THE LOOKOUT | Museu Aguarela Roque Gameiro intends to keep the work of the artist from Minde alive

Maria Alzira (on the right), director of the museum, with Luís Silva and Ana Santos, also responsible for the museum’s work and guided tours

The Aguarela Roque Gameiro Museum opened in Minde, in 2009, under the responsibility of the Roque Gameiro Arts and Crafts Center and the Alcanena Chamber. Director Maria Alzira Roque Gameiro says that this is not a normal provincial museum and that last year it had almost five thousand visits.

The Aguarela Roque Gameiro Museum in Minde houses a large part of the artist’s works, a native of this parish of Alcanena, and the space is practically the same as it was in 1926. Popularly known as Casa dos Açores, due to the fact that it served as home to his sister de Roque Gameiro, married to an Azorean dentist, served as her home until 1992. The Roque Gameiro Arts and Crafts Center (CAORG), founded in 1986, and several businesspeople from Minde exerted pressure on the council to acquire the space to create a museum of the work of Roque Gameiro. In 2003, the house was acquired, and in 2005 construction began. The museum director, Maria Alzira Roque Gameiro, explains that during the work, care and rigor were extreme, with minimal interventions and without using cement. In 2009, the space opened its doors as the Roque Gameiro Watercolor Museum.
Maria Alzira was born in Minde and is a geographer by training and later completed a master’s degree in museology. She has been part of CAORG since its foundation and states that the association works like a set of legs that, the result of a lot of work and love, support each other. The center manages the space in partnership with the municipality. The municipality provides the facilities to the association to develop museum activities and guarantees all maintenance conditions and cost support, also having two full-time employees at the museum.
Publicity is the only point that the director believes could be better explored, since the municipality’s quarterly agendas do not always coincide with the museum’s monthly agendas, making it impossible to publicize activities. However, Maria Alzira guarantees that the municipality is constantly concerned about knowing the museum’s exhibitions and activities to publicize. In addition to the exhibition space, the house has work rooms, where projects, studies and the annual magazine “Roque Gameiro Temas e Propostas” are prepared, where the results of research work are published, and storage space for materials and reserves of works. The building also has two rooms for a drawing and painting studio and for temporary exhibitions.
Maria Alzira Roque Gameiro dedicates every day to the museum, voluntarily and explains that the main objective is to maintain the tradition of Roque Gameiro’s life and work. The director states that the space is a community museum, that is, one that aims for the constant presence of minders. There are several activities that connect the museum to the population. One Sunday a month, several residents go to the museum to tell local and traditional stories. On June 1st, the museum marks Museum Night with the launch of the book “Principezinho” in Minderico. Some of the works also go abroad to be part of exhibitions in schools, hospitals and other places. In 2023, the museum received 4,990 visits.
The director regrets the fact that some residents have never visited the museum and others don’t even know that Minde has it. “Across Europe we have children instructed in schools to visit art and cultural spaces. In Portugal, people are little aware of this reality and there is no interest in visiting and getting to know it” he concludes. Still, he says anyone who visits the museum is always surprised. “Sometimes people come here expecting to find a banal, provincial museum. They end up amazed by the quality of the works,” she says. Each visit to the museum lasts between one and two hours, with a maximum limit of 12 participants, with all visits accompanied by a guide.