The Ages of the Sea
Texts: Francisco Contente Domingues, Mariana Castro Henriques, Pierre Ickowicz, Dominique Lobstein, Eduardo Lourenço, Caroline Mathieu, João Castel-Branco Pereira; biographies João Castel-Branco Pereira, Luísa Sampaio
Editorial co-ordination: João Carvalho Dias
Design: TVM Designers
October, 2012 (278 pages) € 38
ISBN: 978-987-8848-87-3
ISBN: 978-972-8848-86-6 (Portuguese edition)

One of the main activities carried out by the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum concerns the organization of temporary exhibitions on topics connected to reference pieces from its collections. The project of this exhibition resting on a historical survey of the visual display of the Sea, pinpoints the fundamental topics which lead to its representations in Western Painting. The texts of the accompanying catalogue develop many of the ideas raised by exhibition theme sections. The volume includes also full reproduction of all exhibits, biographies of the artists represented, and a sea-related chronology.

Van Goyen, Lorrain, Turner, Constable, Friedrich, Courbet, Boudin, Manet, Monet, Signac, Fattori, Sorolla, Klee, De Chirico, Hopper are some of the eighty-nine authors present in the exhibition. Portuguese painting, through works by Henrique Pousão, Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, João Vaz, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Menez, and Nikian Skapinakis among others.

Infinite tasks: when art and book unbind each other
Paulo Pires do Vale
Editor: João Carvalho Dias
Designer: Sílvia Prudêncio
July 2012 (244 pages) € 36
ISBN: 978-972-8848-85-9

The exhibition and the book that accompanies it encompass a reflection on the limits – which are constantly challenged and reconfigured – of art and the book to come. Paulo Pires do Vale the exhibition curator is the author of the Preface and of the five essays in the same number of the exhibition sections: With infinity in your hands; The fracture and the explosion: coming in / going out; Infinite line: never-ending story; Everything exists to become part of a book; The fire and the book to come. The volume comprises also the following contributions: Brief notes on the book, by Gonçalo M. Tavares; The book, spiritual instrument by Mallarmé, translated by Michael Gibbs, and a facsimile version of Lenz by Rodney Graham, courtesy of the artist; and a bibliography selected by Ana Barata.

The starting points for this multiple journey, this ‘wandering’, as quoted by the exhibition curator, were the collections of the Gulbenkian Museum and the Art Library’s, institutions that carry on the task of collecting initiated by the founder, to which many other works were added from Portuguese and international collections, comprising books, sculpture, installation, painting and films.

A Greek vase in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
Maria Helena Rocha-Pereira
Editor: João Carvalho Dias
Designer: Luís Chimeno
March 2012 (80 pages)
Bilingual edition (English/Portuguese) €8
ISBN: 978-972-8848-83-5

Inaugurating the series “Museum Treasures” dedicated to a single piece or a small selection of works from the permanent collection, the museum publishes a study by Maria Helena Rocha-Pereira, the greatest Portuguese authority on Classical Studies, covering its fourth-century BC , Attic red-figure painted calyx-krater. The vase, considered the finest specimen of Greek classic ceramics in Portugal, was acquired by Calouste Gulbenkian at the important sale of T. Hope collection, through Christie?s, London, in 1917.

Director’s Choice
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
João Castel-Branco Pereira
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa
Scala Publishers, London
Designer: Nigel Soper
December, 2011 (80 pages) €10
ISBN: 978-1-85759

The Calouste Gulbenkian Museu is housed in a complex of modern buildings, the first example of twentieth-century architecture to have been classified as a National Monument in Portugal, both for its formal excellence and its integration into the natural surroundings. The museum boasts collections of fine and decorative arts, from Ancient Egypt to twentieth-century Europe. The quality of the architecture extends to that of the permanent display, which, structured around two great sections of Oriental and European Art respectively, provides insight into the individual taste of the collector, Gulbenkian.

The permanent display includes an ensemble of rare objects from Egypt, Greece, Persia, Mughal India and Turkey. There are masterpieces by artists such as Ghirlandaio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Fragonard, Guardi, Houdon, Turner, Corot, Degas, Manet and Monet. Among the decorative arts, there is furniture by Cresssent and Riesener, silverwork by François-Thomas Germain, Spire and Durant; as well as the unique ensemble of jewellery by René Lalique.

