MAATurities is a programme dedicated to an adult and senior audience, where contemporary themes will be presented through artistic discourses addressed in the museum's exhibition programme. In an open dialogue between different generations and life experiences, the theoretical (online) and theoretical-practical (in person at the museum) sessions act as meeting points for debate on questioning the world around us.

We know how the languages of contemporary art sometimes present barriers to the public, just as we know that at no other stage in the history of art has the spectator's participation been called upon so much. The challenge is great and the dialogue fruitful.

The sessions are online and in person, divided monthly between two spaces, one via Zoom and the other at the museum. Each season, an open session will be held in partnership with the Biblioteca de Belém, Lisbon's library network.

Programme objectives:    

• To bring adult and senior audiences closer to the discourse of contemporary art.
• To provide tools for decoding the discourse of current artists.
• To foster the meeting point between discourses, languages, and narratives that the museum promotes, which is its action par excellence.
• To open a dialogue between individual and generational life experiences and historical, critical, and curatorial perspectives on a path to building collective knowledge.

Target: adults, active and curious people with 60+ years old

Capacity: max: 25 people

Duration: 90 minutes each session

Price: € 45 /season | 25% discount for MAAT Friends

Tickets here

Seasons 2026

Season 1 — (February to May)

Portuguese Art and International Contemporaneity

While in the first half of the 20th century the artistic avant-garde emerged and flourished abroad, it arrived timidly in Portugal, with all the cultural delays under the dictatorship. It was with the 1974 Revolution that the national artistic scene began to keep pace with international trends and experimentation, with Portuguese artists exhibiting and speaking in different international contexts. It is thus within the scope of Contemporary Art, through the EDP Foundation Art Collection, that we will showcase important artists from our country, whose interests and artistic expressions began to take on a more global and intercultural dimension. It is also important to understand the perspectives and poetics of other geographies, which we will do starting with Anna Maria Maiolino, and allow ourselves to take a contemporary look at the relationship between Portuguese art and post-colonialism. 

Schedule:

• 07/02, 10:30 — Open session: Meeting at the Museum (Registration for visitar.maat@edp.pt)

• 09/02, 15:30 — Online session

• 23/02, 15:30 — Online session

• 09/03, 15:30 — Online session

• 14/03, 10:30 — Meeting at the museum

• 23/03, 15:30 — Online session

• 28/03, 10:30 — Meeting at the museum

• 06/04, 15:30 — Online session

• 20/04, 15:30 — Online session

• 09/05, 10:30 — Meeting at the museum

Season 2 — (May to September)

Art is a Fluid Dance

Goethe said that ‘Architecture is Petrified Music.’ In Contemporary Art, notions of permanence have given way to the ephemeral, and petrification has given way to fluidity. In a time of contamination between disciplines, technologies and eras, sound dictates a plurality of rhythms and geographies, offering us the possibility of a dance involving multiple bodies in multiple spaces simultaneously. Based on the sonic and visual provocations of artists such as Christian Marclay and Paulo Furtado, we will travel through artistic experiences where music takes on the role of narrator and provokes the viewer to engage in unusual dances between the erudite and the popular, the experimental and the recognisable. 

Schedule:

• 16/05, 10:30 — Open session: Meeting at the Museum (Registration for visitar.maat@edp.pt)
• 18/05, 15:30 — Online session
• 30/05, 10:30 — Meeting at the museum
• 01/06, 15:30 — Online session
• 15/06, 15:30 — Online session
• 27/06, 10:30 — Meeting at the museum
• 29/06, 15:30 — Online session
• 07/09, 15:30 — Online session 
• 21/09, 15:30 — Online session 
• 26/09, 10:30 — Meeting at the museum 

Season 3 — (October to December)

Present: Reality and fiction between Past and Future 

An attentive contemporary gaze must allow for solid and focused reflection on the layers of history that underpin the present. Where we came from, what has been built, the structural and disruptive steps that enable the richness and diversity of artistic discourse. Yet contemporary art also provokes the present and the future, where challenges such as Artificial Intelligence are no longer a mirage and have come to dictate our daily lives. Between artists who are fully aware of the history of art and artists who, in experimental fields, challenge territories that are still unknown to many, how does the MAATuridades programme confront times and generations? 

Schedule:

• 10/10, 10:30 — Open session: Meeting at the Museum (Registration for visitar.maat@edp.pt)
• 12/10, 15:30 — Online session
• 19/10, 15:30 — Online session
• 26/10, 15:30 — Online session
• 24/10, 10:30 — Meeting at the museum
• 02/11, 15:30 — Online session
• 16/11, 15:30 — Online session
• 23/11, 15:30 — Online session
• 12/12, 10:30 — Meeting at the museum
• 14/12, 15:30 — Online session