António Filipe Pimentel

In 2016, he was one of 17 international figures working in culture and the arts selected to meet Pope Francis, as part of an initiative with the title ‘Arte luce di Dio,’ and, for the occasion, he gave a speech to the Italian Senate.

As director of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, António Filipe Pimentel became known for running several successful and innovative communications campaigns. Initiatives such as the project Coming Out. Bringing the Museum onto the streets, which, in 2015, took to the historical neighborhoods of Lisbon replicas of works from its collections of Portuguese and European paintings, helped promote the institution at the national and international level.

In 2015–2016, he organized unprecedented fundraising and crowd-sourcing campaign - Let's Put the Sequeira in its Rightful Place. The campaign mobilized 171 organizations and fifteen thousand individuals to make donations, resulting in the acquisition of the painting A Adoração dos Magos (The Adoration of the Magi, 1828) by Domingos Sequeira.

He served as director of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga from March 2010 until June 2019. Prior to this he was the director of the Museu Grão Vasco, in Viseu. Between 2007 and 2009 he was Dean of the University of Coimbra, responsible for the field of Heritage. Between 2020 and 2022 he sat on the board of directors for the World Monuments Fund Portugal.

On leaving, he published the book MNAA 2010-2019. Para a História do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (MNAA 2010-2019). For the History of the National Museum of Ancient Art), a compilation of texts that summarised his thoughts on the institution.

An expert in baroque art and historic and artistic heritage, he was awarded the Gulbenkian History of Art Prize in 1991. A corresponding member of both the National Academy of Fine Arts and the Naval Academy, and a member of the Scientific Society of the Portuguese Catholic University, he regularly works with national and international scientific institutions and has published around three hundred titles, in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, UK, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Brazil.

Graduating in history (with a specialization in History of Art) from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra, in 1986, he then completed his master's degree in Cultural and Political History of the Modern Age in 1991. In 2003 he completed his doctorate in History of Art. He is a permanent lecturer at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra.

António Manuel Filipe Rocha Pimentel (born 5 December 1959 in São Pedro de Alva, Penacova) is a Portuguese academic and art historian currently the director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal.

With the remaining funds from this highly successful campaign, the museum was also able to acquire the paintings Retrato de D. João V e a Batalha do Cabo Matapão (Portrait of King John V and the Battle of Cape Matapan, 1717) by Domenico Duprà in 2016, and A Anunciação (The Annunciation, c. 1430) by Álvaro Pires de Évora in 2018.