Transatlantic Directors Conversation

Dorothy Kosinski, director of The Phillips Collection, and Miguel Falomir, director of the Museo del Prado in Madrid, discuss challenges that museums face now, especially considering their museums’ anniversaries (100 for the Phillips and 200 for the Prado) and the repercussions of the global pandemic. Their conversation will cover issues related to balancing history/legacy with the present/future, collecting of today and for the future, juggling digital and technological innovation and shortages, creating new audiences, exploring and comparing fundraising strategies, and examining models of future museum leadership.

Presented in collaboration with the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in Washington, DC. The Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain joins the Phillips’s centennial celebration of Daniel Canogar’s Amalgama Phillips (2021) by presenting Canogar’s Amalgama El Prado (2019), originally screened on the façade of the Museo Nacional del Prado to mark the museum’s 200th anniversary, and now presented for the first time in the United States at the former Residence of the Ambassador of Spain (on view through November 5, 2021).

Miguel Falomir Faus (b. 1966, Valencia, Spain) graduated in Art History form Valencia University with an Extraordinary Prize. From 1990 to 1993 he was an FPI fellow for the Education and Science Spanish Ministry at the Superior Council of Scientific Research (CSIC). In 1993 he graduated from the Art History PhD in Valencia University, and between 1994 and 1995 he received a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. At the same time, he was a Professor at the Valencia University and in 1997 he was named Chief of the Italian and French Paint Department at Museo del Prado. From 2008 to 2010 he was Andrew Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC). In 2015 he became deputy director of preservation and research at the Museo del Prado, a position that he filled until he became general director of the same museum in March 2017. He is a member of the Comitato Scientifico della Fondazione Tiziano in Pieve di Cadore (Italy) and has been invited professor in Údine University (Italy) and UCLA (USA). In 2018 he was awarded Harvard’s I Tatti Morgan Prize for his outstanding findings in the preservation area. He has curated many of Prado’s exhibitions, De Tiziano a Bassano. Maestros venecianos del Museo del Prado (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 1997), Una obra maestra restaurada. El Lavatorio de Jacopo Tintoretto (2000), Los Bassano en la España del siglo de oro (2001), La restauración de El emperador Carlos V, a caballo, en Mühlberg de Tiziano (2001), Tiziano (2003), Tintoretto (2007), El retrato del Renacimiento (2008), El último Rafael (2012), Las Furias: alegoría política y desafío artístico (2014), Tiziano: Dánae, Venus y Adonis. Las primeras poesías (2014) y Lorenzo Lotto. Retratos (2018) among many others.

Dr. Dorothy Kosinski is the Vradenburg Director and CEO of The Phillips Collection, a role she has served since 2008. Dr. Kosinski has diversified and expanded the museum’s collection and programming, notably acquiring photography and contemporary art, launching a transformational partnership with the University of Maryland, establishing a satellite campus in Southeast DC at the Town Hall Arts Recreation Campus (THEARC), and hiring the museum’s first Chief Diversity Officer. Prior to joining The Phillips Collection, Dr. Kosinski worked at the Dallas Museum of Art, where she served in a number of capacities from 1995 to 2008, last as Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture. From 1985 to 1997, she lived in Basel, Switzerland and was the curator of the Douglas Cooper Collection of cubist art. In August 2013, Dr. Kosinski was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Council on the Humanities. In December 2017, she was recognized by the Ambassador of Italy with the Order of the Italian Star, a distinction recognizing her outstanding contributions to the arts and promotion of Italian culture. She currently serves on the Board of the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. Dr. Kosinski received a BA from Yale University and an MA and PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

IMAGE: Daniel Canogar, Amalgama Phillips, 2021, Generative artwork, dimensions variable, The Phillips Collection, The Dreier Fund for Acquisitions