serious Portuguese art, in a border city
A six-metre chandelier made of tampons isn't the kind of thing you find in your city's museum. At the MACE you do. Joana Vasconcelos's "The Bride" is one of the most recognisable pieces in the collection, and it sums up well what you'll find here: contemporary Portuguese art with no concessions to the decorative or the comfortable.
The building was the Misericórdia hospital. The conversion kept what mattered: the Salão Nobre has azulejo panels from 1740, painted in blue and white, and houses the collection's most emblematic pieces. It's one of those situations where the container and the content read each other.
The whole collection comes from a single source: the private collection of António Cachola, with more than 800 works of Portuguese art from the 1980s to today. José Pedro Croft, Pedro Calapez, Ângela Ferreira, João Pedro Vale, among many others. No limit of discipline, theme or aesthetic. The result is a collection with personality, not a catalogue of consensus.
The MACE is on Rua da Cadeia, less than ten minutes' walk from the bastioned walls that put Elvas on the UNESCO map. After you leave, the city greets you with another layer of history on top.
what you'll find
- Joana Vasconcelos's tampon chandelier, in the original
- baroque azulejos from 1740 inside a contemporary exhibition space
- an exclusively national collection, with central names of recent Portuguese art
- a view over Elvas from the top floor
