NEW YORK, NY.- Colnaghi announced Carlos A. Picón is joining the business as Director of the firm’s new gallery in New York. Currently Curator in Charge of the Department of Greek and Roman Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art where he has worked for almost 30 years, Dr. Picón is retiring from the position later this year. Together with his role as Director of the new gallery in New York, Dr. Picón will also expand Colnaghi’s expertise to include ancient art.

Jorge Coll and Nicolas Cortés, Colnaghi: “We’re thrilled to be welcoming Carlos to Colnaghi. Not only is he a world authority in his field, he also shares our determination to champion historical art to a younger audience encouraging both new collectors, and the museum patrons of the future. This appointment coincides with our opening a permanent space in New York, a city which has played a key role in Colnaghi’s history since the 19th century. In the longer term, and with the benefit of Carlos’ experience, we hope to summon today the spirit that inspired our American clients in those times; collectors like Henry Clay Frick, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Andrew Mellon, whose wider patronage of the arts endures and inspires to this day.”

Carlos A. Picón: “I’m delighted to be joining Colnaghi; it’s a legendary gallery with a long and distinguished history, and a very exciting future. I feel blessed to have spent almost three decades at The Met and to have been able to achieve what I did. Whilst I’m ready to retire from my role there, I know I still have time for another adventure in my career and it feels perfect that this should be working with Jorge and Nicolas, both of whom share my ambition that knowledge and enthusiasm for historic art thrives long into the future.”

The new gallery will open later this year at 38 East 70th Street in New York’s Upper East Side; it will be open by appointment. These are the latest in a series of notable developments that have taken place since Jorge Coll and Nicolas Cortés took over Colnaghi in October 2015. Driven to encourage the next generation of Old Masters collectors and patrons, Colnaghi has since moved into a new custom-built gallery in St. James’s in London and held exhibitions and events in London, New York, Detroit and Mexico City. Focused on continuing the gallery’s long-held ties to the museum world, as well as its commitment to scholarship, Colnaghi has published numerous academic catalogues during this period, and placed important works of art with institutions including the Mauritshuis (The Hague), the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) and the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge). Later this year, they will officially launch the Colnaghi Foundation, a not-for-profit organization established to foster the appreciation and study of pre-twentieth-century artworks in the Western European tradition.

Carlos A. Picón is a widely-published authority on ancient and classical art. He joined The Met as head of the Department of Greek and Roman Art in May 1990. Throughout his tenure he oversaw myriad successful gallery projects, major exhibitions - such as Greek Gold: Jewelry of the Classical World (1994-95) and Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World (2016) - and acquired rare objects that are credited with greatly enriching The Met and its collection. Perhaps most notably he led the 15-year project to renovate and reinstall all the New Greek and Roman Galleries, a project which concluded in 2007, with most of The Met's exceptional classical holdings on permanent view in grand and appropriate settings. Carlos was also instrumental in fundraising efforts that led to the naming of many galleries, and in the creation of the Onassis Library for Hellenic and Roman Art within the department. Carlos was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He received a BA in classical and Near Eastern archaeology from Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College, and an MA and PhD in classical archaeology from the University of Oxford. In 1986 he was appointed Curator of Ancient Art at the San Antonio Museums of Art in Texas where he established the Department of Anitquities and built a new wing to house their collection of ancient art.