MIEC Collection

The art collection of the Santo Tirso International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture is a large set of works obtained through purchases, donations, loans, and internal productions. It is an eclectic repository that has been significantly expanded with pieces that are part of the artistic heritage of the City Council gathered over several decades. The exhibition cycle that now opens with “Time, Measurement»«Essentiality. Works from the MIEC Collection”, aims to promote this heritage, documenting the museum’s institutional and programmatic long-lasting relationship with authors and collectors of different sensibilities.

Conceptually, the exhibition addresses issues related to the notion of the transience of life, objectified in the approach to “Time”, sometimes formalized through changes in the natural world and the human condition, which give rise to a notion of variable time, only perceptible by its quality and allegorical nature (kairos), as well as abstract time linked to the measurement and parameterization of the sequence of moments (chronos), which introduces an artificial dimension into the relationship between man and time, transporting itto an area of greater complexity that configures the sequential rhythm of life.