Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian (1869-1955) was a British businessman and philanthropist. He played a major role in making the petroleum reserves of the Middle East available to Western development and is credited with being the first person to exploit Iraqi oil.
Gulbenkian amassed a remarkable collection of Japanese art. The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lissabon was designed by the architects Ruy Jervis d’Athouguia, Pedro Cid and Alberto Pessoa (1969) to accommodate around six thousand pieces collected by Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian.
This lesser known facet of the collector’s activity was explored in the exhibition Floating world: ‘ukiyo-e’ Japanese prints, which presented a large number of Japanese prints produced between the 17th and 19th centuries that belong entirely to the Museum’s collection. The exhibition focused on the concept of ukiyo, which means ‘floating world’ and refers to the fleeting pleasures of everyday life.
