The Cargaleiro Museum, housed in the eighteenth century building Solar dos Cavaleiros, displays a remarkable body of work donated by the Manuel Cargaleiro Foundation.  The public can see and enjoy work done by the famous Manuel Cargaleiro including paintings, ceramics, sculpture and tapestry.  The museum is not only a place where the public can view the work of this renowned artist, it is also a place that holds work by some of the most prestigious national and international authors.  Currently, the city hall of Castelo Branco in the Centro de Portugal Region is expanding the building to receive and expose more of Cargaleiro’s work. Architect Amplianção Celia Anica designed the project, which opened in 2011.

A second Cargaleiro Museum is being installed at Quinta da Fidalga in Seixal.  This museum will be completely dedicated to Manuel Cargaleiro, and is placed in an area where he frequented often during his youth.  The project, Museum of Fine Arts Manuel Cagaleiro Workshop, is intended as a pedagogical tool of memory, dissemination, research and experience in the arts.  It aims to create a museum for teaching and creativity in the field of decorative arts through exhibitions and by running workshops.  The museum will include a didactic-pedagogical extension that will be developed through workshops in ceramics, woodwork, upholstery, paper and binding and a printer, while the museum’s collection will consist of paintings, ceramics, silkscreen, tiles and other decorative pieces from the painter.

Manuel Cargaleiro is a Portuguese painter and ceramist.  He was born in the Villa Velha de Roda (district of Castelo Branco), and as a child lived on the south bank of the Tagus in the municipalities of Almada and Seixal.  In 1952, he made his first solo exhibition of ceramics organized by the then National Bureau of Information.  He was a professor of ceramics at the School of Decorative Arts Antonio Arroyo in Lisbon and later moved to Paris, France to continue his work.  In 1990 he created the Manuel Cargaleiro foundation located in Lisbon, where he donated a large number of his works to a variety of other art pubs.  His work includes pottery, painting, sculpture, ceramics, etching, gouache and tapestry designs.