MACAM Lisbon Explores Private Collecting as Curatorial Practice in 'Other Spaces' Photography Show

MACAM – Museu de Arte Contemporânea Armando Martins in Lisbon presents 'Other Spaces – Photography in the Américo Marques Collection (Part I)', an exhibition that examines how private collections transform when entering the public sphere. Curated by Adelaide Ginga, the show is structured around Michel Foucault's 1967 lecture 'Of Other Spaces', treating photography as a device for producing heterotopic spaces. The exhibition unfolds through three fluid fields: landscape, the human figure, and architecture. It features works by Cindy Sherman, Helena Almeida, Nan Goldin, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Candida Höfer, and Andreas Gursky, among others. The museum, housed in the restored eighteenth-century Palácio Condes da Ribeira Grande, combines a contemporary art museum with a five-star hotel, a hybrid model reflecting shifts in cultural institutions and private patronage. The Armando Martins Collection, comprising over six hundred works, serves as the foundation for the program. The exhibition avoids a chronological survey, instead proposing a conceptual itinerary that highlights photography's diversity as an artistic language. It positions collecting not as possession but as cultural production, demonstrating that private collections are dynamic structures whose significance evolves through exhibition and public engagement. The show runs at MACAM in Lisbon in 2026.