October 2015 to February 2016

The partnership established between the Atelier-Museu Júlio Pomar and Apordoc (Associação pelo Documentário) resulted in a cycle of documentaries about art, which gave rise to a new programme on a larger scale, this time involving the Lisbon Municipal Galleries. This enabled the organisers to hold an art film cycle during the 2015–2016 academic year in the auditorium of the Liceu Passos Manuel school, which forms part of the Rainha D. Leonor and Baixo-Chiado school group, based in the local area.

The school programme consists of films created by artists and other directors, including films about Rui Chafes and Júlio Pomar directed by João Mário Grilo, Inês Oliveira e Catarina Mourão respectively. The sessions involved watching excerpts from the selected films and discussions with pupils at the schools involved in the partnership (from the first cycle of basic education all the way up to secondary level), with a view to stimulating discussion and deepening understanding of the artists in question through the language of film and cinematography. Discussions with pupils were moderated by the instructors, Cláudia Alves and Amarante Abramovici.

Taking as its starting point the exhibition ‘Júlio Pomar and Rui Chafes: Drawing’, which features sculpture and drawing and was held at the Atelier-Museu from October 2014 to February 2015, the artist and choreographer Vitalina Sousa devised a workshop aimed specifically at the community of the Moinho da Juventude in Cova da Moura, with which the Atelier-Museu had already established a number of other partnerships and collaborations. This project, which was geared towards social integration, explored the relationship between sculpture, drawing and bodily movement, bolstering the objectives of the Education Service of the Atelier-Museu, which strives for a broader understanding of modern and contemporary art through various forms of expression: dance, music, visual art, literature, poetry, and so on.

In practical terms, the workshop involved a guided tour of the ‘Drawing’ exhibition, where the participants wandered around the hanging sculptures and drawings, and was followed by further sessions at the premises of the Moinho da Juventude in Cova da Moura, where the members of the group were encouraged to express movement with their own body and to compose dance steps and sequences, thus gaining an awareness of their own bodily presence and potential for expression.

‘Next-door neighbour’ tours, led by Teresa Cardoso and aimed at people living and working in the Mercês area, were held in order to raise awareness of the existence of the museum among the local community, showing them that the museum is also a place for them, and that it can play a role in improving and bringing a sense of dynamism to the area.

In addition to these tours for the local community, a number of ‘Schools go to the Museum’ tours were arranged for school pupils. In these sessions, a school group (comprising teachers and students) visits the museum to get to know the spaces, including the reserves of works of art, and to discover how the museum works, who works there and what jobs they do, opening up a discussion between those working at the Atelier-Museu and the visiting group.

They aim to cover a wide range of activities, fields of work and arts-related jobs, so as to make students aware of their choices and future working options.

These sessions were led by Sara Antónia Matos and Pedro Faro.

Celebration for the painter’s 90th birthday – 10 January 2016

To mark Júlio Pomar’s 90th birthday, the Escola Artística António Arroio visited the Atelier-Museu on 15 January to present work produced by its pupils, based on the exhibition ‘Júlio Pomar and Rui Chafes: Drawing’.

Basing their work on drawings by the two artists, whether in two-dimensional or three-dimensional form, and exploring the link with and between bodies that is evident in the work of both Pomar and Chafes, the pupils fashioned ornaments for their own bodies, in particular for the neck area, and put them on during the presentation.

In addition to references to the exhibition in designing their pieces, each pupil also chose to explore a concept with which they felt a particular affinity, and gave the painter a brief explanation of how they had come up with their idea. Using different materials, from metals to fabrics, paper and moulded plastic, the pieces were assembled entirely by the pupils, with guidance from their teachers. These were then presented to the painter as a tableau vivant.

The work was carried out over the course of 3 months in conjunction with the Education Service of the Atelier-Museu, involving a series of guided tours of the exhibition and several drawing sessions in front of works by Júlio Pomar and Rui Chafes.