Enfilade

From ArtInfo (13 July 2010). . .

Eighteen months into his tenure as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas P. Campbell is beginning to make significant hires at the museum. Earlier this month he stole American painting and sculpture curator Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser from the Wadsworth Atheneum, and now Artnet is reporting that the museum has snapped up Xavier Salomon, the chief curator of London’s Dulwich College Picture Gallery, to join the Met’s Italian painting department. . . .

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In a 30-minutes audio interview available at Yang-May Ooi’s Fusion View (and occasioned by the 2007 Canaletto exhibition at Dulwich), Salomon discusses

his own pan-European roots and about the fusion art of Canaletto, the great Venetian painter who came to London in 1746. Canaletto painted famous London scenes with his Italian eye, staying in this vibrant city for 10 years. Xavier talks about what London might have been like at that time and why Canaletto came here for his painting. He also talks about his personal experiences of European art and what it takes to become the curator of one of the most respected art galleries in the UK.

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A 2008 feature from the Dulwich website indicates a variety of Salomon’s preferences including bespoke suits, scallops, Palermo, Verdi, and Venetian velvet slippers. What’s not to like? Well . . . maybe the camel (though even at that, I’ve never been on one; so who knows? Perhaps taste depends on trust more than we might like to admit).