João Castel-Branco let himself be guided by his freedom of choice and personal taste; vevertheless, the choices ended up yoked together under three rubrics: objects, places and people. Invariably, something of Calouste Gulbenkian’s own temperament surfaces in these choices: the selection reflects the values embodied in the whole collection

In the Presence of Things. Four Centuries of European Still-Life Painting
Volume Two
Texts: Neil Cox
Editorial co-ordination: João Carvalho Dias
Designer: TVM Designers
October 2011 (247 pages) € 35
ISBN: 978-972-8848-82-8

Following to the volume published in 2010, on the occasion of the exhibition with the same title, covering the period from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century, we publish now volume two, which accompanies the second part of the show.

While the emergence of photography served as a boundary for the start of the new show covering still-life painting in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the year of Calouste Gulbenkian’s death, 1955, concluded this path. The presence of works by leading painters is faced with the works by other artists that, although not having practiced mostly this genre, gave an important contribution, by exploring different methods using painting and other mediums.

Neil Cox (University of Essex), responsible for curating the exhibition and author of all the texts in the catalogue, offers the reader, with great clarity and scholarship, the possibility to learn about the challenges involved in the making of still life as a category in modern art, in constant dialogue with the works by such leading painters as Manet, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Picasso, Dalí, Magritte or Matisse. A selected bibliography and names index complete this publication

Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
Texts: Clara Serra, Isabel Pereira Coutinho, João Castel-Branco Pereira, Luís Manuel Araújo, Luísa Sampaio, Maria Antónia Pinto de Matos, Mário Castro Hipólito, Manuela Fidalgo, Maria Fernanda Passos Leite, Maria Queiroz Ribeiro, Maria Rosa Figueiredo, and Nuno Vassallo e Silva
Editorial co-ordination: João Carvalho Dias
Designer: TVM Designers – Luís Moreira
April 2011 (215 pages)
ISBN: 978-972-8848-77-4 (soft cover)
ISBN: 978-972-8848-78-1 (hard cover)

Ten years upon the first publication of the museum’s selected album, an updated and enlarged (190 pieces) new version comes to print including all sections of the collection amassed by Calouste Gulbenkian, translating the memory of the museum’s permanent exhibition.

The organization of this volume follows the museum’s circuit, starting in the galleries dedicated to Oriental and Classical art, developing to Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Mesopotamian, Eastern Islamic, Armenian and Far Eastern Art. It follows with European Art with sections dedicated to the Art of the Book, Sculpture, Painting and Decorative Arts, particularly 18th-century French art, and the work of René Lalique. Included in the book is also a selection of works that by their fragility and the fact that they fall out of the scope of the current exhibition are kept in storage. A selected bibliography and an index of works and authors are also part of this volume.

Evocations, Passages, Atmospheres.
Paintings from the Sakιp Sabancι Museum, Istanbul
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
Texts: Ferit Edgü and Raquel Henriques da Silva
Bilingual edition (Portuguese / English)
June 2007 (159 pages) €24
ISBN 978-972-848-38-5

The exhibition ‘Evocations, Passages, Atmospheres. Paintings from the Sakιp Sabancι Museum, Istanbul’ presents a selection of thirty-eight paintings from the Turkish museum’s collection, produced by Turkish, Armenian, and other artists from all around Europe then settled in Istanbul, and who opted for the city as their subject matter. The exhibition ends with a small group of works painted in Paris, by Turkish artists, and also by Portuguese artists belonging to the CAMJAP collection.

The catalogue includes the essays ‘Turkish painting (1850-1950). An overview’, by Ferit Edgü a Sakιp Sabancι Museum consultant, and ‘Portuguese painting between the 19th and 20th centuries: naturalist traditions and a taste for experiment’ by the Portuguese scholar Raquel Henriques da Silva. Besides the full reproduction of all paintings in the exhibition the catalogue also includes the biographies of the artists represented, which include names like Prince Abdülmecid Effendi, Hüsseyin Zekai Pasha, Fausto Zonaro, Hoca Ali Riza or Halil Pasha, and João Cristino da Silva, Sousa Lopes and Francis Smith, among others.

Inner Landscape
José Pedro Croft
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
Texts: Hellmut Wohl and José Tolentino Mendonça
Bilingual edition (Portuguese / English)
April 2007 (60 pages) € 24
ISBN: 978-972-8848-37-8

The installation ‘Inner Landscape’ by José Pedro Croft results from a commission made to the artist by the Museum to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
The designed pieces stand out on the basis of the abstract geometry of their forms and the technical coldness of their materials, while constantly quoting the Museum as a building, the mechanisms by which objects are exhibited and the particular charisma of the Collection. The catalogue contains texts by Hellmut Wohl and José Tolentino Mendonça, and fully illustrates the installation and its comprising pieces.