Casa da Cerca – Center for Contemporary Art

In 2014, Casa da Cerca – Centro de Arte Contemporânea in Almada, Portugal, continued its programming as a dedicated hub for contemporary art, housed in an 18th-century manor overlooking the Tagus River and the Lisbon skyline. The year opened with the tail end of "Casa Ocupada" ("Occupied House"), a large-scale exhibition that had launched in April 2013 as part of the centre's 20th-anniversary celebrations and ran through January 2014, in which invited artists — including João Pedro Vale and Isabel Ribeiro — progressively took over the venue's rooms and spaces, transforming the historic quinta into a series of site-specific interventions rather than a conventional single show. As with its typical yearly rhythm, Casa da Cerca in this period balanced such contemporary exhibitions with the upkeep and public programming of its botanical garden, "O Chão das Artes," and its documentation centre dedicated to Rogério Ribeiro, the painter who had originally shaped the centre's founding concept.