Soledade Malvar House-Museum closed for conservation work  - Portal do Município de Vila Nova de Famalicão - Portugal

The Soledade Malvar House-Museum, a museum unit in Famalicense that houses the vast art collection of Famalicense antiquarian Maria da Soledade Ramos Malvar Osório, has been closed to the public since Thursday 6 February for conservation and maintenance work on the building.

Over the next few weeks, objects from the collection currently housed in the house-museum, located on Avenida 25 de Abril in the centre of Famalicão, will be moved, followed by conservation and maintenance work on the building, which includes repairing the roof and façades, repainting and rehabilitating the openings and redesigning the ground floor space to incorporate a new exhibition space.

The work has an execution time of 120 days and a municipal investment of around 100,000 euros.

It should be remembered that the building housing the Soledade Malvar House-Museum was designed by architect Eduardo Martins and built between 1955 and 1957 by engineer António Pinheiro Braga. The building where the antiques dealer lived and had her antiques shop, known as Bric-à-Brac, became a museum on 29 September 2002, as a result of the donation to the Vila Nova de Famalicão municipality of the art collection of Maria da Soledade Ramos Malvar Osório, containing antiques collected over the course of her almost 100 years of life.

The museum collection, made up of antiques collected by Soledade Malvar, including furniture from the 18th and 19th centuries, was on display on the first floor and on the ground floor of the building was a gallery that regularly hosted temporary exhibitions by local and emerging artists.