[5] The Villa (Casa de Serralves) is a unique example of Art Deco architecture, and the Park won the “Henry Ford Prize for the Preservation of the Environment” in 1997.

[7] Serralves develops its activities around 5 strategic axes: Artistic Creation, Audience Formation and Awareness-Raising, The Environment, Critical Reflection on Contemporary Society and The Creative Industries.

Special Patron Status is reserved for Founders who stand out because of their ongoing commitment to Serralves, embodied through their contribution to the Annual Fund.

The importance of several initiatives - in particular the Centre of Contemporary Art, which was managed from the outset by Fernando Pernes and which remained in operation until 1980 - played a key role in consolidating the artistic universe in Oporto.

[13][14] These achievements were recognized by the Secretary of State for Culture, Teresa Patrício Gouveia, when she chose the city as the location for the future National Museum of Modern Art.

On this date, and prior to the creation of the Serralves Foundation in 1989, a Founding Committee was constituted, whose members were Jorge Araújo, Teresa Andresen and Diogo Alpendurada.

240-A/89, of July 27, signaled the beginning of an innovative partnership between the State and civil society - encompassing around 51 public and private sector bodies at that time.

The winner project was designed by the architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the Japanese studio SANAA[18] (Pritzker prize in 2012).

In September 2014, an enlargement project was presented by Alvaro Siza[20] to expand the premises of Serralves by transforming the garage of the Villa in the new Casa do Cinema Manoel de Oliveira.

The programming combines in-house production of exhibitions with co-productions with international institutions, enabling the circulation of works by both Portuguese and foreign artists.

[11] The Serralves Foundation signed a contract in March 1991 with the architect, Álvaro Siza Vieira, in order to draw up an architectural project for the museum.

[22] Siza was invited to design a museum project that took into consideration the specific characteristics of the physical setting and the need for integration within the surrounding landscape.

The 13,000-square-meter building, which includes 4,500 square meters of exhibition space in 14 galleries, opened its doors to the public in 1999,[24] with the old Casa de Serralves serving as the foundation's head office.

Since 2003, the library has featured Mario Pedrosa (2003), a site-specific ceiling installation composed of 77 manufactured glass globes by Tobias Rehberger.

In recent years, the museum has organized exhibitions by Alvaro Lapa, Jorge Pinheiro, Franz West, Roni Horn, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Richard Hamilton, Christopher Wool, Luc Tuymans, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian,[2][27] Ana Jotta.

[29] The symbolic start date for the collection is 1968, but it refers specifically to the socio-cultural events of the second half of the 1960s which, in addition to the consecration of pop art, witnessed the launch of the bases of dematerialisation of artworks, the mingling of formal genres, the use of film, photography and text to underpin conceptual projects and blurring of the lines between art and life, accompanied by widespread agitation for new political and social ideas.

In Portugal, the late 1960s paved the way for the experimentalism of the 1970s and the beginning of a dialogue that was more informed by international experiences and relationships between Portuguese artists and their foreign counterparts.

[37] In 2019 Ribas resigned the directorship over a controversy regarding censorship,[38] and subsequently departed Portugal for a position with the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.

Owned by the Serralves Foundation, the house was built by the second Count of Vizela, Carlos Alberto Cabral and designed by the architect José Marques da Silva.

Diogo José Cabral, a textile manufacturer whose industry lay in Vale do Ave, came into the property on his marriage to María Emília Magalhães.

[41] With the aid of the Porto architect José Marques da Silva (1869-1947), the author of the first drafts of the Villa and the Park, Carlos Alberto Cabral gradually put together different views and contributions.

Its articles of association establish the “promotion of cultural activities in the field of all arts”, perceiving its space - the Villa and the gardens – as an indivisible whole, opening it to the public, preserving its character, guaranteeing the survival of the principles that lay behind its conception, not giving in, however, to a static, dated image but rather attempting to adapt the space to the living structure provided by the framework of its time.

The 2nd Count of Vizela first became acquainted with the canons of this style in France, where he lived, and he visited the leading Art deco exhibition held in Paris in 1925.

Other refined aspects of the Villa's interior decoration include the blue limestone and exotic hardwood floors; the marble-lined bathrooms, with stone-carved bathtubs; the geometric patterns of the plasterwork; and the curved form of the library staircase.

Currently on display in the park are sculptures by Claes Oldenburg, Dan Graham, Fernanda Gomes, Richard Serra, and Veit Stratmann.

Located at one of the highest points of the property, the Villa (Casa de Serralves) presides over the Park, which opens out in front of it and on either side.

On the western side of the building, the large door/window of the ground floor salon opens onto the lateral parterre, suggesting continuity between the interior and exterior spaces.

By contrast, the facade overlooking the garden includes wide or long rectangular windows that accompany the rhythm of the sober lines of geometry that define the building's overall form and volumetry.

Originally interspersed by cypresses and demarcated by hedges, this avenue prolongs the garden, cutting into a landscape that is codified by picturesque and bucolic principles of staged rurality, apparent in the buildings included within the centre of the farm, designed by the architect Marques da Silva in the 1940s on a set of existing rural buildings (The Barn and the Olive Press) Today the farm performs a pedagogical function, in particular for maintenance of effective livestock breeding, composed by indigenous species from Northern and Central Portugal, including Barrosã, Arouquesa and Marinhoa cow breeds and the donkey breed Asinina de Miranda.

Serralves em Festa is a festival covering contemporary arts and family-oriented activities including exhibitions, performances, music concerts, dance, theater, circus shows and fairs.