Avaliação de risco de duas obras de arte pública: os casos de estudo das esculturas Eu Espero (Fernanda Fragateiro) e Afonso de Albuquerque (Diogo de Macedo)

Public Art is usually considered as a cultural good available and accessible to general public to be enjoyed mainly outdoor, with no location restrictions. Its outdoor exhibition comprises multiple risks, different from those that should happen indoors, in an art gallery or a museum. This paper aims to highlight some pre- liminary results of a risk assessment of two case studies within an ongoing master research project that is being carried out in the School of Arts of the Portuguese Catholic University. The two case studies are both very different artworks and were chosen in order to obtain an overall framework towards to a better understanding of the risks that they are exposed. One of them is stainless steel park bench of Fernanda’s Fragateiro authorship, and belongs to the International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture of the Santo Tirso municipality; the second is a Diogo’s Macedo limestone sculpture in a granite plinth that represents the Portuguese viceroy in India, Afonso de Albuquerque which is owned by the Oporto’s municipality. The present study aims to identify and understand risks and also point out mitigation measures towards its conservation. It is intended to discuss the use of risk assessment as a useful tool concerning maintenance plans for Public Art preservation.