Xavier Salomon
British art historian, critic, and curator (born 1979)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Xavier F. Salomon (born 1979) is a British art historian, critic, curator, and museum director. Until November 2025, he was the Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator at the Frick Collection in New York.[1] In 2026, he will become the new Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal, succeeding António Filipe Pimentel, who will retire at the beginning of the year.[2]
Xavier F. Salomon | |
|---|---|
| Education | Courtauld Institute of Art (PhD) |
| Occupation | Art curator |
| Employer | Calouste Gulbenkian Museum |
| Known for | Scholar of Paolo Veronese |
| Title | Director |
| Awards |
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Education and career
Salomon was born in Rome, to an English mother and Danish father. He completed his BA, MA, and his PhD in art history at the Courtauld Institute in London, writing his dissertation on the artworks commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini.[1][3][4]
He previously served as the Curator in the Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was responsible for organizing and overseeing important exhibitions that highlighted key works of European art. Prior to that, he was the Arturo and Holly Melosi Chief Curator at Dulwich Picture Gallery, where he curated several notable exhibitions.[5]
He is particularly well known for his expertise on the Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese.[6]
From April 2020 through July 2021, he hosted an online program, "Cocktails with a Curator", with fellow Frick curators Aimee Ng and Giulio Dalvit.[7][8] The program examined artworks at the Frick and had 66 episodes, which are available on YouTube and are the basis of a book by Rizzoli Electra.[9]
Works
- 2009 – Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece
- 2010 – Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery
- 2012 – Van Dyck in Sicily: 1624–1625 Painting and the Plague
- 2014 – Goya and the Altamira Family
- 2014 – Veronese (catalogue of an exhibition at the National Gallery, London)
- 2016 – Van Dyck: The Anatomy of Portraiture
- 2016 – The Art of Guido Cagnacci
- 2017 – Veronese in Murano: Two Venetian Renaissance Masterpieces Restored
- 2017 – Murillo: The Self-Portraits (with Letizia Treves)
- 2017 – "D. H. Lawrence among the Etruscans".[10] Apollo, 5 August 2017.
- 2018 – Holbein's Sir Thomas More (with Hilary Mantel)
- 2018 – Canova's George Washington (with Guido Beltramini and Mario Guderzo)
- 2019 – Rembrandt's Polish Rider (with Maira Kalman)
- 2019 – David Bowie's Tintoretto: The Lost Church of San Geminiano (with Christina Currie)
- 2019 – "An Important Work by Titian has been Hiding in Plain Sight".[11] Apollo, 20 September 2019.
- 2020 – Titian's Pietro Aretino (with Francine Prose)
- 2021 – Frick Madison: The Frick Collection at the Breuer Building / foreword by Roxane Gay; photographed by Joe Coscia Jr.; with texts by Ian Wardropper and Xavier F. Salomon.
- 2022 – Fragonard's Progress of Love (with Alan Hollinghurst)
- 2022 – Paolo Veneziano's Coronation of the Virgin (with Nico Muhly)
- 2022 – Cocktails with a Curator: The Frick Collection (with Aimee Ng and Giulio Dalvit)
- 2023 - Rosalba Carriera's Man in Pilgrim's Costume (with Nicolas Party)
- 2023 – Bellini and Giorgione in the House of Taddeo Contarini
- 2023 – Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters (with Aimee Ng and Stephen Truax)
- 2025 – Goya's Forge (with Hisham Matar)
- 2025 – Porcelain Garden: Vladimir Kanevsky at The Frick Collection
- 2025 – The Frick Collection: The Historic Interiors of One East Seventieth Street
- 2025 – To the Holy Sepulcher: Treasures from the Terra Sancta Museum (with Jacques Charles-Gaffiot and Benoît Constensoux)
- 2026 – Boucher’s Four Seasons (with Flora Yukhnovich)
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