Museum and Market: Heritage and Memories is an installation that brings the Museu Carlos Machado and the Mercado da Graça together as heritage sites and places of encounter, memory and shared knowledge. Both are part of the history of Ponta Delgada and the island of São Miguel and, through their different roles, preserve and sustain connections between people, objects, practices and territories. 

The Museum collects, preserves, interprets, exhibits and shares. The Market exchanges, transforms, supplies and distributes. While the Market enables the circulation of food, essential to life and its continuity, the Museum preserves and brings objects and narratives to life, allowing us to revisit our collective memory. 

The connection between these two places is also embedded in the history of the city itself. The Museu Açoreano, founded by Carlos Maria Gomes Machado, opened to the public in 1880 at the former Ponta Delgada secondary school, which at the time occupied the building of the former Convento da Graça. The Mercado da Graça had been established within the grounds of the same convent in 1848 and opened as a produce market in 1852. 

Drawing on this shared history, the installation invites visitors to consider the Museum and the Market as living spaces of exchange and transmission. Places where different times, people, gestures, artefacts and practices intersect, reflecting a geography and a heritage that continue to shape life on the island.

The exhibition is curated by Maria Emanuel Albergaria, curator of the Estado de Graça#2 project, and is part of the programme of Ponta Delgada 2026 Portuguese Capital of Culture (PDL26).