Dissemination
“Aurélio Lousada — 100 Years of Drawn Literature” exhibition inaugurated at the University of Algarve Library
Since 20 November 2025, the Gambelas campus Library of the University of Algarve has housed a new and significant collection dedicated to comics and visual literatures: the “Aurélio Lousada — 100 Years of Drawn Literature” collection, comprising around 20,000 periodical issues and 5,000 monographs. The holdings include works of comics, adventure literature, crime fiction, reference publications, as well as rare items.
The incorporation of this collection was made possible through collaboration between the Lousada family and CIAC – Research Center for Arts and Communication, which played a central role in the institutional mediation process. CIAC Coordinator Bruno Mendes da Silva and researcher Jorge Carrega were actively involved in all preparatory phases, contributing to the definition of the hosting conditions and to the scientific integration of the archive within the academic context.
Gathered over decades by Aurélio Lousada (1931–2020), the collection remained stored in the family home until its transfer to UAlg. Now arranged across more than 200 linear metres of shelving in the Library’s special collections room, the archive offers a unique panorama of the history of Portuguese comics and their literary roots, including periodicals dating back to the 1840s, serialised novels, 19th-century caricature, and crime fiction by little-studied Portuguese authors.
The reception and cataloguing process benefited from the direct collaboration of Alexandre Lousada, one of the collector’s sons, curator of the archive and currently a PhD candidate in Heritage Studies at UAlg. As part of the preparatory work for the creation of the BDTeca, the Library’s new space dedicated to comics, it was possible to identify materials of high heritage value, including titles absent from the National Library, such as illustrated adventure fascicles, pioneering editions of O Mickey (1935) or O Papagaio (1936) — the latter responsible for the first publication of The Adventures of Tintin outside the Francophone world.
The archive also includes works by authors from the Algarve, such as Roberto Nobre, Rudy Batista and José Carlos Fernandes, highlighting the aesthetic and historical diversity of comics produced in Portugal.
The choice of the University of the Algarve as the final destination of the collection resulted from a joint evaluation process between the family and CIAC, which expressed, from the very first contact, a strong academic and scientific interest in the collection. The Director of the UAlg Library, Salomé Horta, underlined the archive’s potential to stimulate new research, support doctoral studies and open new lines of inquiry into comics, cartoons, posters and film.
The inauguration event, held on 20 November and integrated into the celebrations of the European Day of Academic Heritage, included the signing of the protocol between the University of Algarve and the Lousada family, followed by the official opening of the BDTeca and the exhibition “Aurélio Lousada Collection”. The session concluded with a round-table discussion featuring Nuno Bicho, Vice-Rector of UAlg; Alexandre and Adriana Lousada; and CIAC representatives Bruno Mendes da Silva and Jorge Carrega, highlighting the scientific and heritage relevance of this new incorporation for the study of drawn literature and visual narratives in Portugal.
Esta publicação também está disponível em: Portuguese (Portugal)