The Chiado National Contemporary Art Museum is a museum of contemporary art in the historic center of Lisbon founded in 1911. It was entirely rebuilt in 1994 under the project of French architect Jean-Michel Willmotte.

The division of the former National Museum of Fine Arts into the National Museum of Ancient Art, which inherited from it the works carried out until 1850 and continued to be installed in the Janelas Verdes Palace, and in the National Museum of Contemporary Art, consisting of all subsequent works. date, having been installed in the Convent of São Francisco da Cidade, in a space adjacent to the Academy of Fine Arts. The installation in this space, albeit provisionally, came symbolically and opportunely to place it in the area frequented by the generations gatherings represented in the museum.

It occupied the former halls where the exhibitions of the romantics and naturalists had taken place in spaces adjacent to the convent. The National Museum of Contemporary Art - Museu do Chiado was founded by decree of the Republic on May 26, 1911.

It is born from the division of the former National Museum of Fine Arts into the National Museum of Ancient Art, which inherited from it the works carried out until 1850 and continued installed in the Palace of Janelas Verdes, and National Museum of Contemporary Art, consisting of all subsequent works. to this date, having been installed in the Convent of S. Francisco, in a neighboring space of the Academy of Fine Arts.

By organizing a museum network, articulated throughout the country, a project of modernity developed by the nineteenth-century idea of free enlightenment of citizens was fulfilled, providing the country with the necessary instruments to safeguard and reveal national art. Unpublished and pioneering in the international context was the creation of a museum of contemporary art.

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