Since its inception, the EDP Foundation has been a major player in the promotion of exhibitions, through in-house production, patronage and/or curatorial support, as well as partnerships with other entities in Portugal and abroad.
In its own programming, the EDP Foundation inherited the production and creation of exhibitions and awards initiated in 2000, building this activity and making it more regular since 2006, the year when the Power Station was reopened to the public as a renewed museum space. Precedence was given to projects that embodied the EDP Foundation’s strategy for the arts: discovering new talents and presenting critically consecrated values and historically important works that were not well known.
In 2016, the opening of MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture & Technology marked a new phase in the Foundation’s exhibitive activity, with a programming strategy based on international expansion. While always maintaining an intense focus on national production, the MAAT has also become a platform to present relevant foreign artists in Portugal and create an exchange with other institutions, reinforcing the museum’s position in the international contemporary art networks.
The EDP Foundation is also associated, as a patron or partner, with dozens of exhibitions produced every year by leading institutions. In Portugal, the Serralves Foundation’s Museum of Contemporary Art, National Museum of Ancient Art, the Chiado Museum, Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva Museum, Casa das Histórias – Paula Rego Museum, Lisbon City Museum, National Fine Arts Society, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Graça Morais Contemporary Art Centre and Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso Municipal Museum, and the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, among others. Activities abroad include institutions such as the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, Vitra Design Museum (Germany), Design Museum (Belgium), the Venice Biennale, Fundación Maria Cristina Masaveu, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Madrid), the Barbican Centre (London) and Whitechapel Gallery (London).
