About me
I was born in Oxford in 1968, to a French mother and an American father, whose parents were both Hungarian immigrants. Though I grew up in Chicago, we spent summers in France with my mother’s family. As a teenager, I lived in Upstate New York, where I worked construction many weekends and every summer.
My education was a little unusual, including stints in the Montessori, Free School, elite-prep and Waldorf systems. For the better part of what should have been 5th grade, I was schooled in cars, tents and motels, all the while avoiding truant officers. I studied political science at Haverford, a great Quaker college, with one year abroad at The University of Kent (a “red brick” British university). I moved to NYC and worked in macro-level market research, got bored, and then went to Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. So began my first career, writing the articles populating this site. In 1998, I moved to Switzerland for personal reasons, and went freelance.
In 2007 - surprising everyone, including myself - I was chosen as part of a triumvirate leading Art Basel. A year later, I became co-director, and then from 2012 to 2022, I led the whole organization. During my Art Basel tenure, I oversaw the launches of Art Basel Hong Kong (2013) and Art Basel Paris (2022), guided the organization through the Covid-19 pandemic and two global financial crises, and championed initiatives that broadened its cultural impact including a collaboration with Kickstarter, the place-making projects Art Basel Cities Buenos Aires and Art Week Tokyo, and the launch of Arcual, a blockchain-based digital rights company co-founded by MCH Group, Art Basel’s parent company, and the Luma Foundation.
I went independent in 2023, working on a wide range of projects in culture, including advising foundations, building art-driven brand strategies, and doing projects with artists. And like my parents, I love to teach. For more on that see the site’s Education section. Three things I don’t do, despite frequent requests: buying and selling art, leading companies full-time and running fairs. But I know people…
Media Coverage
This section gathers a selection of interviews, profiles, and articles about my activities. It’s not meant to be comprehensive, and I'll be adding more as I come across them in my archives.
NOTA BENE: Journalism is a rushed and inexact science. So not everything is entirely accurate. And I'm certainly not going to stand behind every quote in every article. But it's always fun when interviewers quote you back to yourself. So if that’s why you’re here… bring it!
Finally, if you’re a hater here doing ops research, happy reading. Maybe it will change your mind. ( ;-)}
