In Portugal, the Albuquerque Foundation is a New Hub Dedicated to Chinese Ceramics
Renato de Albuquerque's private collection of Ming and Qing dynasty porcelain is now on public display.
Not all soup bowls are created equal, and at the newly opened Albuquerque Foundation in Sintra, Portugal, a crab-shaped porcelain tureen created during the Qing dynasty (c.1770) makes a strong bid for supremacy in the category. Realistic but for the green enamel inlay and ornate gilt patterning on its carapace, it has eight legs poised for scuttling, movable eyes like black pearls loose in their settings, and one pincer raised quizzically, as if to ask: Who, me?
It’s easy to see why Renato de Albuquerque, the 97-year-old Brazilian founder of the stately ceramics mecca on Lisbon’s outskirts, became enchanted with the vessel, which is just one among the 2,600 pieces in his world-renowned collection of Ming and Qing dynasty export porcelain. An essay for a near-identical work in a January 2004 Christie’s catalogue notes that there are only one or two other examples of the crustacean tureen in existence. Valued between $30,000 and $50,000 (U.S.) in that sale, the lot in question realized $276,300. Not too crabby at all.
A former civil engineer and hobby collector of Chinese ceramics for 60 years, Albuquerque was persuaded to turn his family’s holiday home into the Albuquerque Foundation by his granddaughter Mariana Teixeira de Carvalho, a former human rights lawyer turned gallery director who is the foundation’s co-founder and board chair. It took her eight years to convince her grandfather, a private man who had always preferred anonymity when loaning objects to institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
With a modernist, glass-walled addition from architects Bernardes Arquitetura, and the original residence renovated to accommodate a restaurant, shop, library, and rooms for artists doing residencies, there is now a custom-designed, publicly accessible space dedicated to housing Albuquerque’s collection in its entirety. Director Jacopo Crivelli Visconti will curate a contemporary program alongside rotating exhibitions from the permanent collection, with the inaugural presentation by Theaster Gates, who displays his sculptures alongside selections from the Albuquerque Collection.
Exploring the theme of co-mingling cultures—across geographies and epochs—is central to the Albuquerque Foundation’s mission. It aims to situate Portugal at the heart of study and discourse about the historical significance of Chinese ceramics. While not everybody can store their soup in crockery as characterful as a porcelain crab, there is still delight to be found in an art form that is so omnipresent in homes around the world.
