Alain Elkann Interviews

A BRIDGE TO BROOKLYN. Anne Pasternak is the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum, one of the oldest and largest fine arts institutions in America. Pasternak is devoted to engaging broad audiences through the power of art, and she is a staunch advocate for the civic and democratic roles that cultural and educational institutions can play.

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 professor at Sciences Po, The Paris Institute of Political Studies. In 2022 da Empoli published in French his debut novel Le mage du Kremlin, for which he received Le Grand Prix du Roman from l'Académie française.

THE TALENT OF LA NIJINSKA. Lynn Garafola is a dance historian and critic. Professor Emerita of Dance at Barnard College, Columbia University, she is the author of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance. A regular contributor of articles and essays to both scholarly and general interest publications, she is the former editor of the book series "Studies in Dance History," the founder of the Columbia University seminar Studies in Dance, and the curator of exhibitions about the New York City Ballet, Jerome Robbins, and, most recently, the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Her latest book La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern is the first to document the full scope of Bronislava Nijinska's creative work and rewrites the history of Euro-American ballet, beginning with Serge Diaghilev's celebrated Ballets Russes in the early 20th century and continuing until the 1960s.

A MAJOR PHILANTHROPIST. John A. Paulson founded Paulson & Co., an investment management firm based in New York. In 2007 his multi-billion payoff shorting the overheated U.S. housing market made him a global industry superstar. He remains active in the markets.

A VERY SPECIAL MOMENT FOR MILANO. Gianfranco Maraniello is an art historian, contemporary art critic and curator. In May 2022 he was selected to be the Director of the Modern and Contemporary Art Museums in Milano, Italy, which includes Museo del Novecento, GAM Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Palazzo Morando | Costume Moda Immagine, Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano and Studio Museo Francesco Messina.

THE FORMULA OF CREATION. Michelangelo Pistoletto is one of the most influential contemporary artists of his generation and a leading proponent of the Arte Povera movement. In 1998 he founded Cittadellarte, an art and creativity laboratory in a disused textile mill on the Cervo River in Biella, Italy. In his new book, La Formula della Creazione, published by Cittadellarte Edizioni in December 2022, Pistoletto recounts the human and artistic journey that led him to define the Formula of Creation, which he also calls the Formula of Life. His book offers us the opportunity to rethink the cornerstones of our existence, and calls us to a new responsibility towards ourselves, towards each other and towards the nature of which we are a part.

REGIONAL SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST. Dr. Sanam Vakil is the Deputy Director of the Middle East North Africa programme at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London where she leads project work on Iran and Gulf Arab dynamics. Iranian by birth, Dr. Vakil has lived most of her life outside of the Middle East. She obtained a Master's and then a PhD in international relations at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC. She then lived in Germany with her husband before moving to London, and she commutes to Bologna twice a month to teach for Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe.

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 noncuranti (2009; Rapallo Carige Prize 2010), Lo Scurnuso (2011), L'uomo che dormiva al parco (2012) and Il Rumore del Mondo (finalist at Premio Strega 2019). Her latest work, Per ogni parola perduta,was published in 2022.

DOCUMENTING OUR DISPLACEMENT. The filmmaker Amos Gitai was born in Israel in 1950 where his father Munio Gitai Weintraub was a prominent Bauhaus architect and his mother Efratia Margalit an intellectual, a storyteller and a teacher. Amos trained as an architect in Haifa and at UC Berkeley in America before becoming internationally known for his documentaries and feature films about the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and personal and collective memory.

A WORLD OF GOOD TASTE. Tino Zervudachi is an internationally acclaimed decorator with an eclectic aesthetic. He has an illustrious clientele that includes some of the world's most discerning business people, art collectors and bohemian aristocrats. His designs can be seen in sumptuous homes around the world.