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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

Loops.Expanded 2026

2026-07-14
2026-10-03
Curatorship: Irit Batsry
MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art – Chiado and DuplaCena present, for the 11th consecutive year, an exhibition dedicated to the loop as a seminal form of the moving image.
Temporary Exhibition

On Gestures and Forms

A dialogue between collections

2026-06-18
2026-09-20
Curatorship: MNAA e MNAC
Works from the collections of Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporânea, and Fundação Millennium bcp, engage in a dialogue across different periods, materials, and approaches to artistic creation.
Temporary Exhibition

Alice Geirinhas

Sycorax

2026-05-29
2026-09-20
Curatorship: Lúcia Saldanha e Rui Afonso Santos
Sycorax is an installation of drawings that summons the absent and silenced figure of Sycorax, the witch and mother of Caliban, characters from "The Tempest" by William Shakespeare.
Temporary Exhibition

Ultratremor

Group show

2026-05-29
2026-09-27
Curatorship: Germano Dushá
Between the visible and the invisible, the exhibition brings together artists who explore states of transformation, apparition, and resonance, bringing matter, imagination, and spiritual experience into dialogue.
Temporary Exhibition

Maria José Oliveira

I who once was I

2026-05-15
2026-10-04
Curatorship: Paula Parente Pinto
Maria José Oliveira transforms everyday materials and discarded objects into territories of memory, ritual, and metamorphosis, where time itself becomes a living material of artistic creation.
Temporary Exhibition

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
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