Exhibitions

Portugal has a great richness of landscapes, natural values and biodiversity. This diversity is the result of the interaction between climate, geology and relief, and is accompanied by enormous cultural diversity. The Natural Variations exhibition makes this diversity known and felt through the representation of the main national landscapes and protected areas, offering visitors an impossible journey: getting to know the main Portuguese ecosystems, ‘gathered’ in 1200m2. In this immersive experience, in which all the senses are called upon, travellers climb a mountain, descend into a cave and dive into the depths of the ocean. Visitors walk around finding plants, animals and fossils, listening to legends and discovering relationships between species, people and landscapes that range from simply sharing a common space to predation, and from cookery to literature.

The exhibition is divided into ten main areas corresponding to ten ecosystems: urban, mountain, forest (including woodland, dehesa and steppe), limestone massifs (including caves), aquatic systems (fast water, slow water, paul), estuary, sandy coast, rocky coast, oceans and island ecosystems, with a focus on the Azores and Madeira. The exhibition areas are defined by combining scenographic structures, photography, video and audio with specimens and biological models of more than 140 species.

Throughout the exhibition, the Natural Parks and other protected areas where each ecosystem is found are identified on maps. At the end, an interactive display allows you to explore these areas in more detail, inviting you on real visits.

Curated by: Cristina Branquinho

Organisation: Lisbon City Council, the University of Lisbon, through the Faculty of Sciences and the National Museum of Natural History and Science, and the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests, I.P.

The "Plantas e Povos" (Plants and Communities) exhibition is based on tropical ethnobotanical knowledge regarding the traditional and local use of flora by African, Asian and American populations, but also on its incorporation into European science from the Portuguese colonial empire onwards, with particular emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries.

In this exhibition you can see ethnobotanical and ethnographic objects, photographs and films from the collections of the Tropical Research Institute and the National Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Lisbon.

Divided into three main sections - Transcend, Transform and Care - visitors are invited to learn about the use that man has made of plants throughout history for a wide variety of medicinal, aesthetic, artistic, food, housing, furniture, transport, clothing and ritual-related purposes, among others. At the end, in the Reflect section, visitors are invited to reflect briefly on the conservation of plant biodiversity.

Among the scientific curators of the exhibition are CE3C researchers Maria Cristina Duarte, Ana Isabel Correia and Ireneia Melo.

With three decades of operation, Herdade da Ribeira Abaixo has many stories to tell. Stories of science and advanced education, written by dozens of researchers and hundreds of students, who share the cork oak forest as their backdrop and the safeguarding of its biodiversity as their mission.

The field station of the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Change, in close collaboration with the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, is located in the heart of the Serra de Grândola, in one of the largest areas of cork oak forest in Portugal. Covering an area of 221 hectares in Santa Margarida da Serra, in the municipality of Grândola, the Estate is made up of a rich mosaic of habitats that is home to more than 800 species of fauna and flora.

The ecological importance of this territory, underpinned by a strong connection to the local community, was the reason why the Herdade was chosen as the ideal location for the development of research and higher education activities in the various fields of ecology, as well as for the promotion of environmental education and citizen-science activities.

Inaugurated at the Grândola Municipal Library and Archive on March 2024, the exhibition now at the Faculty of Science of the University of Lisbon, brings together 65 photographs taken by the students and researchers who have made the Herdade their home. More than the quality of each image, the whole illustrates the unparalleled value of the Herdade as a field station, infrastructure and living laboratory.

The initiative is curated by Inês do Rosário, Rúben Sousa de Oliveira and Rui Rebelo, and has a module dedicated to Ana Luísa Barros's doctoral work, resulting from the winning project she presented in the 2nd edition of CE3C's Participatory Budget.

The opening of the exhibition ‘Wings over water - The birds of the deep sea’, at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, aims to raise awareness of an important group of oceanic birds, showing the diversity and distribution of the various species, their curious adaptations to life on land and at sea, the species at risk of extinction and the factors that threaten them. 

Deep-sea birds are globally threatened with extinction and, despite being expert flyers, are virtually unknown to the general public. They spend most of their time at sea and only come ashore to breed, usually on islands that are not very accessible, which they visit in the dark of night. Portugal is particularly important for this group of birds as it is home to three species that occur nowhere else in the world, as well as very important populations of several other species. Oceanic birds play a fundamental role in balancing the ecosystem, but are rarely mentioned when marine biodiversity is mentioned.

After MUHNAC, the exhibition is currently at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon.

