Art critic and historian João Pinharanda is taking over as director of maat – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, on 1 January 2022.
João Pinharanda’s project for maat, which is being developed since July 2021, will include emphasising the Museum’s place at the core of contemporary artistic and cultural debates in the city, the country and internationally, as well as reinforcing the presence of Portuguese artists and creators from all areas within that debate.
João Pinharanda (Mozambique, 1957) has a degree in History (Faculty of Humanities of the University of Lisbon, 1980) and a Master’s degree in Art History (Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of NOVA University of Lisbon, 1985). As well as a teaching career, he was responsible for the EDP Foundation’s programme (2000-2015), and created and organised the Art Awards promoted by this institution: the EDP Foundation New Artists Award and the EDP Foundation Art Grand Prize. He also contributed to the acquisition of the EDP Foundation Art Collection. He subsequently took on the roles of cultural attaché of the Portuguese Embassy in Paris and director of the Portuguese Cultural Centre in Paris – Camões I.P., between 2016 and 2021.
João Pinharanda follows Beatrice Leanza as maat’s artistic director, as she ends her term at the end of this year. The curator Beatrice Leanza will continue to work with maat in 2022 for the second part of the exhibition Earth Bits – Sensing the Planetary, which will include the research programme Visual Natures: The Politics and Culture of Environmentalism in the XX and XXI Centuries, designed by Brazilian architect Carla Juaçaba, which will open in March, and in the exhibition by Didier Fiúza Faustino, scheduled for October of the same year.
