The first comic book museum in Portugal should be born in Beja by 2025
The first museum in Portugal dedicated to the band should be created in Beja in the current municipal mandate, until 2025, to tell the story of the ninth Portuguese art, admitted this Friday the municipality promoting the project.
“It’s not an absolute certainty, but that’s our expectation”, to create the museum during the current term, which began on the 18th of this month and will end in October 2025, the president of the Chamber of Beja, Paulo Arsénio, told the Lusa agency.
The socialist mayor recalled that, in 2017, when he took office for the first term, he said that “I would only consider moving forward in a second term with the comic book museum”, a project that had been launched in 2016 by the former communist executive.
“This is what continues in our purposes”, he said, stressing: “I cannot commit myself, nor would it be fair or honest on my part, with absolute certainty, but we will do it [atual executivo municipal liderado pelo PS] whatever is in our power to move the project forward”.
In other words, it executes the architectural and museological projects, which is being done by technicians from the municipality, to comply with and, “if possible, move on to the museum installation phase”, needed.
Paulo Arsénio said that the architectural project, to adapt two municipal buildings to install the equipment, designed by the architect Manuel Faião, and the museological project proposal, under the responsibility of the museum’s mentor Paulo Monteiro, are “practically completed”.
As soon as lost projects are completed, the municipality will proceed to the final measurement phase, that is, to determine the costs of installing the museum, which includes a work to adapt the buildings and purchase equipment, explained.
“Without wanting to move forward with a timeline”, the mayor said he hoped that a determination phase would be completed “as soon as possible, it could be a few months”, before the municipality can “see what projects are like possibilities to move forward with the “, as it is your “desire to do it”.
The mayor said that, “in function” of the necessary investment, the municipality can apply for the creation of the museum for community funding or implement it with its own funds.
According to Paulo Arsénio, the municipality has to wait for the new framework of relevant support to be able to apply for the creation of the museum, because it can no longer do so in the current one.
Within the scope of Portugal 2020, “The Chamber of Beja already has its funds, fortunately, exhausted, it means that we are good at taking advantage of what we had at our disposal”, justified.
If it is not possible to finance the museum with the funds involved and if the investment is necessary “not to very high”, the municipality “does not exclude the possibility of advancing the process with its own funds”, he said.
“If the museum’s installation cost doesn’t stop too high and we can do several things by direct administration, internally, with lower costs, we will also assume this responsibility”, he admitted.
Comic book museum collection designed for Beja already has more than a thousand original boards
More than a thousand original boards by Portuguese authors are already part of a collection of the first comic book museum in Portugal, expected to be “born” in Beja, the project’s mentor told the Lusa agency this Friday.
Currently, a collection “It already has more than a thousand original comic book (BD) boards by such important authors as Carlos Botelho, Eduardo Teixeira Coelho, Fernando Bento, José Ruy, Vitor Péon, Fernando Relvas or Filipe Abranches”, needed Paulo Monteiro.
According to the Chamber technician and director of the Bedeteca and the Beja International Comic Festival, a collection is mostly composed of boards donated by the authors themselves or by their families and some collectors, but also includes books, some “rare”, photographs , sketchbooks, notes, scripts and correspondence.
The museum “has varying degrees of importance”, starting with the fact that “be the first comic book in Portugal”, said Paulo Monteiro, who was speaking to Lusa after presenting the project this Friday at Irudika – International Professional Illustration Meeting, to be held until Saturday in the city of Vitória-Gasteiz, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country, in Spain.
“The idea is to tell the story of Portuguese comics, from 1850 to the beginning of the 21st century”, he explained, noting that the younger authors, at the beginning of their journey, are also present at the museum, through the exhibition of their work on an electronic table or in certain temporary ones.
According to the person in charge, the equipment will “occupying a space that is important to fill” in Portugal, which, “despite having a very rich comic book history”, is “one of the few countries in Western Europe” which does not have a museum dedicated to the ninth art.
On the other hand, stressed the author of the comic book, the museum will make it possible to gather “an expressed part” from the Portuguese collection of the ninth art, which is “Fantastic”.
“Just think of names like Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro or Stuart de Carvalhais to realize that [a criação do museu] is a gap that needs to be filled “, he defended, stressing that Portugal was “one of the first countries in the world to have BD”.
There is still no museum dedicated to Portuguese comics. “an incomprehensible, even unfair, situation for the memory of our authors”, creased.
“It’s a wonderful legacy that we must honor by protecting it first and then sharing it with the public, making it known”, he defended.
According to Paulo Monteiro, the first comic book story published in Portugal, by António Nogueira da Silva, dates back to 1850.
Since then, authors have appeared in Portugal “incredible, with very important movements in the context of European and world comics”, which “embodies a history of comics [portuguesa] very rich and with little parallel in other European countries”.
One of the pioneering authors of Portuguese and European comics is Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, the creator of the satirical character of social critic Zé Povinho, who became a symbol of the Portuguese people, he recalled.
The museum also goes “promote” and bring “visibility and status” to comics and Portuguese authors, which “is necessary in an art that for a long time has been left behind in relation to others”.
“It won’t be a static museum”, as it will have a “strong multimedia component”, will host the Bedeteca de Beja, operating at the Casa da Cultura, and will promote workshops, namely comics, serigraphy and illustration.
It will be “also a center of attraction” for comic book artists, he explained, referring that “it is not a device to serve only the municipality” of Beja, “but also to serve a little the whole country”.
The museum will have 12 rooms, seven for the permanent exhibition, three for the Bedeteca de Beja and the bibliographic collection and two for temporary functions, a shop, a space for workshops and a terrace “with a privileged view of the Alentejo plain”.
In the city of Beja, there has been one of the bedetecas billiards in Portugal since 2005, and an international comic book festival takes place every year, projects directed by Paulo Monteiro.
The Toupeira collective has also existed for 25 years, made up of more than 30 authors, who make their living from comics and illustration.
The city has asserted itself as “one of the main centers” comic book diffusion in Portugal and, therefore, the chamber, in 2016, during the executive led by the communist João Rocha, decided to launch the museum project conceived by Paulo Monteiro.
This Friday, in a statement to Lusa, the current president of the municipality, the socialist Paulo Arsénio, said he had the “expectation” to create the museum in this term, which ends in 2025.
