"Surprise". Aida Tavares leaves CCB before the new management is chosen

"An international call is underway with a view to selecting and recruiting the new Directorate of Performing Arts, a process that will be concluded next November" , recalls the CCB Board of Directors, in a written response to questions from Lusa, stating that, "until then, all issues related to this Organic Unit will be assumed by its executive and programming structure".

Lusa contacted the CCB following a report in Público today, which reported that Aida Tavares was "formally dismissed" and that this happened on Tuesday, when she received the letter of dismissal from the hands of the president of the CCB Foundation, Nuno Vasallo e Silva, at a time when the member of the Board of Directors, Madalena Reis, and the CCB's human resources director were also present.

Contacted by Lusa, Aida Tavares stated, in a written response, that "the termination of the service commission contract results exclusively from a unilateral decision by the Administration" , without her agreement, and that it "was not accompanied by any justification".

"And it was even received by me with surprise, given the statements previously made by the President of the Board of Directors of the CCB Foundation to the Público newspaper on June 4th" , he wrote.

A month ago, on June 4, the CCB announced that it would open competitions for the Artistic Director of Performing Arts and Curator of the Architecture Center of the MAC/CCB, a position held by Mariana Pestana, who is leaving at her own request.

At the time, the CCB's announcement came after Aida Tavares told the newspaper Expresso that she had been dismissed by Nuno Vassallo e Silva and Madalena Reis, by telephone at 5:00 pm that day, "when the Minister of Culture [Dalila Rodrigues] already knew that she would not stay" with the portfolio in the new Government, whose composition was announced on June 4 and whose ministers took office the following day.

In a message released late that afternoon by Dalila Rodrigues' office, the then Minister of Culture declined any responsibility or interference in the CCB process.

The Belém Cultural Center, in Lisbon, will open competitions for the Artistic Direction of Performing Arts, a position currently held by Aida Tavares, and Curator of the MAC/CCB Architecture Center, a position held by Mariana Pestana, it was announced today.

Lusa with News to the Minute | 20:30 - 04/06/2025

Speaking to the newspaper Público on the same day, Nuno Vassallo e Silva said that Aida Tavares had not been fired, but had merely been informed that a competition would be opened for the artistic direction of the CCB and that she would soon meet with the cultural programmer to "discuss the future" and her connection to the institution.

Lusa today asked Aida Tavares whether she had considered running for the position, but the cultural programmer declined to comment further.

The CCB Workers' Commission (CT), made up of a president and four members, presented its "mass resignation" a month ago, stating in a statement that "the sequence of events over the last seven months, culminating in the dismissal of Aida Tavares, constitutes an irreversible breach of trust in the institutional administration and the current supervision, and therefore no conditions are met to continue the open, independent and democratic dialogue that is a fundamental principle of the CT".

At the end of 2023, with the appointment of Francisca Carneiro Fernandes to the position of President of the CCB Board of Directors, from which she was dismissed a year later, two organic units came into existence at that institution: Performing Arts and Thought and MAC/CCB.

Aida Tavares was appointed artistic director of the first unit, in a direct hiring in December 2023, and, for the second, Nuria Enguita, chosen through a competition in March 2024. The museum opened in October 2023 without a director.

The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, headed by Margarida Balseiro Lopes, today assured that it "had no prior knowledge of the termination of the CCB's artistic director's duties". The minister was at the CCB in Lisbon this week, having met with the Board of Directors.

"It is further reported that this is a matter that falls exclusively within the remit of the Board of Directors", reads a written response to questions from Lusa.

Aida Tavares took office on December 15, 2023, at the invitation of Francisca Carneiro Fernandes, a hiring that aimed to accompany the institution's new "strategic cycle".

This cultural manager was replaced as president of the CCB by historian Nuno Vasallo e Silva, a decision justified by the department with the "need to give new direction to the management of the foundation", "to guarantee" that it ensures "a service of national scope, participating in a new cycle of Portuguese cultural life".

The then Minister of Culture Dalila Rodrigues was heard in parliament in December regarding the dismissal, having accused her predecessor, Pedro Adão e Silva, of having carried out an "assault on power" at the CCB, guaranteeing "that cronyism in that institution is over".

The statements made by the then minister gave rise to requests from several parties to hear from various figures linked to the CCB in parliament.

In February, Francisca Carneiro Fernandes denied in parliament that the hiring of Aida Tavares was imposed by Pedro Adão e Silva.

Days before, Francisca Carneiro Fernandes' predecessor, Elísio Summavielle, had mentioned that Pedro Adão e Silva had suggested hiring Aida Tavares, a situation that was the culmination of a path of disagreements with the previous Government that led him to decide to leave the CCB at the end of 2023, before the end of the last term.

Francisca Carneiro Fernandes justified the creation of the position of Director of Performing Arts and Thought by the fact that she considers that "any organization that programs performing arts must necessarily have a professional artistic director", saying that it was not necessary to start working "to know that this position did not exist at the CCB".

Regarding the "case, or little affair" of Aida Tavares, Elísio Summavielle declined to make further comments, referring to the statements made by member Madalena Reis, the previous week, in the same parliamentary committee.

Madalena Reis -- who is now the only member of the Board of Directors, following the departure of Delfim Sardo at the end of May, at her request -- explained that she voted against the hiring of Aida Tavares because she felt that "there was no need for change".

"There was a director of Performing Arts. She didn't have exactly the same profile, but she had very similar functions. With this director, a program was created that was shared with the board of directors," he said.

Pedro Adão e Silva, the last to be heard in the series of hearings, argued that the accusations of "assault on power" made by his successor, Dalila Rodrigues, were not confirmed.

For Pedro Adão e Silva, the "completely inappropriate" statements made by the former Minister of Culture occurred "for two reasons": "To justify a dismissal that she did not have the courage to accept" and to try to "hide the year that was lost for cultural policies that was her mandate".

Pedro Adão e Silva explained Dalila Rodrigues' statements as "a projection mechanism: whoever says it is who it is", noting that the people appointed by the previous minister to various positions "all have links to the PSD". "I did not make a single appointment linked to the PS", he said.

Furthermore, they are "all people with the same profile as the minister", who is a historian, he stated at the time.

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