Salvador Salort-Pons | |
---|---|
Born |
Madrid, Spain |
April 18, 1970
Occupation | Museum director |
Spouse(s) | Alexandra Salort-Pons |
Children | 2 |
Salvador Salort-Pons (born April 18, 1970) is a Spanish art historian and museum director. Since 2015, Salort-Pons has served as the Director of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
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.
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. During that time, Salort-Pons helped Yale professors identify an early Velazquez work depicting the education of the Virgin Mary.
In February 2008, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) hired Salort-Pons as assistant curator of European Paintings. Later promoted to be the associate curator in 2011, Salort Pons embarked on a number of ambitious exhibition projects including "Fakes, Forgeries and Mysteries" (2011). 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. Before being promoted to Director in 2015, Salort-Pons took charge of the collections, strategies, and information departments in 2013.
Since becoming Director in the fall of 2015, Salort-Pons embarked on a number of projects to try to make the DIA more like a European town square. He described the future of the DIA as a place where people can "drink coffee and chat." Later on, Salort-Pons suggested that the museum entrance should be physically brought down to the ground level to make it both more like a town square and also more accessible to disabled members of the community. Salort-Pons has repeatedly stated that his priorities directly involve increasing community interest and accessibility.
Salort-Pons also started the "Directors Cut" programming at the DIA in early 2016. That series of talks was designed "for people to get to know him and for him to hear from metro Detroiters."