alain elkann interviews
Santiago Calatrava

Santiago Calatrava

ART PRECEDES SCIENCE. Santiago Calatrava is a visionary architect, a structural engineer, a sculptor, and a painter based in Switzerland. In his architecture he has merged advanced engineering solutions with dramatic visual statements. You can listen to the podcast of...

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Thomas Harding

Thomas Harding

THE GOLDEN AGE OF PUBLISHING. Thomas Harding is a bestselling British author. His award winning books have been translated into more than eighteen languages and include “Hanns and Rudolf”, “The House by the Lake”, “Blood on the Page”, and “White Debt”. His most recent...

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Peter Marino

Peter Marino

NAILING THE TIME IN WHICH WE LIVE. Peter Marino is the principal of Peter Marino Architect, a New York–based architecture practice he founded in 1978. Peter Marino is well known for integrating art within architectural designs and has commissioned more than 300...

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Sasha Suda

Sasha Suda

CONNECTING THE PAST TO THE PRESENT. Sasha Suda is a Canadian art historian. Since 2022 the former director of the National Gallery of Canada has been the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), whose building is a civic landmark and whose encyclopedic...

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Giuseppe Notarbartolo

Giuseppe Notarbartolo

THE WORK OF A LIFETIME. For over 40 years Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara has been involved with the natural history, ecology, behaviour, taxonomy and conservation of marine megafauna. He has a passion for whales, dolphins, seals, sharks and manta rays.You can listen...

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Dambisa Moyo

Dambisa Moyo

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND HUMAN PROGRESS. Dambisa Moyo is a Zambian-born economist and writer whose books, articles, and public lectures centre on the creation of wealth in a global economy.You can listen to the podcast of this interview here. Dambisa Moyo, in 2022 you were...

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Esther da Costa Meyer

Esther da Costa Meyer

THE SASSOONS: A FASCINATING FAMILY. Esther da Costa Meyer is Professor emerita in the Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, and Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. She has worked on both modern and contemporary architecture, on...

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Lina Ghotmeh

Lina Ghotmeh

BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER. Architect Lina Ghotmeh was born and raised in Beirut, where she studied at the American University. In 2005, while working in London and collaborating with Ateliers Jean Nouvel and Foster & Partners, she won an international competition...

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Stephen Buchmann

Stephen Buchmann

INSPIRED BY BEES. Stephen Buchmann is a pollination ecologist specializing in bees. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Entomology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona and a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London who works...

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Antoine Compagnon

Antoine Compagnon

A SENSE OF TIME. Antoine Compagnon is a literary critic, writer, and professor emeritus at the Collège de France, specializing in Marcel Proust. He is Blanche W. Knopf Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. The author of...

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Arturo Galansino

Arturo Galansino

THE FLORENCE OF THE FUTURE. Arturo Galansino is the Director General of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation in Florence since 2015. His impressive career as an art historian and curator had previously taken him to the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery and...

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Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems

CHANGED BY ART. Carrie Mae Weems is best known for her photography. Her work explores family relationships, racial and cultural identities, sexism, class, political systems and the consequences and disparities of power. Weems has participated in numerous solo and...

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Nathan Heller

Nathan Heller

THE VALUE OF THE HUMANITIES. Nathan Heller is a staff writer at The New Yorker, an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry, in which he often writes about technology, higher education, and...

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Charlotte Casiraghi

Charlotte Casiraghi

A SENSE OF FREEDOM. Charlotte Casiraghi is an ambassador and spokesperson for the House of CHANEL. The 36-year-old is the eighth in line to the Monegasque throne because she is the daughter of Princess Caroline, the eldest daughter of the late Grace, Princess of...

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Gilbert & George

Gilbert & George

THEIR FUTURE IS SECURE. On April 1st 2023 Gilbert & George opened the Gilbert & George Centre in London’s East End. I went to visit them in their nearby studio.Are you tired by all the brouhaha of this very important opening? Yes, we are quite exhausted. Now...

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Miguel Flores-Vianna

Miguel Flores-Vianna

LOST IN TIME. Miguel Flores-Vianna is an Argentine photographer whose latest large format book HAUTE BOHEMIANS: GREECE is much acclaimed. Best known for architecture and interiors, he has worked for publications including World of Interiors, Cabana, Architectural...

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Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan

A CHRONICLER OF OUR TIMES. Ian McEwan is an English novelist and screenwriter who has been considered as one of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945" and a leading member of the 100 most powerful people in British culture. His most recent novel Lessons is his...

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Chemi Peres

Chemi Peres

INNOVATION IS THE PATH TO PEACE. Chemi Peres is a Managing Partner and was Co-Founder in 1993 of Pitango, Israel's largest venture capital fund with over $2.8 billion under management. Chemi is also Chairman of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, an independent...

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Giuliano da Empoli

Giuliano da Empoli

THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN. Giuliano da Empoli is an Italian and Swiss political essayist, journalist and novelist. The founding chairman of Volta, a think tank based in Milan, he was an advisor to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi from 2014 to 2016. Now he is a...

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Salvatore Settis

Salvatore Settis

RECYCLING BEAUTY. Salvatore Settis is an Italian archaeologist and art historian. From 1994 to 1999 he was director of the Getty Centre for the History of Art and the Humanities in Los Angeles and from 1999 to 2010 of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Since 2010...

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Benedetta Cibrario

Benedetta Cibrario

ADDICTED TO WRITING. Benedetta Cibrario was born in Florence, Italy, in 1962, to a father from Turin and a mother from Naples. She is a writer who lives in London. Her books include Rossovermiglio (2007; Campiello Prize 2008), which was followed by Sotto cieli...

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Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri

FEELING AT HOME IN ROME. Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London to Bengali parents. She grew up in the United States, taught at Princeton University, and currently teaches at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author, in English, of Interpreter of Maladies...

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Caroline Moorehead

Caroline Moorehead

EDDA MUSSOLINI: THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN EUROPE. Caroline Moorehead is a bestselling and prize-winner author, and the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo, Madame de la Tour du Pin and Martha Gellhorn. Her recent books - a quartet focused on...

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Luke Syson

Luke Syson

CHAMPION OF THE REMARKABLE. Luke Syson is Director and Marlay Curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University since 2019.  From antiquity to the present day, the Fitzwilliam houses a world-renowned collection of over half a million beautiful works of art,...

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Hindou Ibrahim

Hindou Ibrahim

NOMADIC BY NATURE. Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is an advocate for the greater inclusion of indigenous peoples and their knowledge and traditions in the global movement to fight the effects of climate change. On September 1st 2022 she received the International DVF Award in Venice.

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Clarissa Ward

Clarissa Ward

A MOTHER TELLING STORIES OF WAR. Clarissa Ward is a British-American television journalist. She is currently chief international correspondent for CNN. She was with CBS News, based in London, and before her CBS News position, Ward was a Moscow-based news correspondent...

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Moin Mir

Moin Mir

A SCENT OF WISDOM. Moin Mir is a London based writer of Indian origin. His work is influenced by his grandfather, who was a scholar of Sufism. Moin Mir’s most recent book The Lost Fragrance of Infinity is an inspirational story about the rebuilding of a young man's...

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Sylvain Bellenger

Sylvain Bellenger

A PLACE OF MIRACLES. Sylvain Bellenger was born in Normandy, took degrees in philosophy and in art history, directed the Girodet Museum and the Castle of Blois in France, and then moved to the United States. He held curatorial posts at the Cleveland Museum of Art and...

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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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