The Fundação Leal Rios Collection, which the brothers Manuel and Miguel Leal Rios have been putting together since 2003, was partially deposited at Serralves in 2021. This collection of works is very significant for several reasons. First of all, it represents a genuine way of thinking (a particular perspective on the art of the last two decades), and can therefore be identified as a collection (which is very different from a mere gathering of works); it also brings to Serralves a series of works by artists who were already included in the Collection (as a result of previous acquisitions or deposits), adding aspects that allow for a better understanding of their respective trajectories and thus helping Serralves to achieve one of the main objectives of its collecting work, which is to have significant bodies of works by certain artists; it adds artists and works to the Serralves Collection that broaden and enrich our perspective of artistic production from the last decades; it also goes far beyond the domestic scale that is inevitably associated with Portuguese private collections, partly explained by the establishment of a Foundation that has operated in parallel with the collection and which, since 2011, has had a physical space in Lisbon where the works could be exhibited, stored and conserved. This does not prevent a significant part of the works presented in Auto dos Anfitriões (whose installation requires actual museum conditions — assembly teams and exhibition areas) from being shown, not only to the public, but also to the buyers themselves, for the first time since they were acquired.

The title of this exhibition reprises the name of a play by the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões (adapted from a text by the Roman poet Plautus, who continues to inspire playwrights, directors, composers and filmmakers to this day) — and, with it, a history of derivations, plundering and deviations. It immediately invokes three of the characteristics that make the Fundação Leal Rios Collection exhibition unique: firstly, it underlines Serralves’ hospitable vocation and adds meaning to the idea that its Collection is a ‘collection of collections’; secondly, it argues for the confluence of times and geographies (the result of these ‘derivations, plundering and deviations’) as one of the characteristics shared by theatrical writing and contemporary art; finally, it appeals to theatre, and to certain texts related to this discipline, as a way of illuminating certain aspects of contemporary artistic practices.

Produced by the Serralves Foundation—Museum of Contemporary Art, the exhibition is curated by Ricardo Nicolau.