A Museum is a collection of pieces made for everyone to enjoy
This was the spirit in which the MNAA-Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Portugal's first museum, approached the challenge to present itself, through two exhibitions, at the Centro Colombo, the largest Portuguese shopping mall. Through these exhibitions, the MNAA seeks to make closer contact with the audiences to whom its treasures truly belong.
"Drawing the World. Art from the Period of the Discoveries" is the second exhibition organized with this objective. After "Constructing Portugal. Art from the Middle Ages", this is an attempt to give the panorama of a country which, between the decline of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, moves forward, becomes the main protagonist of Modernity, without nevertheless pursuing its ambition of spreading the Christian faith. Reformulating the legacy of the knowledge it inherited, exploring an unknown world – which it draws on new maps – and putting in contact peoples and cultures, unknown each other before, it thus initiates an extraordinary process of transculturality: the most incredible human adventure between Antiquity and our nowadays globalization.