Coordination: Mónica Carneiro da Silva, Maria Dias, Patrícia Garcia Pereira and Cristina Luís (CIUHCT).

The ‘mini’ version of the Insects in Order exhibition creates the same labyrinth and clue game concept in the exhibition space: visitors are given an insect preserved in resin at the entrance, and have to follow a dichotomous key built with plaques placed on the floor and coloured paths until they reach the identification of the Order. Information on the characteristics, diversity, biology and ecology of the 14 main insect orders can be found in the vertical displays.

It was produced by Tagis, CE3C - Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Change and MUHNAC - National Museum of Natural History and Science, as part of the ‘The World at School’ programme, with funding from Ciência Viva and the Foundation for Science and Technology. 

Due to its ease of transport and assembly, enormous flexibility and small size, this mini-expo is ideal for short exhibitions in small museums, science centres, environmental education or schools. Host organisations will only have to pay for transport, assembly, disassembly and the training of monitors.

In 2023, CE3C hosted its first artist residency, in collaboration with the Plant-Soil Ecology research group and researchers Cristina Cruz and Teresa Dias.

The resident artist was Evgenia Emets, born in Ukraine and whose life was divided between Moscow and London before arriving in Portugal in 2018. Evgenia is a multidisciplinary artist and poet who is passionate about working with forests, ecology, biodiversity and the community, reflecting this through her visual works, poetry, installations, performance and forest art. Sound, poetry and calligraphy merge in her creations. She seeks to capture spontaneous messages of time and timelessness in her poetry, translated into vocal and visual forms that allow her to articulate a continuous discourse between abstract and concrete languages of visual, sound and natural spaces.

With CE3C, Evgenia developed Forest Time - the new edition of Eternal Forest presented in spring and summer 2023.

The programme includes exhibitions, art walks and site-specific experiences in two different spaces: Lisbon's Estufa Fria and Monsanto Forest Park. It also included a number of parallel activities, such as the publication of a new book focusing on the values of nature protection and biodiversity.

More information here.

20 photographers, 118 photographs.

This exhibition presented the five honours from the 4th edition of the Natural History and Science Photography Competition, with the 30 best entries. With this initiative, MUHNAC-ULisboa undertakes its annual commitment to encourage professional and amateur photographers to capture the various faces of Nature and Science in Portugal and in Portuguese-speaking African countries (PALOP), exhibiting the best works to the public.

CE3C is one of the initiative's partners, awarding one of the prizewinners.

Have you ever wondered if we could tell which species were present in an environment without having to capture, see or hear them?

In fact, all species leave traces in the environment from which DNA can be extracted and used to identify them. This exhibition aimed to show how environmental DNA is changing the study of biodiversity, opening up new perspectives and possibilities.

This exhibition, coordinated by Maria Judite Cardoso Alves, Hugo Gante (MUHNAC, CE3C) and Filipe Ribeiro (MARE), is the result of collaboration between researchers from MUHNAC, cE3c, MARE-FCUL, CIBIO-InBIO and the University of Oslo under the project ‘ENVMETAGENOMICS - eDNA: from rare species detection to whole-community diversity using high-throughput sequencing’ (PTDC/BIA-CBI/31644/2017).

Unique insects invaded the city of Lagoa! This exhibition consists of six large-format canvases, displayed throughout the city of Lagoa, which depict species of insects endemic to the Azores, with the aim of publicising the region's unique biodiversity and raising awareness of its conservation.

Each canvas features a highly detailed photograph showing the ‘portrait’ of an endemic insect, accompanied by a ‘nickname’ inspired by the names of Portuguese kings, a brief description of its function in the ecosystem and its scientific name. There is also a stamp warning of the risk of the disappearance of species that in just 500 years have lost around 97 per cent of the forest area they occupied.

The exhibition ‘brings insects to the city’, showcasing a unique natural heritage which, due to their small size and the places where they live, is unknown to the general public. The authors thus wanted to encourage the incorporation of these insects into the Azorean identity heritage.

‘Azoreans millions of years ago’ is an initiative of the Azorean Biodiversity Group (GBA/CE3C) and the University of the Azores, with the collaboration of various organisations and civil society. It was designed by Ana Moura Arroz, Rita São Marcos, Isabel R. Amorim, Rosalina Gabriel and Paulo A. V. Borges. and the macrophotographs are by Javier Torrent.

