Exhibition designed as a meeting point between pieces from the archives of four museums (Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, FCG Modern Art Centre, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga and Museu Nacional de Etnologia), inspired by the poetic concept of “shadow lines”.

“The search for the treasure (that is, the idea for the exhibition) began with a conversation about a book, namely ‘Shadow Lines’ by Joseph Conrad. Helena de Freitas and João Miguel Fernandes Jorge took the ‘ability to look backwards and to look forward’ that shadow lines afford us as a point of departure and began sketching plans for an exhibition that would ‘expand the senses’, bring together ‘tools with work of art’, affirming the value of both as ‘art objects’.” (Coelho, Público, 29 Jan 1999, p. 3) This is how journalist Alexandra Lucas Coelho described the origins of the exhibition. Once “the idea had been proposed to Jorge Molder, the two curators of “Linhas de Sombra” (Shadow Lines) would descend into the vaults of the aforementioned museums together, an exercise that was archaeological in two senses: exploring personal memory and the memories of the museum, often hidden for centuries.” (Ibid.).

As the director of a contemporary museum space, Jorge Molder was well aware of the current and past meanings of these stores or archives, leading him to write: “Even in the world of today, where barely any museums have vaults, the latter having been converted to adhere, insofar as far as possible, to conservation guidelines and renamed stores, the sense of anticipation that surrounds them remains unparalleled.” (Linhas de Sombra, 1999, p. 8) Mirroring the exhibition’s curators, he would add: “Indeed, museum archives continue to invoke a natural feeling of curiosity, no doubt because they are heirs to the enduring fascination of their ancestors [vaults]. But also because, fortunately, despite the rules, inventories and other protocols, they continue to be places of surprising discoveries and rediscoveries.” (Ibid.)

In turn, referring to this same mystique, Alexandra Lucas Coelho wrote in an article for newspaper Público: “In every museum, there are two territories, the one that visitors see and the one that lies beneath their feet; the one that belongs in the light and the one that remains in the shadows: and it is this boundary that Helena de Freitas and João Miguel Fernandes Jorge, as curators of the exhibition, succeed in tearing down.” (Coelho, Público, 29 Jan 1999, p. 2)

In a piece on the exhibition, newspaper Diário Económico reported that visitors could see paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, assorted documents and more practical objects, giving the example of a blowpipe from the Museu de Etnologia. These objects were exhibited across a series of ten spaces. The article added that “they are little-known pieces, usually kept far from the public eye in different museum spaces” (“Gulbenkian mostra objectos ‘escondidos’”, Diário Económico, 4 Feb 1999, p. 22).

The ten areas contained almost 150 pieces, which “can be combined in thousands of different ways, all of which burst into view, revealing meanings that had, until then, been buried” (Coelho, Público, 29 Jan 1999, p. 2).

The structure of the exhibition sought to foster dialogue between pieces from disparate eras and of differing natures, showcasing works from the archive of the Modern Art Centre with a particular focus on works usually in storage, alongside pieces from the Gulbenkian Museum, the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (National Museum of Ancient Art) and the Museu de Etnologia (Museum of Ethnology), none of which are usually on display (Letter from Jorge Molder [draft], 14 Jan 1999, Gulbenkian Archives, CAM 00434). Speaking to Agência Lusa about the concept behind the exhibition, Helena de Freitas explained that the aim was to “break down the chronological and geographic boundaries between the pieces, in an attempt to expand their meanings and allow them to speak to one another” (“Gulbenkian mostra peças saídas das ‘caves’”, Diário dos Açores, 27 Jan 1999, p. 7).

The curators were interested in “the broken or uninterrupted line of sight established between the works and their capacity to create a space for the abstraction of their here and now, in other words to foster connections and processes of continuity that transcend linear chronologies, relationships and periods” (Fernandes; Freitas, Linhas de Sombra, 1999, p. 12).

The exhibition gave rise to the idea of creating a video containing all of the illustrations from La Légende de Saint Julien L’Hospitalier by G. Flaubert, illustrated by Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. We know this from a letter citing the grounds for refusing a loan of the book for an exhibition in the USA from September 1999 to April 2000 (Internal memo, 18 Nov 1998, Gulbenkian Archives, CAM 00432). On this subject, Alexandra Lucas Coelho wrote: “This manuscript (almost always) hidden in a drawer of the CAM archives is now made visible, page by page, illustration by illustration, on a computer screen. The fragile nature of this unique specimen means that it cannot be handled – it will be displayed in a glass case.” (Coelho, Público, 29 Jan 1999, p. 3)

Another curious inclusion was an installation by the artist Gilberto Reis (1955) in the Gallery of the Modern Art Centre (lower ground floor), though there are no images of this in the catalogue.

On the final day of the exhibition, a round table was held between the directors of the participating museums and the curators of the exhibition. Guided exhibition tours led by Helena de Freitas and João Miguel Fernandes Jorge took place on 7 and 27 February, in addition to a tour led by Rodrigo Eduardo Silva on 6 March.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation conservation and restoration team intervened directly in the exhibition, carrying out work on the piece Anjo da Anunciação, from the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga archives immediately beforehand, and on a Rui Sanches sculpture during the exhibition, after it accidentally fell during a guided tour (Internal memo, 26 Mar 1999, Gulbenkian Archives, CAM 00424).