Between VHILS and the Jerónimos: Lisbon’s urban art as a tourist object

Abstract

Several cities have included urban art as part of their tourism promotion and planning strategies. This fact derives from a gradual social valorization and institutional legitimation of this type of aesthetic expressions present in the public space. In many cities, we are now faced with processes of touristification of urban art, a dynamic that is dependent on a set of social actors. The touristification of urban art has consequences not only in terms of the constitution of the tourist offer of the city, but also in the relations and interactions that are established between operators and guides, tourists, artists, institutions and local communities. With this article we intend to reflect on the articulation between urban art and the tourism sector, starting from a set of preliminary data of a qualitative nature collected in the framework of an ongoing project on Urban Art in Lisbon.

Keywords:
urban art; tourism; Lisbon; artworld