The Serralves Foundation currently holds over 4300 works in its collection, of which more than 1700 belong to Serralves with a further 2600 works from various private and public collections on long-term deposit. Deposits that have served as points of reference for the development of the collection include the Collection of the Portuguese Secretariat of State for Culture and the Collection of the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD). The Serralves Collection also includes approximately 5000 artists’ books and editions. Details of this collection can be accessed at http://biblioteca.serralves.pt/.

The focus of the Serralves Collection is contemporary art produced from the 1960s to the present day. Art produced before 1960 may also be considered in relation to its relevance to the Collection and artists represented therein. The inaugural exhibition of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in 1999, ‘Circa 1968’, served to highlight the 1960s and 1970s, a historic period of political, social and cultural change that took place around the world, as seminal decades out of which emerged new paradigms in art making and the beginning of the post-modern era.

As part of a continued research and development of the Collection in the twenty-first century, the Serralves Collection aspires to further distinguish itself through its focus on contemporary art´s relationship to performance, architecture and contemporaneity in the context of a post-colonial and globalized present. While resonating with the art and ideas of our recent past, the Collection aims to reflect on how the art of today also anticipates its future.