alain elkann interviews
Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano

BUILDING VESSELS OF LIGHT. Renzo Piano is an Italian architect whose notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The Shard in London, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens...

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Mary McCartney

Mary McCartney

AN EYE FOR THE REAL. The London based photographer, filmmaker and author Mary McCartney’s photographs have been shown at leading international institutions and galleries. Mary’s editorial work has featured in GQ, Vogue, and the Sunday Times, and she has been a guest...

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Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel

AN ARCHITECT IS LIKE A FILMMAKER. The Paris based architect Jean Nouvel injects a sense of originality into the projects he undertakes all over the world. He creates a unique concept for each particular combination of people, place and time, yielding buildings that...

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Patrick Seguin

Patrick Seguin

A PASSION FOR PROUVÉ. Patrick Seguin is the founder of Galerie Patrick Seguin in Paris. He has a particular love for the work of the French designer Jean Prouvé. Patrick Seguin promotes and collects both Prouvé’s industrially produced furniture and his architecture of...

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India Mahdavi

India Mahdavi

A COLOURFUL CONVERSATION. Paris based interior designer India Mahdavi is internationally known for her expressive mix of colours that argue with each other and for her furniture design.This interview is also available as a podcast. India Mahdavi, how would you define...

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Federico Marchetti

Federico Marchetti

OUR CUSTOMERS BUY BEAUTIFUL FASHION FROM MOBILES. Federico Marchetti is a visionary who started the e-commerce fashion company Yoox very early in the emergence of the web. Now he is the Chairman and CEO of the combined Yoox Net-a-Porter Group, following the merger...

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Gina Lollobrigida

Gina Lollobrigida

A SUNDAY DISCUSSION WITH A DIVA ABOUT HER LOVES AND SUCCESSES. Gina Lollobrigida: “I turned Sinatra down. To make it up to him, I gave him two Dali paintings.” This 2001 interview with Gina Lollobrigida from our archive is newly published here because we feel that the...

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Davide Rampello

Davide Rampello

HANDMADE ITALY. Davide Rampello is an Italian television presenter, the Artistic Director of Davide Rampello & Partners creative studio, a university professor and a former president of the Milan Triennial.Davide Rampello, in your book “Handmade Italy. Living...

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Laura Mattioli

Laura Mattioli

THE ART OF OUR TIME. Laura Mattioli is the Founder and President of the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) in New York. An art historian, curator, and collector, Laura specializes in twentieth-century Italian art. Since 1983 Laura Mattioli has been the curator...

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David Salle

David Salle

WHAT MATTERS MOST IN ART IS NOT THE WHAT, BUT THE HOW. The artist David Salle was born in 1952. He divides his time between his studio in Brooklyn, New York City and his studio in East Hampton, Long Island. His eclectic talent encompasses being a painter, a...

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Larry Gagosian

Larry Gagosian

GLOBAL ART. The art dealer Larry Gagosian has evolved his business into a global network of seventeen exhibition spaces with a vibrant  contemporary program that features the work of leading international artists.This interview is also available as a podcast here...

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Franco Maria Ricci

Franco Maria Ricci

PRESCIENT INFLUENCER Franco Maria Ricci is a, if not the, giant of art publishing and graphic design. Born outside of Parma, as a young graphic designer Ricci came across the typefaces of Giambattista Bodoni in the Palatina Library and felt an instant affinity with...

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Nina Yashar

Nina Yashar

DOYENNE OF DESIGN. Nina Yashar founded the famous Nilufar Gallery in Milano, which has become the reference point to lovers of historical design as well as to people following the evolution of contemporary design. Nina works within ‘interdisciplinarity’, shifting in...

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John Jay

John Jay

MADE FOR ALL. John Jay is the President of Global Creative for Fast Retailing, the parent company of Uniqlo, a Japanese casual wear designer, manufacturer and retailer. This interview is available as a podcast. John Jay, when did you meet Mr Tadashi Yanai, the founder...

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Miguel Falomir

Miguel Falomir

THE PRADO AT 200. Miguel Falomir is the director of Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, which celebrates its Bicentenary in 2019 with a special program featuring numerous exhibitions and museum-related activities.Professor Miguel Falomir, you have been the director of...

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Fernando Caruncho

Fernando Caruncho

THE GENIUS OF LIGHT. Trained as a philosopher and gardener, the Spanish garden designer Fernando Caruncho began his career 40 years ago and has made private and public projects all over the world. His two sons, Fernando and Pedro, trained as architects and now work...

