Alain Elkann Interviews

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 to design the Estonian National Museum. Following this victory, she co-founded her first studio, DGT Architects, in Paris. Upon delivery of this project in 2016, she had established Lina Ghotmeh—Architecture. Ghotmeh has won several prestigious awards, has delivered multiple commended projects and designed the Serpentine Pavilion 2023, À Table.

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 towards a world where nature is understood, valued and protected. In his most recent book What a Bee Knows Buchmann explores the thoughts, memories and personalities of bees.

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 numerous books on literary criticism and history, he was installed as one of the 40 members of the Académie Française known as "the immortals" in May 2023. He was recently appointed the first writer in residence at the musée du Louvre.

AN EXPERIENCE OF JOY. The artist Jennifer Guidi works and lives in Los Angeles. Represented by Gagosian, Massimo de Carlo and David Kordansky Gallery, her work has been exhibited around the world. Her solo exhibition Mountain Range is on view in the Richard Rogers Gallery at Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France, until September 3rd 2023, and from September 16th to January 7th 2024 the Orange County Museum of Art in California will host her first institutional exhibition in the United States.

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 Royal Academy of Arts in London.

CREATING A WEB THAT HOLDS DIFFERENT ELEMENTS TOGETHER. Lee Bul is a contemporary sculpture and installation artist who was born in 1964 to dissident parents under the military dictatorship of Park Chung-Hee in South Korea. Her work investigates the ways that modern art, architecture and technology have shaped both our real and imagined worlds, and questions patriarchal authority and the marginalization of women.

WORKING FROM HOME. Ivor Braka is an art dealer and collector who works privately from his home in London rather than a gallery. For many years he has also been involved in the restoration of Gunton Park in North Norfolk, where he now owns and runs two celebrated pubs.

A CONTINUUM OF CREATIVITY. Philippe Starck is a French creator known for his wide range of designs, including interior design, architecture, household objects, furniture, boats and other vehicles.

CONSTRUCTING A SELF THROUGH ART. Jimmy Robert is a visual artist who places the question of the body, racialised, queer, at the centre of his work. Born in 1975 in Guadeloupe, he grew up in France before studying at Goldsmiths College in London and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He currently lives and works in Berlin, teaching at the UdK, Universität der Künste. His photographs, videos, sculptures, texts and works on paper are usually presented in the form of installations that interweave these various media. He is also known for his performances, with which he questions the visibility of Afro-descendants in art history.

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 non-profit, non-governmental, and non-political organization founded in 1996 by his father, Nobel Peace Laureate and former President of Israel Shimon Peres. In 2021 Chemi was awarded the prestigious Reinhard Mohn Prize by the Bertelsmann Stiftung in recognition of his outstanding commitment to promoting innovation that serves both business and society.