Lagos, Portugal: A Lively Street Art Scene

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I love a good museum.

Put me in Paris, London, Florence, Rome, or New York and I can happily disappear into one for hours. There’s something extraordinary about standing a few feet from a painting you’ve seen reproduced hundreds of times and suddenly realizing that the actual brushstrokes are right there in front of you. Someone stood before that canvas centuries ago and made those marks with their own hand.

That never gets old. But after enough hours indoors, even the most devoted art lover can begin looking longingly toward the exit. And sometimes, when you step back outside, the art is waiting for you there too.

Not framed. Not guarded. Not accompanied by a little plaque explaining what you’re supposed to think about it. Just there. On a wall. Around a corner.

Across the side of a building you might otherwise have walked right past. That’s one of the things I’ve enjoyed so much about the street art here in Lagos, Portugal.

Street art has become such an important part of the visual life of cities around the world, and I love the democracy of it. You don’t need a ticket. You don’t need to know anything about art history. You don’t even need to have intended to see it.

You simply turn a corner and there it is. Sometimes enormous. Sometimes funny. Sometimes political. Sometimes beautiful. Sometimes strange enough that you stand there for a minute wondering what on earth the artist was thinking.

Which, come to think of it, isn’t all that different from what happens in museums.

We tend to separate “serious art” from street art, as though one belongs in grand buildings and the other belongs somewhere farther down the cultural ladder. But history has a wonderful way of rearranging those judgments.

Many artists we now consider geniuses weren’t treated particularly kindly by their own time. Van Gogh struggled enormously to find an audience for his work. The Impressionists were mocked. Art that initially seemed disruptive or unacceptable eventually found its way onto museum walls.

So I’m always a little hesitant to assume we know which artists working today will matter fifty or a hundred years from now. Some of them may very well be painting on the side of a building.

What I especially like about street art is that it changes the character of a place. A blank wall becomes a conversation. An alley becomes somewhere worth walking.

An ordinary building suddenly develops a personality.

And because street art exists in public space, it becomes part of daily life. People walk past it on the way to work. Children grow up seeing it. Travelers stumble onto it accidentally. It belongs, at least for a while, to everyone.

Lagos has embraced that beautifully. The town has developed a thriving street-art scene, much of it encouraged over the years by the Laboratório de Actividades Criativas, or LAC, an arts organization that has helped bring artists together and turn parts of Lagos into something resembling an outdoor gallery.

One of its projects has invited artists from different countries to come to Lagos, create work, and leave pieces behind for the town to enjoy.

And you notice it when you walk. A face appears on the side of an old building.

A huge mural stretches across a wall. Something playful is tucked into a narrow street where you least expect it.

The artwork doesn’t compete with Lagos. It becomes part of Lagos. I think that distinction matters.

The best street art doesn’t simply decorate a place. It interacts with it. The building, the neighborhood, the crumbling plaster, the light, even the people walking past all become part of the experience.

And unlike a museum exhibition, it changes constantly. A mural fades.

Another appears. Something gets painted over. A new artist comes along. The city keeps moving, and the art moves with it.

There’s something wonderfully alive about that.

I still love museums, and I suspect I always will. I’ll continue wandering through galleries looking at the work of people who lived hundreds of years before I did, trying to understand what they saw and what they wanted us to see.

But travel has taught me not to assume that all the important art is hanging inside. Sometimes the gallery is the street. Sometimes the canvas is a wall. And sometimes the most interesting work in town is waiting for you around a corner you hadn’t planned to turn.

So when you travel, visit the museums. Absolutely.

But when you come back outside, keep looking.

The exhibition may not be over yet.