BEATRICE TRUSSARDI FOUNDATION - Key Persons
Giuliano da Empoli is an Italian and Swiss writer and researcher. He is the founding chairman of Volta, a pro-European think tank based in Milan and a professor at Sciences-Po Paris. Prior to that he was Deputy Mayor for Culture in Florence and a Senior Advisor to the Italian Prime Minister. He also served as an Executive Board member at the Venice Biennale and established Italy's first Design Council in 2007.
At age twenty-two, his book about the problems faced by Italian youth, "Un grande futuro dietro di noi", sprung a nation-wide debate that led the newspaper La Stampa to designate him "Man of the year". Since then, he has published eleven more books, on subjects ranging from information overload ("Overdose", 2002) to the dangers of hyper-specialization ("Contro gli specialisti", 2013).
His latest book, about national-populist spin doctors, "Les ingénieurs du chaos" (Lattès, 2019) has been translated in twelve languages.
Massimiliano Gioni is the Edlis Neeson Artistic Director of the New Museum and the director of the Nicola Trussardi Foundation in Milan. He has curated numerous international exhibitions and biennials including the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the 8th Gwangju Biennale (2010), the first New Museum Triennial (co-curated with Lauren Cornell and Laura Hoptman in 2009), the 4th Berlin Biennale (co-curated with Maurizio Cattelan and Ali Subotnick in 2006) and Manifesta 5 (co-curated with Marta Kuzma in 2004). Gioni has organized important solo and group exhibitions at the New Museum and internationally, collaborating with a multitude of institutions and museums including, among others, the Dakis Joannou Collection/Deste Foundation in Athens; the Long Museum in Shanghai; the Museo Jumex in Mexico City; the Phillips Collection in Washington DC; the Tony Salame Collection/Aishti Foundation in Beirut; and the Qatar Museums in Doha.
Since 2003, Trussardi and Gioni have presented a series of solo exhibitions, public art interventions, and other incursions into symbolic places and forgotten spaces in Milanredesigning the city through the visions of artists such as Allora & Calzadilla, Maurizio Cattelan, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Agnes Denes, Elmgreen & Dragset, Urs Fischer, Fischli & Weiss, Ragnar Kjartansson, Sarah Lucas, Ibrahim Mahama, Paul McCarthy, Paola Pivi, Pipilotti Rist, Anri Sala, Tino Sehgal, and many others.