Salvatore Settis is the Academy’s Distinguished Visiting Fellow in connection with its International Observatory for Cultural Heritage. He is the former Director of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (1994–1999) and of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (1999–2010), where he also taught Classical Archaeology and Art History. He was Warburg Professor at the University of Hamburg (1991) and delivered the Isaiah Berlin Lectures at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2000), the A.W. Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (2001), and the Lectures of the Cátedra del Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (2010-11). He was also appointed as Professor of the Borromini Chair at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland (2014-2015), and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Institut de France, the American Philosophical Society, the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere, ed Arti, and of the Academies of Sciences in Berlin, Munich, Brussels, and Turin. He currently chairs the Scientific Council of the Musée du Louvre.
Settis’ research interests focus on ancient and Renaissance art history, and his numerous publications include If Venice Dies (2016), Azione popolare: Cittadini per il bene comune (2012), Artisti e committenti fra Quattro e Cinquecento (2010), and The Future of the Classical (2006). He was the editor of The Classical Tradition (with Anthony Grafton and Glenn W. Most, 2010), I Greci. Storia, arte, cultura, società, vols. 1–6, (1995–2002), Memoria dell’Antico nell’arte italiana , vols. 1–3 (1984–86), and is the general editor of the series Mirabilia Italiae. For his interest in the preservation of landscape and cultural heritage, Settis has been Chair of Italy’s High Council for Cultural Heritage and Landscape (2007–2009). He has been awarded two honorary degrees in Law by the University of Padua (2007) and the University of Rome Tor Vergata (2008), and one in Architecture by the University of Reggio Calabria (2013).