Alain Elkann Interviews

THE GALLERY IS A PALESTRA WHERE AN ARTIST CAN EXPRESS HIS POETRY. Franco Noero is an influential Italian contemporary art gallerist. Born in Cuneo, he is founder of Galleria Franco Noero in Turin, and board member of ITALICS art consortium uniting over 70 of Italy's leading ancient, modern, and contemporary art galleries. He opened his baseline gallery in March 1999, focusing heavily on conceptual...

THE ART OF BOOKSELLING. Johnny de Falbe runs John Sandoe Books, the independent bookshop near London's Sloane Square, together with his wife Arabella von Friesen and their staff. He has worked there since 1989. The small Chelsea shop stocks around 30,000 books and is one of London's best-loved independent booksellers. "It matters to me that we have clients in America, Italy and all over the world....

MASTER OF THE CRAFT OF ACTING. Marco Antonio Servillo was born in Afragola, Italy, in 1959. He built a rich theatrical foundation by founding the Teatro Studio in 1977 and co-founding the influential company Teatri Uniti in 1987. He achieved international film renown through his frequent collaborations with director Paolo Sorrentino, delivering unforgettable lead performances as real-life politica...

Amos Gitai , the acclaimed 75-year-old Israeli architect-turned-filmmaker known for his politically charged and deeply reflective documentaries, premiered his latest work, The Road to Jericho , out of competition at the 2026 International Venice Film Festival. The 75-minute film chronicles the struggle of a Bedouin community in the occupied West Bank village of Khan al-Ahmar, weaving together 40 year...

THE REGENERATION OF THE FRICK. Axel Rüger is a German art historian, curator and museum director. Director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from 2006 to 2019, he previously worked as a curator of Dutch art at the National Gallery in London. He led the Royal Academy of Arts in London from 2019 through 2024, and in March 2025 assumed the directorship of The Frick Collection in New York City. "You...

REINVENTING LONDON'S LEGENDARY LUXURY HOSPITALITY. International entrepreneur Paddy McKillen has a passion for the hospitality business and property development. In 2004 he was part of a group that bought four of London's 5-star hotels: Claridge's, The Berkeley, The Connaught and The Savoy.

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, Ando was going on to Paris, as he is restoring and rebuilding the Bourse de Commerce building to become a museum that houses the Pi...

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...

TAKING FASHION SERIOUSLY. Valerie Steele is an American fashion historian and the Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City. A pioneer in the field of fashion studies, she has been instrumental in establishing fashion as a legitimate intellectual and cultural subject. "Both the allure and the problematic aspects of fashion attracted and...

THE JOB OF THE ARTIST IS TO MAKE TIME STAND STILL says Tracey Emin the renowned British artist as she contemplates her life, saying "When I am old, even if I can't walk I still want to be able to work. Everything I have and I do is towards my art. Art is like a wall. You stop and it talks to you. Art is not competing with technology, machinery, spaceships. Art is something else. Art comes from ano...

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.

HUMANISE: A DEEPLY PASSIONATE MANIFESTO. Thomas Heatherwick is a British designer whose varied work over two decades is characterised by its originality, inventiveness and humanity. As the founder and design director of Heatherwick Studio, Thomas now heads a team of over 250 problem solvers dedicated to making the physical world around us better for everyone. This team wants to see a world where t...

REVIVIFYING ROME. Thomas Clement Salomon is the director of Rome's Baroque Palazzo Barberini and the Galleria Corsini since January 2024. Palazzo Barberini is home to the National Gallery of Ancient Art, with a collection of paintings by Caravaggio and other Caravaggesque painters that now includes the very recently acquired Caravaggio Portrait of Monsignor Maffeo Barberini. Thomas studied art his...

ANTHROPOLOGY REGENERATES CULTURE. Simone Verde is a museologist and art historian who was appointed Director of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy, in December 2023, replacing Eike Schmidt who moved to Capodimonte. From 2014 to 2016 Simone Verde was head of scientific research at the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, and from 2016 to 2023 he directed the Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta in Parma, Italy...

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 ti...

WHO WE ARE AND WHERE WE ARE. Sir Steve McQueen CBE is a British film director, film producer, screenwriter, and video artist. Over the last 30 years he has created some of the most innovative works of moving image designed for gallery spaces. He has also directed critically acclaimed feature films, including the Academy Award-winning "12 Years a Slave", as well as "Hunger", "Shame", "Widows", "Bli...

STILL PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES. Sir Norman Rosenthal celebrated his 80th birthday on November 8th 2024. ​A curator and art historian, he was Exhibitions Officer at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and for many years Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy in London. Recently he curated Georg Baselitz: The Last Decade at the Sabancı Museum in Istanbu...

AN EXTRAORDINARY LOVE OF NATURE. Saskia de Rothschild became the youngest person to lead a first growth Bordeaux wine estate in 2018 at the age of 31.

DOING BRILLIANTLY. Roula Khalaf is the Editor of the Financial Times (FT). Born in Beirut, after studying in the United States at Syracuse University and Columbia University she first worked for Forbes magazine. From 1995 she was a foreign correspondent at the FT, and in 2016 became Deputy Editor to Lionel Barber, succeeding him as Editor in January 2020.

MILANESE MASTER OF CONTEMPORARY DESIGN. Piero Lissoni is a multi-award-winning-architect, designer and art director. One of the masters of contemporary design, he has an almost forty-year history in the development of projects the world over in the fields of architecture, landscape, interior, product and graphic design. He is art director for Alpi, Boffi, Living Divani, Lualdi, Porro and Sanlorenz...

WRITERS ARE UNBALANCED PEOPLE. Paul Theroux is an American novelist and travel writer known for his highly personal award-winning observations on many locales. Over 50 works of fiction and travel writing include modern classics The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, My Secret History and The Mosquito Coast. Theroux's recent book, Burma Sahib, explores Eric Blair's years as a British...

PATTI SMITH – WORKER. Patti Smith was born in Chicago in 1946. In the 1970s the American poet, songwriter, singer, and visual artist blazed a trail for punk rock artists, especially women. Patti Smith earned herself such titles as "godmother of punk" and "punk's poet laureate" with her androgynous appearance, intense live performances, and penchant for writing lyrics that often blend poetry with s...

COMBINING ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN. Nathalie Droulers and her twin sister Virginie were born in Milan in 1973. Nathalie graduated in Architecture from the Polytechnic University in Milan in 1997. She worked in New York as a Creative Director in product design development and in 2000 returned to Italy, where she collaborated with the Milan-based Dstudio as a Project Manager. In 2005 she fou...

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 B...

CONTINUOUS TRANSFORMATION. The Spanish contemporary artist Miquel Barceló is known for his relief-like mixed-media paintings, expressive bronze sculptures and ceramics.