Museum of Folk Art

A place where various disciplinary spheres meet and dialogue, this museum is a living document that gathers memory, projecting it towards contemporaneity. The overhaul of the old “Secção da Vida Popular” (Folk Life Section) pavilion, built for the 1940 Portuguese World Exhibition, resulted in the Museum of Folk Art, inaugurated in 1948. The adaptation to museum is a project by Jorge Segurado, in collaboration with ethnographer Francisco Martins Lage and artist Tomás de Mello. The creation of the museum also counted on the collaboration of a vast team of decorators and painters, resulting in a combination of modernist and traditional elements. On the exterior, the building displays bas-relief compositions with rural subjects, whereas, on the inside, the various rooms depict the regions of Portugal. Its heritage and historic relevance lies in the architectonic ensemble, and also in the important collection gathered throughout the universal exhibitions and initiatives of Estado Novo, which are currently on display at the Museum of Ethnology.