Over the last few years, the Museum of Pontevedra has been promoting these residencies as a way of supporting the artistic research of emerging creators. As an alternative to the traditional model of prizes and competitions, residencies provide time, space and guidance to develop a project, test it in other contexts and share it with different professional communities. Having this approach, the institution is returning to the spirit of the grants awarded by the Provincial Council of Pontevedra to regional artists between 1864 and 1982, which played a decisive role in renewing Galician art at various moments in history.
The Museum’s residency programme thus seeks to support contemporary creation and give greater visibility to new artistic projects; encourage artistic education and promote the arts; and foster research, innovation and experimentation. It also aims to help build creative and collaborative networks through both theory and practice, as well as to bring the artistic production from the territory to international audiences.
This strand of the programme emerged from rethinking Novos Valores, which began as a plastic arts competition and became an international artist residency programme in 2025. In collaboration with the Walter & Nicole Leblanc Foundation in Brussels and Matadero Madrid, each edition enables two artists, researchers or curators from the province of Pontevedra to undertake a four-week residency in the Belgian capital and a three-month residency in Madrid. The resulting projects are presented at the Pontevedra Biennial: in 2025, the works by Carlos Fer and Andrea Davila Rubio were showcased, while those by Sol Mussa and Sara Piñeiro, selected through the 2026 open call, will be exhibited two years later.
This is not the Museum’s only initiative in this field. In 2024, it launched an international residency for artistic or curatorial research at the Institute Art Gender Nature of the Basel Academy of Art and Design, which was awarded to Andrea Davila Rubio. In the field of live arts, the Santa Clara Convent, in collaboration with Colectivo RPM, hosted a residency in 2026 for the dancer and choreographer Fran Martínez, who developed the project Transfixión (Transfixion), subsequently presented at the Pontevedra Live Arts Biennial in July of the same year.
Thanks to these initiatives, the Museum of Pontevedra is consolidating its residency programme as a means of supporting emerging artists at key moments in their careers and connecting creation in the province with leading institutions beyond elsewhere. By working with prestigious institutions and through open calls, this commitment also seeks to ensure that artistic research reaches the public and becomes an integral part of the Museum and the Biennial.
Museo de Pontevedra