«Consisting of founding works of contemporary Portuguese art historiography, from 1850 to the present day, the MNAC's collection holds several national treasures. Having grown exponentially over the last three decades, the collection, mostly by Portuguese creators, with a growing number of women artists, constitutes a unique, historical and emotional legacy, in some ways as identifiable as our fingerprints [impressões digitais]. After seven temporary exhibitions between 2018 and 2023, in which we focused on specific aspects of the collection and chose to share especially works that had never been displayed, the new long-term exhibition brings together the highlights of the collection along with newcomers to the collection i.e, artists of our own time.

Curated by Ana Guimarães, Emília Ferreira, Maria de Aires Silveira and Tiago Beirão Veiga, the journey through these 170 years of history, held at the museum’s main building, values the coexistence of different artistic languages, putting painting, drawing, engraving, photography, sculpture, installation and video into dialogue.»

The painting "Untitled: Memorabilia" (2014) is part of the Museum's Art Collection and is on display at the exhibition Impressões Digitais: MNAC Collection. This artwork by Rui Macedo is included in Octopus Books: 1001 PAINTINGS You Must See Before You Die (page 936) by Stephen Farthing. A publication with more than 300,000 copies sold worldwide in 15 languages, this newly revised and updated edition brings you right up to date with an incisive look at the world's best paintings.

«Rui Macedo (b.1975) began working as a painter at the end of the 1990s, after graduating from the Faculdade de Belas Artes in Lisbon. He recently said of his work, "The work of a painter is a challenge that deals directly with a cultural heritage; it is bound to architecture-the space and place where it is seen." This painting, given the enigmatic title Untitled, was originally made as apart of an exhibition/installation called Memorabilia, which was presented by the artist at the Convento Dos Capuchos, Caparica, during the summer of 2014. Macedo used the painting in that exhibition to remind his audience of art's artifice and to challenge the overly codified context of the exhibition space. Today, the painting is free of the installation; is a painting that now hangs alone. As such, it is more open to interpretation, but i still presents the viewer with a group of meticulously imagined trompe-l'oeil frames that demonstrate the artist's technical virtuosity. Now appearing as the whole story, not a fragment of another bigger story, the painting turns our understanding of authenticity upside down. In doing so, it takes us from the shadows of Renaissance painting through the geometry of modernism to a point where the frame is the subject and no longer simply a protective device and decorative border.» – Stephen Farthing, 2017