Luke Syson


Luke Syson is an English museum curator and art historian. Since 2019, he has been the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, prior to which he held positions at the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2011 he curated the acclaimed Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery: Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, which included his pivotal role in the controversial authentication by the National Gallery of da Vinci's Salvator Mundi.

Education and early career

Syson received a Bachelor of Arts from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London and he continued studying there for three years in the PhD program; his focus was on the 15th-century royal portraiture of Milan, Ferrara, and Mantua. His first professional positions was as the curator of medals at the British Museum from 1991 to 2002. Towards the end of his tenure, he served as co-curator for the Pisanello: Painter to the Renaissance Court exhibition in 2001 and co-created a new permanent gallery: "Enlightenment: Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century", which opened in 2003. From 2002 to 2003 he subsequently served as a senior curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where had a leading role in creating the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries.

Later career

Syson became the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Chairman of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2012. The same year he curated Plain or Fancy? Restraint and Exuberance in the Decorative Arts. While at the MET he led the $22 million renovation of the museum's British Galleries. In 2015, Syson was a candidate for the director of the National Gallery; the position later went to Gabriele Finaldi.
He became the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2019, replacing Tim Knox.

Exhibitions

  • Pisanello: Painter to the Renaissance Court at the National Gallery, London
  • Renaissance Siena: Art for a City at the National Gallery, London
  • Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan at the National Gallery, London
  • Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

    Selected publications

  • via London, England: National Gallery
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