the building process of the museum, and also to the satisfaction in verifying that they found the best possible solution to highlight the garden.

Education
In 1984, under the direction of Maria Madalena de Azeredo Perdigão, the ACARTE award was created. Conceived as a “service directed especially to contemporary culture and vanguard artistic activities, it should promote multidisciplinary projects in the fields of theatre, music, dance, poetry, cinema and video, favouring innovation, experimentation, research and the development of creativity.

The CAI, Centro Artístico Infantil (Children ArtsCenter), was created, under the direction of Natália Pais, as a department of the ACARTE, with the purpose of developing a program in the filed of education, aesthetics, and pedagogy or artistic expression by sensitizing and forming both children and adults. In 1994 this center was transferred to the Serviço de Educação (Educational Department) and returned to the CAMJAP in 1999.

In 1987 the Workshops of animation cinema are created, in the CAM, in the sequence of a course organized by the Royal College, and the purchase of equipment. In 1993, depending on the CAI, it was named CITEN, Centro de Imagens e Técnicas Narrativas (Center for Images and Narrative Techniques), until the present day.

The ACARTE will be extinct in 2002, but maintaining the Jazz in August and the Madalena Azeredo Perdigão Awards. The CAI was integrated in the new Education Department, created in the same year.

Directors
In 1993, after the death of the first president of the F.C.G., and according to the Administrative Council’s decision, the Center was given the name of its key proponent and became the Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão. In 1994 the architect José Sommer Ribeiro retired and Jorge Molder was appointed as the new director.