Dr Nicholas Cullinan, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and co-curator of last year’s hugely successful Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibition at Tate Modern, has been appointed Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, it was announced today, Tuesday 6 January 2015.

The appointment by the Gallery’s Board of Trustees, which has been approved by the Prime Minister, was made following the resignation of current Director Sandy Nairne in June 2014. Nicholas Cullinan will take up his new post in spring 2015. 

Since joining The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in early 2013, Dr Cullinan has taken an important role in developing a number of projects including the programme for the museum’s occupancy of the Whitney Museum of Art’s Marcel Breuer building in 2016 (following the Whitney’s move to another location), expanding and redisplaying the permanent collection and increasing the Modern and Contemporary Department’s base of supporters. At the Met, he organised the exhibitions Venetian Glass by Carlo Scarpa: The Venini Company, 1932-47 (2013); Amie Siegel: Provenance (2014); and devised and led, together with co-curator Andrea Bayer, one of the Met’s opening exhibitions at the Breuer building for March 2016. He has been responsible for a number of major works being acquired by the Met. Significant gifts he worked on include the donation to the Museum of forty-four pieces by Carlo Scarpa and fifty-seven works from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, dedicated to African American artists.

Previously Curator of International Modern Art at Tate Modern (2007-2013), he worked on exhibitions such as Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs (2014), Malevich (2014), Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye (2012), Tacita Dean: FILM (2011), Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia (2008) and Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons (2008). While at Tate, Dr Cullinan also worked on acquisitions and collection displays, founded a committee for Russian and Eastern Europe art and was involved with many aspects of the second phase of the Tate Modern project, for which the new building, designed by Herzog & De Meuron, is scheduled to open in 2016.

Prior to joining Tate, he was the 2006-7 Hilla Rebay International Fellow between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Previous experience includes in 2006 a Helena Rubinstein Internship at the Photography Department of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Lecturer in Art History at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff from 2003-2004. 

Dr Cullinan was educated at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where he was awarded First Class Honours for his B.A. in History of Art, a distinction for his M.A. and where he also gained his PhD. In 2003 Dr Cullinan was visiting teacher for the M.A. Course at the Courtauld Institute. While studying there he was a part-time Visitor Services Assistant at the National Portrait Gallery, London from 2001-2003. He also served as board member of the Courtauld Association from 2011-2013. Dr Cullinan is British and grew up in Yorkshire although he was born in Connecticut, USA in 1977.