Alain Elkann Interviews

HERE TO SERVE. Joel Mesler is an artist whose career in the art world started as an art dealer and gallerist.  A Master of Fine Arts graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, Mesler worked for almost two decades as an art dealer in Los Angeles and New York City, painting on and off while promoting artists Henry Taylor and Rashid Johnson early in their careers. In 2017, Mesler moved to Sag Harbor, where he owns Rental Gallery. He continues to paint, influenced by pop culture and nature as well as his own history of addiction and his Jewish heritage. "Survival is our badge of honour" "I'll never stop painting rabbis" "There's nothing to hide"

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”, “Blitz”, and “Occupied City”. “It’s always good to have some kind of understanding of where you are now and why you’re here now.” “I’m not a slave to the medium.” “The only reason I do what I do is because I can somehow reflect on who we are or who we want to be.”

THE DIFFICULT HAPPINESS OF BEING JEWISH. Pauline Bebe is the rabbi of Communauté Juive Libérale (CJL), a Progressive Jewish congregation in Paris, where she was the first female rabbi to lead a synagogue. “The philosophy of Judaism is to maintain hope in times of difficulties, and we have to fight for our ideals of democracy, of humanity, of respect for every living person.” “A lot of Jews feel that they are not understood; that whatever they say or do will not be understood, but they also think that more than ever they have to reclaim their Judaism.” “I hope for peace. I hope for dialogue with everyone.”

POWER IS NOTHING WITHOUT CONTROL. Ambrogio Beccaria was born in Milan in 1991 and gained a degree in nautical engineering. In 2019 he became the first Italian in the history of sailing to win the Mini-Transat – the historic solo competition that crosses the Atlantic Ocean on board 6.5 metre boats. Since 2022 Beccaria has been reaching important goals on his boat “Alla Grande – Pirelli” and in 2023 won the Transat Jacques Vabre, the most important race of the year. “I love everything about sailing.” “You need to be a sailor. You need to understand your boat, to feel what is going on, to be connected with the sea.” “Once you won one race then you have to win the next.”

I WANT TO CREATE JUNCTIONS. Hans Ulrich Obrist is a Swiss art curator, critic, and art historian who lives and works in London where he is Artistic Director at Serpentine. Obrist is the author of The Interview Project, an extensive ongoing project of interviews, and is also co-editor of the Cahiers d'Art review.

TRADITION AND INNOVATION. Inigo Lambertini was appointed Ambassador of Italy to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by the Italian Government in February 2022 and arrived in London in October, a few weeks after the death of Queen Elizabeth. Neapolitan by birth, he entered the Italian diplomatic service in 1987, and his career includes recent duties as Chief of Diplomatic Protocol in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, after New York.

DESIGN OF THE PRESENT INTO THE FUTURE. Tim Marlow OBE is the Chief Executive and Director of The Design Museum which since 2016 is housed in the former premises of the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, London. Marlow is a curator, writer and broadcaster who has worked with some of the most influential contemporary artists to deliver wide-ranging and popular programmes. He sits on the Board of Trustees for the Imperial War Museum, Sadler’s Wells, Art on the Underground Advisory Board and Cultureshock Media.  

TASTEMAKER AND HOTELIER. Jasper Conran is a British designer who studied at Parsons School of Art and Design in New York. He has worked on collections of womenswear and for the home, as well as productions for the stage in ballet, opera and theatre. He opened his first hotel in Morocco, L'Hôtel Marrakech, recently followed by Villa Mabrouka in Tangier. "I have a store of ideas in my head, and this ability to switch from one thing to another." "Theatre and ballet let me go crazy." "I went to see the Saint Laurent house and bought it immediately. I could see what it could be as a hotel."

A MISSION TO STOP EXTINCTION. Fanny Minesi is General Director of Friends of Bonobos - Les Amis des Bonobos du Congo (ABC). Her organisation operates the world’s only sanctuary – Lola ya Bonobo - and only rewilding site for bonobos – Ekolo ya Bonobo. Raised in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), she has been immersed in wildlife conservation since childhood. In November 2023 she was presented with the Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa by William, Prince of Wales. Fanny Minesi works to secure the future of endangered bonobos through rescue and rehabilitation, rewilding, conservation law enforcement, education, and economic development. "The only way to survive for bonobos is making a transfer of affection with someone or another bonobo. Love is really important for their survival." "What is different about our organisation is that when small bonobos arrive, we give them a surrogate mother who will give them love and affection." "If we want Congo to value the protection of its natural resources, we

DESIRE FOR FREEDOM. Edward St Aubyn is a British novelist. Five of his books - Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk and At Last - form the semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose Novels. In 2018 Benedict Cumberbatch starred in the title role of the five-part drama Patrick Melrose. Edward’s more recent work includes Dunbar - which retells King Lear - and Double Blind, which has been described as 'a book of big ideas, in which the characters experiment with medicine, psychology, narcotics, religion and meditation to understand themselves and find peace. But as cerebral as the book is, it is also deeply felt, because St Aubyn has been thinking about these issues for decades.' “I spoke in every voice except my own.” “I had the double relief of having turned myself into Patrick Melrose, and then Benedict Cumberbatch taking over the burden of being Patrick” “The common driving force of all my work is a desire for freedom”

AT HOME IN TANGIER. Rob Ashford is an American stage director and choreographer. He is a Tony Award, Olivier Award, Emmy Award, Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award winner. “The actors come, and they all fall in love with Tangier I promise you that.” “There was blood and mud everywhere, and the audience just really loved it.” “I was very lucky in my career. I am so happy. I could not be happier.”

STRIKINGLY INVENTIVE STORYTELLER. Edward Carey is an English playwright and illustrator who settled in Austin in 2006 and teaches at the University of Texas. His Italian publisher Elisabetta Sgarbi recently made a short film based on his story “Gatto e la casa dei fantasmi” (“The Cat and the House of Ghosts”) which she showed at the 41st Torino Film Festival.

POSTGRADUATE EDUCATION AT A TIME OF TECHNOLOGY AND TENSION. Costis Maglaras is the Dean of Columbia Business School, and the David and Lyn Silfen Professor of Business at Columbia University. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, London, in 1990, and his MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1991 and 1998, respectively. He joined Columbia Business School in 1998, and prior to becoming dean served as chair of the Decision, Risk & Operations division at the Business School, Director of the School's doctoral program, and was a member of the executive committee of the University's Data Science Institute. He is a Fellow of INFORMS, an Honorary Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, and a Member of the Economic Club of New York. Quick LinksGet Embed PlayerShare on SocialDownload Audio File  

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.

CHRONICLING CAPITALISM. Francine Lacqua is the London-based award-winning anchor of the Bloomberg Television daily weekday programme The Pulse with Francine Lacqua. She also presents Leaders with Lacqua and is a Bloomberg editor-at-large, fluent in English, Italian and French.

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.

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.

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.