Alain Elkann Interviews

VISIONARY IN DESIGN.  Clémence and Didier Krzentowski founded Galerie kreo in 1999. Today Galerie kreo is located in a very beautiful building in 31 rue Dauphine in the centre of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It is a gallery of 20th and 21st century design and they are preparing a very important exhibition that will take place at Christie's in Paris from January 14 to January 28, 2026, when they will pr...

INTIMATE DIALOGUES WITH ANTONELLO DA MESSINA.  Marco Delogu  is an acclaimed Italian photographer, publisher, and cultural director whose work focuses on portraits of groups sharing common languages and experiences.  He served a successful four year term as the Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London from 2015 to 2019, noted for his innovative approach as the first photographer leadin...

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE VOYAGE.  Simone  Fattal  is a Lebanese-American artist. Born in 1942 in Damascus, she was educated in Beirut and Paris, studying philosophy at the École des Lettres and the Sorbonne, as well as archaeology at the École du Louvre. Simone  Fattal and Etel Adnan (1925–2021) were life partners for 49 years, artists who shared a profound creative, political, and personal connectio...

COMMITTED TO DIALOGUE.  Riccardo Di Segni is the Chief Rabbi of Rome and director of the Italian Rabbinical School since 2001. He is a retired medical doctor specializing in radiology, and as Vice President of the National Committee for Bioethics (Comitanto Nazionale per la Bioetica) in Italy combines his rabbinical duties with his background in medicine. Di Segni is an author whose work focuses o...

THE GOLDEN FLEECE OF  ZEGNA .  Ermenegildo "Gildo"  Zegna  is Chairman and CEO of the Ermenegildo  Zegna  Group, founded in 1910 as a textile company by his grandfather and namesake in Trivero, Italy. Under his leadership, the Group has strengthened its position in high-end menswear and has grown into one of the leading global companies in the luxury sector. In 2011,  Zegna  was awarded the title...

José Tolentino de Mendonça  is a theologian, university professor, and one of the most original voices in modern Portuguese. Born in the island of Madeira in 1965, today he is Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, an administrative unit of the Roman Curia. He is Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical Institute for Christian Archaeology and a Bishop since 2018. From 2018 to 2022 he was Li...

MPERIAL PLAY.  Giuliano da Empoli  was born in 1973. He is an Italian and Swiss writer and political scientist living in France. He was a senior advisor to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. His debut novel  The Wizard of the Kremlin  became an international bestseller and was translated into 35 languages. A 2025 film version stars Jude Law as Vladimir Putin. His latest book  The Hour of the Pre...

A JOURNEY THROUGH JOURNALISM.  Mishal Husain  is a celebrated British journalist who joined Bloomberg from the BBC, where she presented its leading news programme Today on BBC Radio 4 for over a decade. Before joining Today in 2013, she was an anchor on the international news channel BBC World News. In 2024 she was awarded the Charles Wheeler Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism by the...

MODERN ARCHITECT.  Sean Griffiths is Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster and former Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University. His current architecture and design practice Modern Architect was founded in 2014 and has worked largely on residential, commercial and public art projects. Previously Sean Griffiths was a founding director of the internationally...

PHOTOGRAPHER MONK.  Nicholas Vreeland , also known as  Rato Khensur Thubten Lhundup , is a Tibetan Buddhist monk and the former abbot of Rato Dratsang, an important 14th-century Tibetan Buddhist monastery reestablished in India. The first and only Westerner the Dalai Lama has appointed Abbot of a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, he is a photographer who learned his craft as an assistant to Irving Penn...

EASY PEASY LEMON SQUEEZY.  Ruthie Rogers CBE is an American and British chef who owns and runs the Michelin starred Italian restaurant The River Café in Hammersmith, London. She is the widow of the Italian-born British architect Richard Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside, who together with Renzo Piano created the Pompidou Centre in Paris. "I always want somebody to come to the River Cafe and leave...

REVOLUTIONALIZING FASHION IN MILAN.  Coco Brandolini  was nobly born in France. An Italian fashion executive, artist and designer, in 2022 she launched her own brand called  d'AddA and established it in a charming apartment on Via Montenapoleone in Milano. She describes her enterprise as a joyous ode to her heritage transformed into limited edition pieces made from upcycled materials. "The craftsm...

GLOBALLY RELEVANT DESIGN. JENNIFER ROBERTS became the Chief Executive Officer of Design Miami, the global forum for collectible design, in 2015. She has introduced several new verticals for the company including Design Miami Curatorial Lab, a strategic consultancy to help businesses build cultural capital. In addition, Roberts successfully launched Design Miami. Paris and developed new event forma...