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Nicholas Cullinan

Nicholas Cullinan

A COLLECTION OF BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. Dr. Nicholas Cullinan was appointed the Director of the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2015. He was previously Curator of International Modern Art at Tate Modern in London, and then Curator in the Department of Modern and...

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Paul Andrew

Paul Andrew

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FERRAGAMO. Paul Andrew is an English fashion designer. In February 2019, Andrew was appointed Creative Director of the globally successful Salvatore Ferragamo brand.  This interview is available as a podcast. Paul Andrew, how did you become...

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Luigi Donà dalle Rose

Luigi Donà dalle Rose

CREATING WORLD HERITAGE. Count Luigi Donà dalle Rose is a Venetian who has spent fifty years making the marine village of Porto Rotondo in Sardinia beautiful and fascinating. Over time he has transformed Porto Rotondo into a glamorous and celebrated residential...

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Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

A LAYERED APPROACH TO LANDSCAPE. The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) award winning landscape designer Todd Longstaffe-Gowan brings to his garden design a sense of the complexities of our relation to the past that is informed by his training and experience...

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Prince Dimitri

Prince Dimitri

A PRINCE IN NEW YORK. Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia, is founder, president and creative director of the jewellery firm which bears his name, Prince Dimitri. He lives and works in New York, where Prince Dimitri was formerly senior vice president of the jewellery...

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Pietro Beccari

Pietro Beccari

DIOR'S FORWARD STRIKER. The interview with Pietro Beccari, the new president of DIOR – in France they call him PDG (Président-directeur général) – took place at the Dior headquarters in Paris at 30 Avenue Montaigne, on the eve of the construction work that was...

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Tania Coen-Uzzielli

Tania Coen-Uzzielli

FROM ACROPOLIS TO AGORA. Tania Coen-Uzzielli is Director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (TAMA).  She was previously Head of Curatorial Services at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem where she curated exhibitions on Jewish art and the “Synagogue Route” exhibition, one of the...

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Letizia Moratti

Letizia Moratti

A RESPONSE TO THE CRISIS IN WELFARE SYSTEMS. Letizia Moratti is the former Rai (Radiotelevisione italiana) president, was the Italian Minister of Education, Universities and Research, served as the mayor of Milan, and today is Chairwoman of the Board for UBI Banca, a...

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Alvaro Barrington

Alvaro Barrington

In ARTISTS I STEAL FROM the 36 year old artist Alvaro Barrington and Julia Peyton-Jones, the very well appreciated contemporary art curator, bring together works by 49 artists who influence Alvaro’s work. The exhibition is at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in London from 5th...

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Jean-Michel Othoniel

Jean-Michel Othoniel

TOTALLY CONNECTED WITH NATURE.  Jean-Michel Othoniel is a French artist who works with the idea of emotional geometry.  Using glass bricks or his signature beads he creates exquisite jewelry-like sculptures whose relationship to human scale ranges from intimacy to...

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Alberto Rocca

Alberto Rocca

THE JOY OF CONSERVATION. Monsignor Alberto Rocca is a fellow at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana library in Milan, as well as being the director of the Pinacoteca (painting gallery), and director of the Class of Borromean Studies.As director of the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana,...

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Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando

CONNECTING HUMANS AND NATURE. I interviewed the eminent Japanese architect Tadao Ando at Château La Coste, the beautiful hotel and vineyard located near Aix-en-Provence, where Ando was opening a show of his drawings in the art centre that he built in 2011. Afterwards...

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Lia Rumma

Lia Rumma

A MATTER OF LAND AND WATER. The Lia Rumma Gallery was founded in Naples in 1971 and has played a major role in discovering new artistic trends such as Arte Povera, Minimal Art, Land Art and Conceptual Art, and exhibiting emerging and prominent artists such as Joseph...

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Ralph Rugoff

Ralph Rugoff

THE SPECIAL VALUE OF ART. American born, London based curator Ralph Rugoff is director of London’s Hayward Gallery and artistic director of the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. He is the first UK-based curator to hold this prestigious role,...

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// FEATURED

Money Must Stay in the Family

The plot of Money Must Stay in the Family, unfolds around the family matriarch’s last will and traces the story of an upper class Jewish family from Turin, the fictional Ottolenghis. The multigenerational saga begins with the flight from Mussolini’s Racial Laws of 1938 and continues with the arrival in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the dispersion from New York to Rome, Paris, Tuscany, South America, and Jerusalem.

// PUBLICATIONS

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