Ai Weiwei - 215 - Alain Elkann Interviews
Alain Elkann Interviews
COMPLETELY FRESH. Ai Weiwei is a contemporary artist, writer and humanitarian activist. Born in China in 1957, from 1981 to 1993 he lived in the United States. He currently has three exhibitions in New York: Child’s Play is at the Vito Schnabel Gallery at both 455 W 19th Street and 360 W 11th Street, and What You See is What You See is at Faurschou New York, 148 Green Street, Brooklyn. Ai Weiwei’s exhibitions run to late February 2025. “I don’t belong to anywhere at all or to any group, and I’m still trying to find out what is left, as a human and as an...
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Sir Norman Rosenthal - 214 - Alain Elkann Interviews
Alain Elkann Interviews
STILL PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES. Sir Norman Rosenthal celebrated his 80th birthday on November 8th 2024. A curator and art historian, he was Exhibitions Officer at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and for many years Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy in London. Recently he curated Georg Baselitz: The Last Decade at the Sabancı Museum in Istanbul. His Roberto Matta 1911-2002 opened at Ca’ Pesaro, Venice on October 25th 2024, and he is curating David Hockney’s April 2025 exhibition at Fondation...
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Joseph Rykwert - 213 - Alain Elkann Interviews
Alain Elkann Interviews
IN MEMORIAM. Joseph Rykwert CBE died on October 18th 2024 at the age of 98. One of the foremost architectural historians and critics of his generation, Rykwert spent most of his working life in the UK and the USA. He was the Paul Philippe Cret Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and taught the history and theory of architecture at several institutions in Europe and North America. His many influential works on architecture include The Idea of a Town (1963), On Adam’s House in Paradise (1972), The Orders of...
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Lorenzo Fiaschi - 212 - Alain Elkann Interviews
Alain Elkann Interviews
CONTINUING THE RENAISSANCE. Lorenzo Fiaschi is one of the three friends who founded the very prestigious Galleria Continua art gallery in San Gimignano, the town with a fantastic and famous skyline of medieval towers in Tuscany, Italy. "We aimed to be in the moment, to continue from the past, and to move toward the future. That's why the name: Galleria Continua." "My idea was to build bridges to help Cuba — cultural bridges between Cuba and the rest of the world." "It's about seeing people happy and enjoying the projects we are doing when they say, 'Wow!' — creating emotions."
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Alexandra Mousavizadeh - 210 - Alain Elkann Interviews
Alain Elkann Interviews
INDEXING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Alexandra Mousavizadeh is a Danish economist and CEO of Evident, an intelligence platform that benchmarks and tracks Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption across the financial services sector. Prior to June 2022 Alexandra was a partner at Tortoise Media in London and creator of The Responsibility 100 Index and The Global AI Index. Alexandra specialises in index creation, using data to build benchmarks that rank nations and companies on key social and technological issues. “We have never seen technology change this quickly.” “Implementing AI in a...
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Thomas Persson - 209 - Alain Elkann Interviews
Alain Elkann Interviews
AN HOMAGE TO FRIENDSHIP. Thomas Persson is a creative director, editor and brand consultant. His understanding of fashion, culture and corporate identity is a resource for global fashion and beauty companies in their visual communication and brand building projects. He created “Acne Paper” an acclaimed magazine published by Acne Studios. He art directed global advertising campaigns for leading fashion brands including Armani and he made two books on the legendary photographer Snowdon. Today he is once again at the editorial helm of a reborn “Acne Paper”. “A magazine is a...
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Erdem Moralioglu - 208 - Alain Elkann Interviews
Alain Elkann Interviews
CELEBRATING INDIVIDUAL SELF-EXPRESSION. Erdem Moralıoglu is a British fashion designer and the eponymous founder of London-based fashion label Erdem, which he established in 2005. His Spring Summer 2025 collection was shown at the British Museum’s South Entrance amidst its 45 feet high columns. The show was based on The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, published in 1928 and banned in the same year. The book gives voice and form to the love of two women at a time when the idea of gay love between two women was not even illegal, its very existence was denied as impossible. For Spring...
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Dr Amin Jaffer - 207 - Alain Elkann Interviews
Alain Elkann Interviews
EXPLORING HYBRIDITY. Dr Amin Jaffer is Director of The Al Thani Collection. He is responsible for working with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux and a global team in the creation of a museum space for The Al Thani Collection at the Hôtel de la Marine, Paris. He is also Artistic Director of the 2025 edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah. For 10 years he was International Director of Asian Art at Christie’s. At London’s Victoria and Albert Museum he was External Exhibition Curator responsible for the exhibition Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s...
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Gad Elmaleh - 206 - Alain Elkann Interviews
Alain Elkann Interviews
A MISSION TO MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH. Gad Elmaleh is a stand-up comedian. Born in Morocco, after attending French schools in Casablanca he went to Montreal for 4 years. He was a political science student for a year, worked on radio, wrote humorous stories and played them in night clubs. In 1992 he took The Cours Florent theatre course in Paris. Through his one-man shows Décalages and La Vie Normale Gad was revealed as a humorist, and he is an actor who starred in various movies. Gad has two sons: Noé with actress Anne Brochet, and Raphael with Charlotte Casiraghi. "I love doing movies, but there...
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Kamel Mennour - 205 - Alain Elkann Interviews
Alain Elkann Interviews
WRITING NEW CHAPTERS. Kamel Mennour is an Algerian-born French art dealer. In 1999 he founded Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris. Today Mennour is a contemporary art gallery representing over forty artists with four exhibition locations in Paris. “I was part of the art scene which was offering a very stimulating position for Paris as a big place on the world map for art.” “The work has to have something very particular that I can become obsessed with.” “We are growing a trinity between the artist with his artworks, the gallery, and the collector.”
info_outlineAN ARCHITECTURE OF OPTIMISM. Amanda Levete CBE is a Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Prize winning architect and founder and principal of AL_A, an international award-winning architecture studio in London. Since its formation in 2009, AL_A has refined an intuitive and strategic approach to design and urban thinking.
“There’s only one thing in life that you cannot design, and that is heritage.”
“We are using architecture to message the technological optimism of fusion.”
“A historic context has this built-in resistance that forces you to think in a certain way.”