Lagos Museum reopens after four years on October 27

Following the completion of four years of refurbishment works, the Municipal Museum of Lagos is set to reopen on 27 October 2021.

The reopening of the museum, founded in 1932 and closed in September 2017 for refurbishment works, will make an “important contribution to the recognition and cultural projection of the Algarve”, according to the local municipality.

“The intervention, which has now been completed allowed for a new programming of contents, conservation and restoration of the collection and an appreciation of the exhibited collection, now displayed to the public in museum environments in accordance with current concepts, but with the utmost respect for the original ideas of the patron and founder from the museum, Dr. José Formosinho”.

The museum, which will operate “in the same building where it was installed almost a century ago”, has undergone “substantial improvements” and will feature “a long-term exhibition” consisting of an “important set of pieces corresponding to the period after the 1460 (year of the death of Infante D. Henrique) and that goes until the end of the Peninsular War”.

It was gathered that this monument was given new lighting, which “enhances the gilded woodwork, the paintings on canvas, the painted ceiling in perspective and the image of the Patron Saint of the Brotherhood”.

According to the municipality, inside the museum, some notable pieces of its collection now gain the deserved prominence and historical and artistic contextualisation through accessible texts, graphics and multimedia applications”.

The Câmara de Lagos also mentioned that the museum has “the exhibition of special collections, constituted by the founder of the museum and enriched by countless donations from the people of Lagos”.

Among these pieces are “a cabinet of curiosities, a section of naturalist painting from the 19th and 20th centuries and a section dedicated to the so-called artisanal or homemade industries, with a remarkable set of objects, the result of knowledge usually transmitted within the family, but which they were also the target of innovation in formal education between the 1st Republic and the Estado Novo”, he stated.

The remodelling of the space and the restoration of the collection were carried out under the CRESC Algarve 2020 Operational Program, in an application with a total investment of 3.4 million euros, benefiting from 60% funding from the European Regional Development Fund ( ERDF).