The Sintra Museum of Modern Art – The Berardo Collection Museum was created to receive, since 1987, a precious treasure: The Berardo Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, an important international historical perspective of European and American art, since the beginning of the 20th century.

The Museum has showed temporary exhibitions organized by artistic movements such as: on Surrealism, the Cobra Group, Abstraction, American Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, the Color Field Painting, Op and kinetic art, Pop Art, Photography and the 90's.

In its programming there were shows centered in one single artist represented in the Berardo Collection. That was the case of “Living” by Michael Craig Martin, the sculptures “Sintra-Granada” by Susana Solano, the work “Nem sombra nem vento” by Carlos Nogueira. In 2000, the exhibition “Durante o Fim” by sculptor Rui Chafes ocuppied besides all the Museum rooms, the Pena Palace and the Pena Park.

The exhibition of larger dimension was Júlio Pomar 's “Autobiography”, an anthology representative of the painter's career. Also the Estate of Erich Kahn was revisited in Sintra, in celebration of the sixty years of the extinction of nazi concentration camps, an historical show entitled “Forgotten Generation Erich Kahn, Jewish Survivor, German Expressionist”. Another important exhibition was “Fernando Lemos Surrealism”, which travelled to the Centro de Artes da Calheta, Madeira, as well, after the Sintra Museum exhibition.

With the intention of showing young artists, the Museum has created a space called “New Gallery”, and in which presented works by Adriana Molder, Catarina Leitão, Joana Vasconcelos, Sara Maia, João Pedro Vale, Miguel Navas, among others.

Specially relevant were the thematic exhibitions “Seduction, Cinema and Painting” and “Art Deco”, organized with the all the Berardo Art Déco Collection, in collaboration with the Musée des Années 30 in Paris and the Museu do Traje in Lisbon.