Salvador Salort-Pons
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Salvador Salort-Pons | |
|---|---|
 Salort-Pons in 2022 | |
| Born | April 18, 1970 Madrid, Spain |
| Occupation | Museum director |
| Spouse | Alexandra Salort-Pons[1] |
| Children | 2 |
Salvador Salort-Pons (born April 18, 1970) is a Spanish-born American art historian and museum director. Since 2015, Salort-Pons has served as the Director of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Salort-Pons was born on April 18, 1970, and raised in Madrid, Spain. In 1993, Salort-Pons graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid with a master's degree in Geography and History with a specialization in the History of Art. While studying at the Complutense University of Madrid he was taught by the former director of the Museo del Prado, Alfonso Pérez Sánchez.
In 1998, Salort-Pons was a recipient of the Rome Prize and lived and studied at the Spanish Academy in Rome for two years where he researched the presence of Spanish artists in Rome during the 17th century. In 2000, he became a member of the Royal College of Spain in Bologna where he completed his thesis about the trips Diego Velázquez made to Italy. His dissertation was published in 2002 and included over 50 new documents relating to the life and work of Velázquez during his two trips to Italy (in 1629–1630 and 1649–1651). Among Salort-Pons's discoveries was the correct dating of the Velázquez Portrait of Innocent X.[2]
In 2006, while working at the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, Salort-Pons received a Master of Business Administration from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.[2]
Early career
Salort-Pons's first curatorial job was as the exhibition curator at the Memmo Foundation/Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome. While at the Memmo Foundation, he co-curated "Il trionfo del colore: Collezione Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza" (Rome, 2002) as well as "Velázquez" (Rome, 2001), which was the first monographic exhibition on the painter ever organized in Italy.[3]
Until 2006, Salort-Pons served as the senior curator at the Meadows Museum of art on the campus of Southern Methodist University in University Park, Texas.[3] During that time, Salort-Pons helped Yale professors identify an early Velázquez work depicting the education of the Virgin Mary.[4][5]
DIA early years (2008–2015)
In February 2008, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) hired Salort-Pons as assistant curator of European Paintings.[6] Later promoted to be the associate curator in 2011, Salort Pons embarked on a number of exhibition projects including "Fakes, Forgeries and Mysteries" (2011).[7] As the head of the European Art department at the DIA, Salort-Pons was the in-house curator for the traveling Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus exhibition. In 2013, Salort-Pons was appointed executive director of Collections Strategies and Information, overseeing a number of key departments at the DIA, including Collections Management, Conservation, and Publications.[8]
As a curator, Salort-Pons did extensive research on the Italian and Spanish collections of the DIA. Under his guidance, the museum acquired a number of Spanish masterpieces by artists such as Francisco de Zurbarán, Alonso Cano, Juan Valdes Leal, and Juan de Espinosa. In addition, he rediscovered a work by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo at Oakland University whose location had been lost to scholars for many years.[9]