Past Exhibitions 2025
15.11.2025 - 22.02.2026
Learning to teach, teaching to learn, with Elvira Leite
With a career spanning more than six decades, Elvira Leite is not only a key figure in the reinvention of art education in Portugal, but also a prolific artist. Organised in two parts, the exhibition Learning to teach, teaching to learn with Elvira Leite brings to the institutional space both a presentation of rarely seen paintings and a recreation of the artist’s studio.
The first part brings together her early career works in dialogue with a selection of recent, previously unseen pieces that move between figuration and abstraction. The second part transforms the gallery into a space where one can ‘play’ with the geometries, shapes and drawings from her gamebooks, while also offering the chance to explore her archive of letters, photographs and objects. By inviting an encounter with this hybrid practice, Learning to teach, teaching to learn is na invitation to discover the unique universe of this artist and educator.
Curated by Matilde Seabra.
15.11.2025 - 15.02.2026
State of spirit, by Mariana Caló e Francisco Queimadela
For over fifteen years, Mariana Caló and Francisco Queimadela have been exploring film and video, in dialogue with photography, drawing and sculpture. State of spirit is the most comprehensive presentation of the duo’s work to date, bringing together a wide selection of existing pieces alongside new, previously unseen works. Its guiding thread is the idea of community, understood as a dialogue between culture and nature. Through images that shift between light and shadow, like fables reflecting the fleeting and transitory nature of life, social dynamics emerge—beliefs, habits and rituals linked to the seasons, rural labour, family life, and ancestral forms of orality and spirituality.
In an immersive, dreamlike atmosphere that captures the magic inherent in both the lived and imagined possibilities of everyday life, the exhibition unfolds as a stage where acts of devotion, memory and pleasure are performed.
Curated by João Laia.
15.11 — 31.12.2025
Recursions: a cartography of unfinished grounds
Recursions: a cartography of unfinished grounds centres on the dialogue between the work of Kiluanji Kia Henda and three Angolan artists—Flávio Cardoso, Lilianne Kiame and
Raul Jorge Gourgel—, in order to reflect on the promises, failures, and ruins of modernity. The exhibition is structured around the idea of recursion: an organic process of return that
encompasses both past and present, marked by recurrent, unfinished, and constantly shifting movements. With strong ties to territory and landscape, the works trace cycles of memory and speculation, proposing Angola as a living archive of collective imagination.
Curated by Kiluanji Kia Henda & Margarida Waco.
05.12.2025
Lena d’Água and Lena Platonos
On December 5, 2025, Galeria Municipal do Porto organized an evening conceived as a dialogue between two artists united by their shared interest in musical experimentation: Lena d'Água and Lena Platonos. The event, which included two concerts, took place in the auditorium of the Almeida Garrett Municipal Library.
06-08.11.2025
Colectivos Pláka: The same mistake tomorrow
From 6 to 8 November, the Colectivos Pláka programme offered a new course entitled ‘The same mistake tomorrow’, led by June Crespo and Delfim Sardo. This course was presented in partnership with Galeria do Sol/CCOP.
During the three-day course, artists and thinkers were invited to consider error, hesitation and the unfinished not as failures, but as an integral component of the creative process.
The course explored the interplay of gesture, matter and thought across visual arts, cinema, music and dance, culminating in a public talk entitled 'The same mistake tomorrow – A ping-pong conversation', featuring Delfim Sardo and June Crespo, on 8 November at 5 pm.
25-26.10.2025
Fogo Fátuo #3
Fogo Fátuo (will-o'-the-wisp) is an event dedicated to art in motion — a meeting space for different languages, geographies, and traditions. Each edition of Fogo Fátuo offers a dynamic programme that encompasses intimate acoustic performances and immersive audiovisual experiences, showcasing the breadth and richness of performative and sound-based artistic practices.
This new edition of Fogo Fátuo is entirely dedicated to the work of Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, offering an immersive two-day experience of this artist and choreographer's universe.
The programme is presented by Galeria Municipal do Porto in partnership with Teatro Municipal do Porto, where Baczyński-Jenkins also presented two additional choreographies.
19-21.09.2025
Circuitos’25
Circuitos’25 is the second edition of an initiative that aims to give visibility to the people and projects that make up the city’s artistic fabric, strengthening the connection and familiarity between audiences and Porto’s contemporary production.
Promoted by the Contemporary Art Department of Ágora – Cultura e Desporto do Porto, E.M., this edition reaffirms a commitment to an open and cross-cutting approach to the city’s artistic scene.
