A new museum called Muzeu—Thought and Contemporary Art DST has opened in Braga, northern Portugal, housed in a former courthouse and built by the DST Group, a Portuguese industrial conglomerate. The inaugural exhibition, titled "Let Us Be Realistic, Let Us Demand the Impossible," features over 100 works by 96 artists including Alex Katz, Francesco Clemente, Franz West, and Nan Goldin. The museum prioritizes workers, opening first exclusively for company employees on 24 April, then to the public on Freedom Day (25 April), with free admission for the first week and closure on International Workers' Day (1 May).
The museum matters because it challenges the traditional notion of art institutions as elite spaces, instead positioning itself as a civic forum for cultural and political discussion that centers the working class. DST Group's chairman José Teixeira embeds leftist principles into the museum's operations, offering free entry, training for workers to become guides, and integrating philosophy lessons and reading groups into human resources. This model reimagines corporate art collections as tools for worker empowerment and social change, reflecting the revolutionary spirit of May 1968 and Portugal's 1974 Carnation Revolution.