SERRALVES, THE MUSEUM THAT HAS IT ALL

February is not only Fashion month. It is also Art month, so we wanted to share with you one of our favorite museums: the Serralves Foundation in Porto, Portugal.

If you find yourself in the city or have been wanting to go, the foundation is one of its wonders. Serralves is like a treasure box, holding inside its grounds a series of unmissable secrets.

The museum was designed by Alvaro Siza. It is the most important contemporary art institution in Portugal. Located inside Serralves Park, where you can also find Villa Serralves (the most notable example of art deco architecture in Portugal) and the gorgeous villa gardens and park, where there is an art deco set of fountains, a pond, a tennis court, a tea house, and a beautiful and fun tree top walk. The Foundation also has a cinema house which is located outside the Park grounds in a neighboring villa.

The museum is currently holding exhibitions on Cindy Sherman and Joan Miró, maintaining an impressive quality consistency of national and international artists whose work has been featured: Joan Jonas, Ai Weiwei, Agnès Varda, Olafur Eliasson, Louise Bourgeois, Yoko Ono, Juan Muñoz or Manoel de Oliveira to name just a few.

Alvaro Siza’s building itself is a feast of light. It is totally integrated into the Serralves Park grounds and, like the rest of the elements in the park, can’t be seen from the outside. The interior and exterior of the building are intertwined, evoking silence and quietness; the architecture makes space for the greenery outside. This is particularly true when the works exhibited allow for the windows to be uncovered. Siza designed it with the intention that the villa and the museum never saw each other but were both integral parts of the experience of the park. We personally love the library, which is small but unique. We also love the way the building is open to the exterior but also closed, devoting itself to the remarkable artwork that usually hosts.

The Serralves Villa, which is used today as an exhibition area where you can visit a selection of Miró’s paintings, is a must.

It is a wonderfully maintained Art Deco villa with the most impressive gardens surrounding it. The beauty of it is impressive; walking through the different rooms and corridors, the visitor feels transported to the times it was filled with people and parties. Walking around the park, it feels as if time has stood still, no noises, no sight of any other building, and suddenly we are whisked back into the 1930s.

The beautiful tea house, which in summer fills up with hanging wisteria, is right next to the tennis court, which has a charming, slightly run-down state, as it has been kept exactly as it was.