This exhibition is different in the relationship it establishes with its visitors. Instead of providing scientific information in a passive way, the Insects in Order concept forces visitors to go through the individual experience of identifying the animals. At the entrance, they receive a real insect preserved in resin and in order to decide which path to follow on the dichotomous key drawn in the space, they have to observe its morphological characteristics. At the end of the path they find the order to which the insect they have chosen belongs. Thus, in a playful way, almost like a game, visitors are experiencing the scientific method

The original version of Insects in Order opened to the public on 28 May 2010 at the Old Riding Arena of the Colégio dos Nobres of the National Museum of Natural History and Science (MUHNAC) in Lisbon, as part of the programme to commemorate the International Year of Biodiversity (Bioevents 2010) at MUHNAC and the University of Lisbon's Centre for Environmental Biology (now known as the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Change).

The innovative exhibition concept was also recognised internationally. For the first time, a scientific exhibition developed and produced in Portugal was the subject of a review in the prestigious scientific magazine ‘Science’.

The exhibition ‘Lisbon Gardens - From the Middle Ages to the 21st Century’ opened on 23 October 2020 at the Museum of Lisbon - Palácio Pimenta, right next to the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Ciências ULisboa). The exhibition has the collaboration of several cE3c researchers and HortaFCUL custodians.

The main contribution was to the exhibition centrepiece ‘Tools for a city garden’, presented through models, videos, illustrations and other devices that appeal to sustainability, the recycling of materials and the proximity between urbanity and nature, exploring the tools for building and maintaining a resilient and sustainable urban garden. David Avelar and Florian Ulm, researchers at cE3c and guardians of HortaFCUL, Catarina Costa, researcher at cE3c, as well as Rebecca Mateus, Manuel de Sousa Botelho and Madalena Horta, guardians of HortaFCUL, are the members of Ciências ULisboa involved in this collaboration.

Lisbon's vegetable gardens have been a particular feature of the urban landscape since ancient times. They have been fundamental to the subsistence of the city's population. Today, gardens are essential for the sovereignty, security and sustainability of food in cities. But they are also places of enjoyment and enchantment that mirror, in their diversity, the configurations of the urban fabric and the demographic make-up of the city.

In a multidisciplinary approach, this exhibition presents, through cartography, painting, literature, photography and video, the territories and paths, practices and narratives, characters, strategies and policies of the universe of urban gardens. From the Middle Ages to the present day, it reveals the fascinating world of Lisbon's gardens. 

Several cE3c researchers are collaborating on this project by developing various materials, including a set of videos that visitors can access via QR-codes located next to each exhibition moment. These videos allude to some of the many services that the forest provides, such as habitat, air renewal, soil formation and water purification.

The videos are distributed around the recreation of a burnt forest, recreated by burnt stumps distributed on the three levels of the Jardim do Torel, resulting from the recent fires in Oliveira de Frades, in Viseu, and Serra dos Candeeiros, in Porto de Mós.

The idea of placing the videos in the middle of the devastated forest is to create a strong relationship between management and ecosystem services, showing that poor forest management leads to a loss of ecosystem services, a reduction in our quality of life and that of future generations.

Cristina Cruz

In the installation, visitors will also find a lake that once functioned as a swimming pool and is covered in a natural black dye, alluding to oil disasters and the dangers of fossil fuels for water quality. The phrase ‘I can't stop these tears from faling’ is drawn on the wall in front of the lake.

Another part of the installation is what Brazilian artist Túlio Dek calls ‘a sweeter, cosier place’: a small wooden house, inside which are hundreds of seeds of trees and grass species such as wheat and barley, which visitors are invited to take with them and plant wherever they like, recording this moment on social media with the hashtag #BeyondTheTrees.

The ‘Beyond the Trees’ installation aims to draw attention to the massive destruction of the planet, sensorially impacting the public, giving them an almost immersive experience of a forest devastated by fire and, at the same time, appealing to the individual role of each one of us. Túlio Dek, who has been doing an artistic residency in Portugal since the beginning of 2019, has been working on this project for over a year: the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the inauguration, initially scheduled for April 2020.

This collaboration has been a great challenge, but the interesting thing is that Artist and Scientists have formed a team that has grown, questioned, discussed and learnt. They learnt and consolidated the scientific foundations of the Installation that Túlio Dek created, and they consolidated in the scientists the fascination with communicating their knowledge as part of a social and cultural intervention outside the perspective of traditional science communication.

Cristina Cruz

The installation is curated by Rui Afonso Santos and produced by Square One - Contemporary Art Agency. It has the support of the Parish of Santo António, the Foundation for Science and Technology, the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, the LX Store, the University of Lisbon, the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Change - cE3c, TNT Arte and the European Commission.

Text adapted by Marta Daniela Santos from the official Square One Agency press release.