The Miró Collection that lays in Porto is classified as public interest work

The Miró collection, transferred to Porto by the Portuguese Government, for a 25 year period, was officially designated public interest collection today, in the National Official Journal, in a decree signed by the Assistant Secretary of State for Cultural Heritage, Ângela Ferreira. 

The acquis includes 85 paintings by Joan Miró i Ferrà. Miró was born in Barcelona and besides painting, he was also devoted to sculpture and ceramics.

This collection can be admired at the Serralves Foundation, as determined by the protocol signed between the Portuguese Government and Porto City Hall in February 2019.

"The 85 paintings by Joan Miró that are now classified are very heterogeneous and refer to six decades of artistic production, by using different materials, techniques, tools, including, among others, oils, watercolours and drawings, collages and sculptural works, and represent a vast and diverse sample of the work by the Catalan artist", reads the classification decree.

The Miró collection had to be screened by the Museum, Restoration and Conservation Section of the Immaterial Heritage of the National Cultural Council and by the previous procedures under the Administrative Procedure Code to be classified as public cultural interest.

The city of Porto is in charge of this set of works of the surrealist painter, and it had to establish two protocols, with the General Direction for Cultural Heritage - the state organism in charge of the management of such acquis, and a second protocol, with the Serralves Foundation, where the deposit terms of the artwork are defined.

Porto City Hall also committed to the annual payment of 100 thousand euros plus VAT to Serralves, and the investment up to one million euros in "all the extension, remodelling and conservation works that are deemed necessary".

The Serralves Foundation ensures guardianship of the Miró Collection and it is obliged, as a bona-fide depositary, to promote the collection, safeguarding its state of conservation.

This process began in October 2018, when Prime Minister, António Costa, and the Minister of Culture, Graça Fonseca, came to Porto to announce that the Miró Collection would stay in Porto for 25 years.