19.07.2025-Em contínuo
Galeria Digital do Porto
Galeria Digital do Porto is a circuit of digital public art that invites people to rediscover the city by engaging with artistic projects. Challenging artists, residents and visitors to reflect on the city through the intersection of its material presence and the processes of digitalisation and dematerialisation, this is a project of the Municipality of Porto, coordinated by Porto Digital and curated by Galeria Municipal do Porto / Contemporary Art Department of Ágora — Cultura e Desporto do Porto, E.M., S.A. By bringing together art, technology and territory, this initiative aims to act as a critical accelerator of urban dynamics, sparking discourse on the present and future of the city to foster collective reflection on contemporary public space.
12.07.2025 - 12.10.2025
Lucid Reverie – Panorama of Portuguese Contemporary Art
Lucid Reverie – Panorama of Portuguese Contemporary Art is the result of a year-and-a-half-long research by international curators Hiuwai Chu and Raphael Fonseca. The exhibition presents a map of some of the most relevant artistic practices in Portugal today while also providing a tool for their internationalisation, encompassing sculpture and painting, as well as photography, moving image and text, through a selection of 20 artists/duos from different generations.
10.06.2025
Primavera na Galeria
To warm up for this edition of Primavera Sound Porto, the Galeria Municipal do Porto is hosting Primavera na Galeria.
This afternoon of concerts will feature musicians Milan W. (Antwerp) and Alan Sparhawk (United States), marking the start of what is now one of the most highly anticipated events on the European festival scene.
Primavera na Galeria will take place at the Municipal Auditorium of the Almeida Garrett Library between 5 pm and 8 pm. Admission is free, subject to capacity.
10.05.2025 - 12.10.2025
Beach Ruins, by Andreas Angelidakis
The Galeria Municipal do Porto inaugurates the installation Beach Ruins, created by artist Andreas Angelidakis for its front courtyard in the gardens of Palácio de Cristal. Curated by João Laia, the project launches a new GMP initiative, an open-air summer commission that will take place every year from May to October.
24.04.2025
Abril Febril 2025
Abril Febril is a tribute to the ferverous atmosphere of April 1974 and a reflection on its meaning today.
After a first edition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, the Galeria Municipal do Porto is once again bringing together a series of musical projects in the Acoustic Shell of the Palácio de Cristal around a common cause: keeping alive the flame of the revolution and the ideals it represents.
Claiana, Nenny and Prétu make up the line-up for this evening of celebration of freedom, of what is yet to come and of the desire for a more plural and inclusive life.
29.03 - 22.06.2025
Primal Form, by Francisco Pedro Oliveira
In a liminal space between abstraction and materiality, Francisco Pedro Oliveira proposes an aesthetic and spiritual experience. Throughout the installation, different elements of the work articulate the artist’s ecosystem of interests: Portuguese ethnography, apotropaic phenomena, vernacular knowledge and syncretistic notions of spirituality.
Curated by Isabeli Santiago.
Curated by Isabeli Santiago.
29.03 - 22.06.2025
Depth of Field, by Mónica de Miranda
Spanning video, performance and installation, Mónica de Miranda's exhibition questions the division between presence and dissociation; distraction and connection; utopia and memory. It inhabits a time that resides within the space between fiction and reality, where the potential to rewrite history and think about alternative futures intersect in the discursive and performative actions proposed as part of the project.
Curated by João Laia and Nuno Crespo
29.03 - 15.06.2025
Deep Scarlet, Scream Ruby - The Freestanding Joys, by Pauline Curnier Jardin
In her first exhibition in Portugal, French artist Pauline Curnier Jardin evokes the image of a traveling circus arriving to town. Drawing inspiration from religious pageantry, folk rituals, and subcultural aesthetics to challenge traditional structures of power and desire, the project channels the anarchic energy of carnival — rituals of reversal, an embrace of excess, and the ability to destabilise social order.
Curated by João Laia
01.03.2025
Fogo Fátuo #2
Fogo Fátuo (will-o'-the-wisp) is a day dedicated to art in motion. Bringing together artists and collectives from diverse geographies, it intertwines folk traditions with contemporary expressions. Taking place across different locations in and around Galeria Municipal do Porto, Fogo Fátuo offers a dynamic programme that ranges from intimate acoustic performances to immersive audiovisual experiences, showcasing the breadth and richness of performative and sound based artistic practices.
With:
Angélica Salvi, Chiara Bersani, Eddie Peake, Inês Condeço, Inès Cherifi, Pauliteiros de Miranda do Douro, PRICE, Wimme Saari.