Making of the Gulbenkian Museum

Focusing on Calouste Gulbenkian’s determination to preserve his cherished art collection intact after his death, this book tells the story of the creation of the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. It begins with the efforts of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, founded in 1956, to reunite an exceptional art collection then dispersed between Paris, Washington D.C. and London. The book examines the legal, diplomatic and practical measures that made this mission possible and follows the planning of a museum shaped by the most advanced museological thinking of the 1950s and 1960s, whereby the artworks themselves guided decisions across architecture, exhibition design and museography. It also highlights the key roles played by the first generation of Portuguese women curators and international consultants, from cataloguing the works to trial exhibitions and final installation. Ultimately, the volume shows how the Foundation interpreted and translated Gulbenkian’s taste and character into museum form, resulting in a unique and enduring institution.

The Inside series focuses on the mission and organisation of an institution rather than the collections within it - the context in which it operates and the people who make it work. It tells the story of how an institution has evolved through its people, history, architecture, purpose and practice.

Vera Mariz is Research Curator at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. She holds a PhD in Art History, and her research focuses on the 19th and 20th century history of collecting and art markets, with particular emphasis on transnational networks of collectors and dealers, collectors’ homes and display practices, the transition of private collections into the public sphere, and the history of jewellery. Her work has been published in The Rijksmuseum Bulletin, The Getty Research Journal, MDCCC 1800, Ge-conservación, and the Journal of the History of Collections, among others.