In any museum, whether large or small, the visitor only has access to part of its collections.
The permanent exhibition of a museum is an exhibition of the best that it contains, displayed according to scientific and exhibition criteria of the time when it was created. In the reserves of the museums there are many other objects that tell many other stories, but which, for various reasons, are not included in the permanent exhibition circuit. The same happens with the Museu de Alberto Sampaio.
Whether due to lack of exhibition space or because of the quality and quantity of the Museum collection, there are collections that are only timidly shown to the visitors and others that are even kept in reserve collections, away from the public eye. As an example, let us recall that the Museum possesses excellent collections of liturgical vestments, civil clothing and fabric samples that are rarely put on display.
Among those Museum pieces that are rarely shown to the visitor, there is a set of twenty-three choir books, twenty of plainsong and three without musical annotation, dated mainly from the 16th and 17th centuries. There is also a collection of glassware from which we can highlight eighteen flasks and jars of coloured lattimo glass, as well as glasses with engraved decoration and an original cruet with long spout and a thorny handle. The museum also possesses a collection of tools related to old handcrafts practiced in Guimarães – comb-maker, cobbler, cutler, goldsmith, weaver, currier, wood carver and stone mason.
For those who are interested in knowing these collections in more detail, it is possible to access the records of some of these pieces by consulting the MatrizNet Programme on the Internet or the MatrizPix, or by giving prior notice to the museum to consult them.