After ten years as deputy director of the Frick Collection in New York, Xavier F. Solomon was appointed director of the Calouste Gulbenkian museum in Lisbon, after an international recruitment process.
Born in Rome in 1979, Xavier Salomon studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he defended a doctoral thesis devoted to the patronage of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini. He has exercised conservative functions in several museum institutions, notably at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery and the British Museum in London. He organized several major exhibitions, including “Magnificence in Renaissance Venice” in 2014 at the National Gallery, or even “James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). Masterpieces of the Frick Collection, New York “at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in 2022. He is recognized for his expertise in the Italian and Spanish Renaissance.
The Calouste Gulbenkian museum, inaugurated in 1969, is part of a 7.5 hectare museum and landscaping set under the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, created around the Private Collection of the Patron and Oil Industrial of Armenian origin Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian. The museum has been closed since March 2025 for work, with a reopening scheduled for 2026, shortly after taking office of Xavier Salomon. He himself had previously supervised the renovation of the Frick Collection between 2021 and 2025. In Lisbon, the works aim to modernize the technical facilities (air conditioning, lighting, security), improve the reception of the public and restructure the galleries in order to clarify the exhibition paths.
The complex includes the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM), reopened on September 21, 2024 after four years of renovation. Dedicated to modern and contemporary art, this building, inaugurated in 1983, was redeveloped for an amount of 58 million euros. It now has 900 m² of additional exhibition spaces and retains more than 12,000 works, mainly Portuguese and international artists.
Xavier F. Solomon will supervise the end of the museum’s restoration site and the mission will be to enhance a collection rich in more than 6,000 works, covering many geographic periods and areas, from Antiquity to modern times, from Japan to England via the Middle East. He succeeds António Filipe Pimentel, director of the Calouste Gulbenkian museum since 2022, who will retire in early 2026.
