PONCE, PR.- Museo de Arte de Ponce announces the appointment of a new member to its curatorial staff, Pablo Pérez d’Ors, whose title is Assistant Curator of European Art. Pérez d’Ors, an art historian, was born in Pamplona, Spain. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Navarra and his Ph.D. at Oxford University in England, where he specialized in Spanish Baroque painting. His doctoral thesis was titled “Devotional Painting and Preaching in 17th-Century Spain.”

In 2003, Pérez d’Ors joined the National Inventory Research Project at the Northampton Museum, where he was in charge of cataloguing the collection of early European painting. This experience opened the door for his first curatorial work, in 2007, with the National Gallery in London.

From 2008 to 2010, Pérez d’Ors was an Andrew Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Frick Collection in New York, an internationally renowned institution that gives young curators the opportunity to join the museum’s staff and develop their own exhibit. The result of Pérez d’Ors’ tenure was The King at War: Velázquez’ Portrait of Philip IV, an exhibit that provided a detailed study of Velázquez’ famous painting. The show was well received by critics and reviewers in both the United States and abroad. During this period, Pérez d’Ors also worked closely with the organizers of the History of Art symposium organized each year by the Frick and the Institute of Fine Arts.

“Pablo joins the Museo de Arte de Ponce at a very opportune moment. His first big challenge is a perfect fit for his education and professional career thus far, since we have asked him to design the museum’s educational program and lecture series to complement El Greco to Goya, the magnificent exhibit we’ll be inaugurating in 2012,” noted Dr. Agustín Arteaga, the museum’s director and chief executive officer. “Another of Pablo’s strengths is his educational expertise, so many of our educational workshops and lectures will actually be given by him,” Arteaga added.

The Museo de Arte de Ponce is home to hundreds of European works, and it offers visitors a wide survey of Western art from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. Two special strengths within the European collection are Baroque art and Victorian painting, so Pérez d’Ors represents an extremely important addition to the museum staff.

Pérez d’Ors worked for several years as an independent translator and assistant lecturer at Oxford. He has published important studies on European art, especially the work of Diego Velázquez, the relationship between poetry, preaching, and the visual arts, and the work of the German Renaissance master Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The new Assistant Curator has given a number of lectures at U.S. and European universities on Spanish and European art. Among the subjects of these lectures are The Spanish Siglo de Oro and El Greco: Rhetoric and Religion in 17th-Century Painting. Perez d’Ors has been awarded with several academic honors, among them the Hugh Pilkington Scholarship and a doctoral fellowship from the Manuel Ventura Figueroa Foundation.