MADRID.- The Royal Board of Trustees of the Museo Nacional del Prado approved the appointment of Miguel Falomir Faus, current head of the Department of Italian Renaissance painting, as the Museum’s new Deputy Director for Collections and Research, succeeding Gabriele Finaldi, who has recently been appointed the new Director of the National Gallery in London.

Miguel Falomir will take over the post on 1 June. Gabriele Finaldi will continue to be associated with the Prado until 17 August (the date he joins the National Gallery) in order to complete his catalogue of the drawings of José de Ribera.

Miguel Falomir (born Valencia, 1966) has a PhD in Art History and is a professor in that subject at the University of Valencia. He has been a curatorial department head at the Museo del Prado since 1997. During that time he has been responsible for significant advances in the study of the Prado’s Italian Renaissance paintings, evident in the important research and restoration projects undertaken and the organisation of a large number of temporary exhibitions including Titian, Tintoretto, The Renaissance Portrait, Late Raphael and The Furies. International recognition within his field came with his appointment between 2008 and 2010 as Andrew Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. He is currently completing the catalogue raisonné of the works by Titian in the Prado. The post of Deputy Director for Collections and Research at the Prado involves heading the Museum’s curatorial departments, which are located in its Research Centre in the Casón del Buen Retiro, in addition to supervising the restoration programme of the collections. Miguel Zugaza, Director of the Museum, has singled out Miguel Falomir’s “outstanding qualifications and skills for leading the next stage in the development over the next few years of the Museum’s Research Centre and its teaching activities (the Escuela del Prado), in addition to his commitment to making a decisive contribution to the phase on which the Museum is now embarking with the aim of celebrating its bicentenary in 2019.”

Other appointments
The Museum’s Royal Board of Trustees has also appointed Judith Ara as the Museum’s General Technical Co-ordinator, a new post that will function to support the Director and Board of Trustees in the planning and monitoring of the Prado’s ongoing projects and its collaboration with other institutions, paying particular attention to the supervision of procedures relating to the management of loans and deposits of works from the Museum. Her present position as General Curatorial Coordinator will be taken over by Karina Marotta, until now Head of the Museum’s Exhibitions Department.

Miguel FALOMIR (born Valencia, 1966) has a PhD in Art History and is a professor in that subject at the University of Valencia. Since 1997 he has been Head of the Department of Italian and French Renaissance Painting (up to 1700) at the Prado where he has curated numerous exhibitions including The Bassanos in Golden Age Spain (2001); Titian (2003); Tintoretto (2007); The Renaissance Portrait (2008); Titian. Saint John the Baptist (2012); The Furies, political allegory and artistic challenge (2014); and, most recently, Danaë and Venus and Adonis. Titian’s early “poesie” for Philip II (2014). During this period Dr Falomir has also been involved in the restoration of important works by Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and Raphael.

Miguel Falomir specialises in Spanish and Italian Renaissance painting, to which he has devoted various books and more than fifty articles published in Europe and the USA. He has been the recipient of a Fulbright post-doctoral grant from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University (1994-195), and was Andrew Mellow Professor at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of Art, Washington (2008-2010). He is a member of the Comitato Scientifico of the Fondazione Tiziano in Pieve di Cadore (Italy) and is on the editorial board of various specialist publications in Spain and Italy. He has been guest professor at the universities of Udine (Italy) and UCLA (USA).

Judith ARA (born Madrid, 1961) has a degree in Art History from the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid (1979-84). In 1991 she passed the official state examinations to become a Library, Archive and Museum Assistant (in the Museums section), having passed the comparable state exams for Museum Curator in 1988.

Since 1993 Judith Ara’s career has focused on collection management at the Museo Nacional del Prado. In 2002 she was appointed Associate Assistant Director of Curatorship to the Assistant Director of Curatorship while from April 2007 to the present she has been General Curatorial Coordinator.

Judith Ara was the technical curator for the exhibition Splendours of Spain: from El Greco to Velázquez, held at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Río de Janeiro (Brazil) in 2000, and was joint curator with Isabel Argerich of the exhibition Protected Art. The Commission for Artistic Heritage during the Spanish Civil War, held at the Prado in 2003 and jointly organised by the Museum and the Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España (IPCE).

Karina MAROTTA (born Madrid, 1967) has a degree in Art History from the Universidad Complutense, Madrid. In 1988 she passed the official state exams to become a Museum Curator. Her first post was at the Museo del Ejército in Madrid (1999-2003) where she was head of the Fine Arts Department before joining the Museo del Prado as head of the Exhibitions Department in February 2003.

As Head of the Museum’s Exhibitions Department, Karina Marotta has been responsible for organising numerous exhibitions held at the Prado from that date onwards, as well as others organised by the Museum for display in other parts of Spain (the “Travelling Prado” programme) and around the world (the “International Prado”). Particularly complex in terms of organisation were the exhibitions held in Japan (2006 and 2012), China (2007), Russia (2011) and Australia (2012 and 2014).

In addition, Karina Marotta has coordinated the re-display of the Museum’s permanent collection, including the re-hanging associated with the re-modelling and reopening of the galleries, as established in the Collections Plan following the opening of the Prado’s extension in 2007.

Since 2005 she has been a member of the organising committee of the international IEO group (International Exhibitions Organizers).