Sixty-five years ago, Renato de Albuquerque raised his arm to make his first bid at an auction. It was a sale in the interior of São Paulo and, enraptured, he was completely oblivious to the fact that the seemingly perfect Chinese porcelain was broken on the back. ‘Sir, you acquired it in that condition,’ the auctioneer replied over the phone to his frustrated bidder. The São Paulo engineer barely knew that it would be the cornerstone of one of the most important Chinese porcelain collections in the world. More than six decades later, his rather unique passion for ‘export ceramics’ would earn him a dedicated museum on the other side of the ocean.

This collection of 2.600 pieces is housed in the recently opened Albuquerque Foundation, which opened its doors on February 22, in Sintra. While only twenty per cent of the collection is on display to the public, it requires not a great deal of effort to understand Renato de Albuquerque’s – now 97 years old – fascination with objects. Found on the family’s old farm, the terracotta-coloured museum has retained the main manor house and introduced contemporary spaces designed by the Brazilian firm Bernardes Arquitetura. It has every reason to be a museum prized by ceramics buffs; wanted by art lovers who are keen on cultural trips; and visited by tourists in search of sophisticated one-day experiences in Sintra.

The head of Albuquerque Foundation is Renato’s granddaughter, Brazilian Mariana Teixeira de Carvalho, who has been around ceramics all her life and who, having worked in the contemporary art market – she has been involved with internationally renowned galleries, including Luisa Strina, Hauser & Wirth and Michael Werner -, recognised that the collection had developed enough size and weight to spill over the walls of her grandfather’s rooms. ‘He used to say: I have a few pieces at home, not much!’. He did not see himself as a collector. However, a few years ago, in the Chinese porcelain scene, which is tiny and everyone knows each other, people began to ask what would happen to the collection after his death. It was around the same time as the collection’s first exhibition at the Metropolitan, which my grandfather refused to associate with his name,’ Mariana recalls. Entitled Global by Design: Chinese Ceramics from the R. Albuquerque Collection, the show featured 60 pieces at the New York museum for six months in 2016. After attempting to donate the collection to a number of international and Brazilian institutions – although, surprisingly, not a single one showed any interest in keeping the collection on Brazilian soil -, the family finally decided to start their own museum.

‘’This collection consists of numerous objects for domestic use, and it seems to make sense for it to be on display in a home environment, where my grandfather lived for some time. It also provides an inviting and familiar atmosphere for those who have never seen or heard of a collection of this kind,” Mariana, herself a beginner on the subject (“I’m going to visit mainland China for the first time now in March and I honestly cannot wait!”), she says.

For lay people like us, export ceramics, the focus of the collection, are those produced in China and sold on foreign markets from the sixteenth century onwards, particularly during the age of the great navigations, when – as we know – European explorers sought out new sea routes to access Asian luxury goods such as tea, spices, silk and porcelain. Portugal was the first European country to establish direct trade relations with China. Approximately forty per cent of the first custom-made orders from this period are part of the Albuquerque Foundation’s collection. ‘Export goods carry with them all this context, related to trade, the reason why they were made, the person who made the order, the individual who took it back, the route they travelled, the countries they were destined for. My grandfather likes these stories,’ Mariana Teixeira de Carvalho says. Renato de Albuquerque had a highly successful career in construction and urban planning in São Paulo, which may also explain his fixation on the mobility and travelling dynamics of export ceramics. ‘I also have a different interpretation: he is obsessed with the material. And porcelain is so delicate, so fragile, but it can withstand firing at very high temperatures and has a very long life. The pigments are transformed into other colours after firing. The glaze, which goes on top or underneath, can be explored in so many different ways.” Which is why there is a rich and specialised library on display in the museum’s mansion, which the scholarly engineer built up over the years.

However, the museum’s concept and services obviously do not stop at sixteenth-century China. Its aim is to foster the current production of ceramics, a language that has been pushed aside by the contemporary art market. Perhaps better late than never, artists like Grayson Perry, Simone Leigh and Ai Weiwei, among many others who include ceramics in their artistic practice, are being acknowledged by contemporary art biennials, exhibitions and galleries. This language has been around for millennia, and today artists are reinforcing its ancient techniques, reinterpreting them, incorporating non-traditional materials and innovative techniques. In 2003, Grayson Perry, who labels himself a “pot maker”, won the British Turner Prize, the first time the award celebrated a ceramicist. He has been striving for ceramic recognition in contemporary art for decades, like Simone Leigha, the American of Jamaican roots who, only after 25 years working as a ceramicist, has had her oeuvre recognized and presented at the 2022 Venice Biennale. The craftsmanship of the material, the widespread familiarity with clay and the long-term sustainability of the ceramic processes nourish the artists’ creativity, but they are systematically damned by the contemporary art market, which upholds its status quo by deeming and separating that which is art – and that which, in this case, is said to be handicraft.

This is why the choice of the American Theaster Gates to open Fundação Albuquerque’s contemporary program was so timely. A Chicago artist and urban planner, he is known for using art to revive marginalized communities and transform urban spaces. One of his most striking projects is the Stony Island Arts Bank, a former banking institution that he transformed into a cultural facility, blending a historical archive, an art gallery and a community space. Together with the Rebuild Foundation, he has brought entire neighbourhoods back to life, renovating abandoned buildings into cultural centers with curricula on education, art and the preservation of the identity and heritage of the African-American community.

During one of his TED Talks, Theaster said: “I spent about 15 years making pots… You quickly learn how to make amazing things out of nothing. As a potter, I feel you also start to learn how to shape the world.”

Under the title A mão sempre presente, the artist’s solo show at Fundação Albuquerque takes us by storm by showcasing Theaster Gates’ ceramicist bent, with pieces such as clay buddhas and an entire floor littered with black ceramic tiles made in Tokoname, Japan, the city where the artist studied pottery. Art there is made to be touched and walked on, and the tiles are not blue or white, but black. Gates resorts to narratives tied to his own ancestry, citing influences such as Dave Drake, a slave potter from the southern United States, who was acknowledged and admired for his craftsmanship and for having the courage to etch his signature on the pieces, which revealed his reading and writing ability (in the 1870s, this was an explicitly forbidden act for a slave).

“The entire history of these objects [import ceramics] is inextricably intertwined with imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, globalization and the struggle for commercial supremacy,” the accompanying essay explains. Theaster Gates’ critical and engaged stance questions all these historical issues and their impact on the world today. He was also at the museum during the opening days to deliver a beautiful musical performance with his band “The Black Monks”. Their music is deeply embedded in the black tradition of the American South, including the blues, gospel and mournful chants, but it also touches on ascetic practices, coming closer to Eastern monastic traditions.

There will be three to four contemporary exhibitions a year at the Fundation, run by Italian-Brazilian curator and critic Jacopo Crivelli Visconti. He was the curator of the 34th São Paulo Biennale (2021) and the national entries of Brazil (2007 and 2022) and Cyprus (2019) at the Venice Biennale. He invited this time the curator Becky MacGuire, an expert in Chinese porcelain, to shape the narrative of the first permanent exhibition. “We have visited several family collections that treasure a tremendous cultural wealth, but these are spaces that have stood still in time, that are not alive,” Mariana says. That is why there was an effort to launch a public and educational program and an artistic residency with a focus, of course, on ceramics, as well as a café and a concept store displaying pieces made by contemporary artists and designers.

Mariana went to meet her daughter and grandfather at the end of the interview for this article: “There are four generations of the family gathered here”. The thousand-year-old pieces are now building a new chapter in their history.