The Fernando de Castro House-Museum, and its particularities, will be presented at the International Colloquium of Art Collections, promoted by the group Entresséculos dedicated to investigating the historical development of arts and crafts in Brazilian society.
The XIV Seminar of the D. João VI Museum – Grupo Entresséculos and the X International Colloquium on Art Collections in Portugal and Brazil, in the 19th and 20th Centuries, take place from 7 to 11 November, in the University City of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The second day of the colloquium will be dedicated to communications framed under the general theme of strange and foreign collections, which includes the paper An altar without worship: the Fernando de Castro House-Museum (Porto), by Ana Anjos Mântua and Vera Gonçalves.
According to the objectives stated by the organization, “it is from the perspective of the unexpected, the unusual and singular, the first vision still unrecognized, or the strangely familiar, that we propose to think together about the various forms of strangeness in art and collections. With this, we intend to review the historiography of art and the history of collections, in order to better understand how historians, critics, art theorists and collectors dealt with the strangeness placed on them or deliberately sought out”.
In this framework, the theme Strange and foreign collections proposes the presentation of studies on “strange” collections and collectors, whether due to the type of pieces collected or the way in which the collections were formed.
The collection of the Fernando de Castro House-Museum is made up of different collections gathered over several decades. It is mainly composed of religious art with erudite and popular representations, Portuguese naturalistic painting and decorative arts. Also noteworthy is an interesting group of caricatures and some books written by Fernando de Castro, collector, artist and poet.
The Fernando de Castro House-Museum has been managed by the Soares dos Reis National Museum since 1952.