An Interview with Xavier F. Salomon

by Adela Lovric // Aug. 18, 2026

The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum is one of Lisbon’s most distinctive modernist buildings, not least because of its pronounced relationship with the lush Mediterranean garden surrounding it. Designed in the 1960s by Ruy Jervis d’Athouguia, Pedro Cid and Alberto Pessoa, it was conceived as part of a landscape in which art, architecture and nature exist in equilibrium. When the Gulbenkian Foundation acquired the site in 1957, it had already lived several lives—as farmland, a zoo, a racetrack and a fairground.

Following 18 months of renovation, the museum has now reopened, with much of the work focused on recovering the character of its original 1969 design. Later partitions have been removed, carpeting and materials such as silk, wood and bronze reinstalled, and lighting and protective glass upgraded to contemporary standards. Most strikingly, the garden now flows visually into the galleries through the vast windows.

At its heart is the legacy of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, an oil tycoon, businessman, collector and philanthropist of Armenian origin, born in the Ottoman Empire, who amassed one of the biggest private art collections of the 20th century. He left his fortune and collection to establish the Gulbenkian Foundation, where some 6,000 works—from Ancient Egypt to the 20th century—remain together. Around 1,000 are displayed in the museum, following a route that moves through the Islamic world, China and Japan before arriving in Europe.

We spoke to Xavier F. Salomon, appointed Director of the museum earlier this year after serving as Deputy Director of The Frick Collection in New York, about the recent restoration, the collection on view and what might come next.

Calouste Gulbenkian Museum // Courtesy of Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, © Ricardo Oliveira Alves

Adela Lovric: Could you explain the logic of the display and your own approach to this extremely diverse collection?

Xavier F. Salomon: The general approach to the display is what was here since the beginning of the museum, so that hasn’t changed at all. It’s divided in three sections: antiquities, Asian art and European art. A third of the museum is antiquities and Asia, and two thirds are Europe. It’s more or less in chronological order, but with some thematic approaches. All of that was kept as a principle. What has happened [with the recent renovation] is all the vitrines and the selections of objects in them are slightly different. The conjunctions and the hang of the paintings are a little different. There are quite a lot of differences. The Lalique room, for example, was entirely redone, but it is in the same space where it was before. In terms of the overall approaches, it’s a very traditional one and a historic one for the building, but with changes through this project.

AL: Regarding the recent renovations, what is the significance of this dedicated return to the 1969 concepts? Is there anything else from that period that you would like to see brought back or revived?

XFS: The 1960s is not necessarily my favorite period in terms of architecture or art, but it was a key moment for building museums. If you look at what was built between the mid 1960s and mid 1970s, there are some very iconic buildings: Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum in New York, the Kimbell Art Museum in Texas, the Yale Center for British Art in Connecticut, Museo Nacional de Antropologia in Mexico City, MASP in Sao Paulo. If you have an architecturally poor museum building, you’re free to do whatever you want with it. But if your building is a masterpiece of architecture, and that could be something by Frank Lloyd Wright, David Chipperfield, Renzo Piano or a much older building, you had to be respectful of that building. I worked for Dulwich Picture Gallery in London⁠, the first picture gallery created in Britain, designed by John Soane in 1811. It’s a Regency English building. You’re not suddenly going to make that into a modern gallery that has nothing to do with history. So, because the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum building was created in the late 1960s, you have to be respectful of that. Even the offices, the furniture, how we treat materials, all of that has to be a timepiece.

Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, exhibition view // © Pedro Pina

AL: What can this collection tell us about Calouste Gulbenkian’s particular taste, and perhaps even his personality? And, more broadly, what can it reveal about the tastes and sensibilities of his time?

XFS: I don’t necessarily think it’s a product of the time, but I think it’s definitely a product of the geography he inhabited. This is a man who was born and grew up in Istanbul, of Armenian descent. When he was a kid, it was the Ottoman Empire. By the time he was an adult, it was Turkey. There’s quite a substantial historic change. He then lived most of his adult life between London and Paris, traveling quite a lot, and then the last 15 years of his life, here in Lisbon. That cosmopolitan approach is something that you definitely see in the collection. It has incredible depth in Ottoman objects because he was Ottoman, and in French objects because he lived in France. And then beyond that, it goes to Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Japan, Italy, England. You can really learn about a cosmopolitan man who lived in the first half of the 20th century and looked at the world with a lot of curiosity.

Life-size marble sculpture of Diana installed in a museum next to a window with a view to a garden

Jean-Antoine Houdon: ‘Diana,’ 1780, installation view, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum // © Fernando Guerra

AL: As the once richest man in the world, there was practically nothing Gulbenkian wanted that he wasn’t able to afford. What are some of the most valuable objects that can be seen in the current display?

XFS: Value is always flexible. Something that was very valuable in 1950 may not be so valuable now, or it may be more valuable. We don’t really deal with our collection in terms of the monetary value. When it comes to cultural and historic value, or rarity, some of it is the grouping of objects. When it comes to Mamluk glass or Iznik pottery, we have some of the best collections in the world. French 18th century furniture, we have an extraordinary collection. When it comes to objects created by René Lalique, both glass and jewelry designs, we have an incomparable collection. There are these small sections within the larger museum that are absolutely exceptional. When it comes to individual works of art, [Jean-Antoine] Houdon’s ‘Diana’ is one of the great masterpieces of the sculptor, something that belonged to Catherine the Great in Russia. Rubens’ portrait of his wife is also one of the great paintings of Western art.

AL: Is there a particular piece or pairing in the exhibition that you’re especially excited for visitors to discover?

XFS: I always point out objects that mix different cultures. The sections of the museums are divided, but you often can’t make those divisions very easily. For example, we have a ceramic porcelain object in the Asian collection, which was believed to be Chinese, but it’s in fact Iranian, and was then mounted in France in the 18th century. It was a water pipe originally and then became a teapot. That, to me, is a fascinating object. Half of it is Iranian, half of it is French, but it is in the Asian collection. If you go into the European collection, we have pieces of furniture that include Japanese lacquerware. They were French objects, but including Japanese things. What I really love to look at is these mixes of cultures and the ways in which these things were brought together in very unexpected and sometimes very beautiful ways. Those are some of my favorite objects.

AL: Is a dialogue between this collection and the CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian something we might expect to see in the future?

XFS: Absolutely, I very much hope so. The CAM has a new director. We are becoming very close and talking a lot about future projects. Both of us are learning about our institutions, but we want to do that in conversation. I would ideally like for our objects to be more present in the contemporary world. Collections like ours can be a huge source of inspiration for contemporary artists, any artists, who just want to come and be inspired by what we have. There are no plans right now, but I’m hoping that this is something that can happen soon. Bringing artists into our collection or using our objects at CAM are both things I would be very excited to do.