Letʼs Put Sequeira in the Right Place

The National Museum of Ancient Art set out to acquire Adoração dos Magos, one of the most important works by Domingos António de Sequeira, requiring a public fundraising campaign to secure its return to Portugal.

Working alongside Fuel, we developed the digital platform that transformed this initiative into an interactive national campaign. Rather than relying solely on traditional fundraising, the project invited every citizen to contribute directly, turning thousands of individual donations into a collective effort to preserve Portuguese cultural heritage.

Turning every donation into part of the artwork.

The digital experience was built around a simple idea: divide the painting into 10 million pixels, allowing each contributor to sponsor one or more pixels and become visually connected to the artwork.

Every donation generated a unique colour assignment that was rendered in real time, gradually revealing the painting as new contributions arrived. Behind this experience, a custom platform managed payment processing, colour mapping, and high-volume rendering while maintaining performance throughout the campaign.

The result was more than a crowdfunding platform. It became an interactive digital representation of a national effort to preserve an important piece of Portuguese cultural heritage.

A campaign people could actively be part of.

Rather than simply collecting donations, the platform allowed contributors to participate visually in the campaign. Every contribution immediately became part of the evolving artwork, transforming fundraising into a shared digital experience that encouraged engagement and collective participation.

• €745,623 raised through the campaign.
• More than 5,400 individual donors.
• 173 organisations participated.
• Campaign exceeded its original fundraising target by more than €145,000.

The platform was developed using Laravel and MySQL, with a custom interactive canvas capable of rendering and updating millions of individual pixels in real time.

A bespoke payment integration and colour-mapping system ensured every contribution was processed instantly and reflected visually on the artwork, creating a seamless experience throughout the campaign.