INSCRIBING IDEAS TO MEMORY.  Amos Gitai is an Israeli film-maker, internationally known for his documentaries and feature films about the Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and personal and collective memory. Born in Haifa, Israel in 1950, Gitai was wounded during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when a medical evacuation helicopter in which he was travelling was hit by a Syrian missile. He has dr...

ART FOR PUBLIC PURPOSE.  Dr Caroline Campbell  was born and educated in Belfast, and became Director of the National Gallery of Ireland in 2022. She studied Modern History at University College Oxford, and has an MA and PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. A former Fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, New York, before joining the National Gallery of Ireland, Ca...

COSINESS NEVER GOES OUT OF FASHION. Antonio Monfreda is an Italian art director and curator who has become a defining figure in the worlds of design, photography, and art direction. As international editor of Martina Mondadori's Cabana Magazine since 2016, from the very first issue he turned his talent to the photography of interiors and lifestyle. Monfreda's new book Tuscan Rooms: Interiors from...

A VISION OF TRANSFORMATION. Explore the impact of  Maja  Hoffmann  on contemporary culture through her LUMA Foundation and innovative art projects.  Maja  Hoffmann  is a Swiss art collector and patron. The Founder and President of LUMA Foundation, she has led the development of LUMA Arles in Provence, an important international cultural project. By addressing urgent issues in culture, nature, scie...

TOWARDS THE ULTIMATE GALLERY.  Thaddaeus Ropac  is an Austrian born gallerist specializing in international contemporary art. He founded the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in 1981, and today he represents more than 70 artists with galleries located in Salzburg, Le Marais and Pantin in Paris, London and Seoul. In September 2025 he will open his new 280 m2 space in Palazzo Belgioioso in Milan, with a show...

PASSION COMES WITH AN EXPIRATION DATE. André Aciman is an Italian-American writer. Born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, he is the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name, Out of Egypt, Eight White Nights, False Papers, Alibis, Harvard Square, Enigma Variations, Homo Irrealis, Roman Year, and Find Me. He is currently a distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of the City Un...

MISS SPENCER.  Christine Orban is a French writer who was born and raised in Casablanca, Morocco. She lives in Paris and is the author of more than twenty bestselling novels. Her recent book titled "Mademoiselle Spencer" is about Diana, Princess of Wales. It will be published In Italy as "La Signorina Spencer"  by Libreria Pienogiorno on July 31st 2025. "Diana thought she was chosen by a man in lo...

COOKING SMARTER.  Jeremy Scheck  has charmed a new generation of home cooks with his simple tasty recipes and reliable culinary know-how. He is the author of  ScheckEats―Cooking Smarter: Friendly Recipes with a Side of Science  and has been featured on the Today show, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, BBC Radio, People, and Access Hollywood, among others. A graduate of Cornell University with a doub...

WHO KNEW.  Barry Diller  is an American businessman and philanthropist who recently published his life story in his book  Who Knew  with Simon and Schuster. The chairman and senior executive of IAC and Expedia Group, he founded the Fox Broadcasting Company with Rupert Murdoch and USA Broadcasting. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1994. Barry Diller is married to the fashion desi...

A TRYST WITH TIME.   David  McDermott is an artist whose work has been exhibited internationally since the 1980s. In his experiments with time he emphatically insists on the beautiful and the miraculous, looking beyond the promises of techno-modernity and mirroring themes of 19th century artists' rejection of the Industrial Revolution. "This old-fashioned concept of moving forward in time and aban...

IN CONVERSATION WITH CARDINAL TIMOTHY RADCLIFFE : A LIFE OF HOPE AND HUMANITY. Timothy Radcliffe OP is an English priest who served as Master of the Order of Preachers from 1992 to 2001. He is the only friar of the Dominican Order's English Province to hold the office of Master-General. Created a Cardinal by Pope Francis in 2024, he took part in the recent Conclave to elect Pope Leo XIV, the first...

THE CHRISTOPHER GIBBS AESTHETIC.  Lucy Moore  is an author and historian, well-known for her engaging biographies, including of the dancer Nijinsky, the politician and rake Lord Hervey, and three generations of Indian princesses in  Maharanis . She wrote  Anything Goes: A Biography of the Roaring Twenties  and the widely acclaimed  In Search of Us: Adventures in Anthropolog y. As Editor of the boo...