Nicholas Cullinan has been appointed director of the National Portrait Gallery, London. The former curator of international modern art at Tate Modern, who is currently based at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, will take over the role when current director Sandy Nairne steps down in February. He will become only the gallery’s 12th director in its 158-year history.
At Tate Modern, Cullinan, 37, worked on several highly successful exhibitions including last year’s Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs and Malevich shows, as well as on projects with contemporary artists such as Tacita Dean, with whom he also leads an initiative to preserve and protect analogue film.
In 2013 he moved to New York to take up the post of curator of modern and contemporary art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he has been developing a programme for the museum’s occupancy of the Whitney Museum of Art’s Marcel Breuer building (from 2016).
Former roles also include periods at Guggenheim museums in New York and Bilbao and at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Cullinan knows the National Portrait Gallery well having worked there as a part-time visitor services assistant while studying at Courtauld Institute of Art between 2001-03.
Speaking about his appointment, Cullinan said: “It is with great pleasure that I return to the National Portrait Gallery, an institution that I have grown up with and where I first worked 14 years ago.
“At a time when identity, shared culture and civic values are increasingly relevant to us all, the Gallery is uniquely placed to generate a discussion by reflecting on our common artistic, cultural and social history – in short, on what binds us together.
“It will be an honour to lead the gallery at a particularly exciting time in its development, and to build upon its remarkable success and accomplishments.”
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