Arts Arena: Advisory Board (insert)

María Kodama Borges

Writer, translator, and President of the Fundación Internacional Jorge Luis Borges. Long-time companion and widow of the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, one of the twentieth-century’s most influential literary figures, María Kodama was also Borges’s collaborator and Director of his collection Biblioteca Personal (Personal Library). She began studying ancient Anglo-Saxon with Borges at the age of sixteen, and among their later co-authored books are Brief Anglo-Saxon Anthology and Atlas, excerpts of their travel log from around the world; together, they also translated the first book of the Younger Edda by Snorri Sturlson. Borges’s universal heir and literary executor, Kodama today oversees the vast “Borges universe,” including worldwide rights and publication of his work, the organization of and participation in hundreds of colloquia and homages, the authorship of prefaces, and the directorship of publications and projects from films to courses on haiku poetry to art exhibitions, e.g., the Borges exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the annual Borges and Kafka colloquium in Prague, and the construction of the Borges labyrinth in Venice. The Fundación Jorge Luis Borges, headquartered in Buenos Aires and Madrid, houses Borges’s library, the first editions of his books, manuscripts, and objects that accompanied him for most of his life, and carries out cultural and scholarly activities that mirror and continue Borges’s multiple poles of interest. María Kodama is the author of numerous short stories, and lectures internationally on Argentine literature. Among her most recent honors are the Premio Borges established by the Cámara de Diputados de la Nación and Officier des Arts et Lettres by the French government.

Vicki Goldberg

Photography critic and scholar, a leading voice in photography criticism, the author of the seminal work The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives, Margaret Bourke-White: A Biography, and editor of Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present, she counts over two dozen books to her name and received the 1997 Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography. Her latest book is Vicki Goldberg: Light Matters, a selection of essays and criticism culled from her writings published over 25 years, including her photography columns for The New York Times. Goldberg’s subjects range from pop imagery to war journalism, from photo-booth portraits to manipulated digital imagery, from the “boredom” of voyeurism to the preponderance of tragic photographs in the news, and her work has been called “of such importance that it should become mandatory reading in the fields of communications, media, photography and sociology” (P. Laytin). She also writes on photography for Vanity Fair, Aperture, and other publications, and was Senior Advisor of the Public Broadcasting System special program American Photography: A Century of Images and co-author of the accompanying book.

Jonathan Harvey

British-born Jonathan Harvey is one of the world’s most celebrated composers in electro-acoustic music today. He has composed music for most every genre: orchestra, chamber, tape, ensemble and electronics, computer-manipulated sounds, music for cello and live and pre-recorded sounds, and music for solo instruments. His music is widely played, toured, and recorded (80 recordings), and he attracts commissions from around the world. Composer/conductor Pierre Boulez first invited Harvey to work at France’s IRCAm in 1980, a sponsorship that has resulted in ten realizations at the Institute or for the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Harvey’s church opera Passion and Resurrection (1981) was the subject of a BBC television film, while his opera Inquest of Love was performed at the famed Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. He holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Southampton and Bristol, is a member of Academia Europaea, and in 1993 was awarded the prestigious Britten Award for composition. He published two books in 1999, on inspiration and spirituality respectively. Harvey was a Harkness Fellow at Princeton, Professor of Music, now Honorary Professor of Music at Sussex University, UK; he is also Professor Emeritus of Music at Stanford University, an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, and Composerin- Residence at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He was the winner of the inaugural Giga-Hertz-Award (2007), the world’s largest award for electronic music. In 2008 Harvey’s compositions were premiered at the Berlin Philharmonic and featured at the BBC ’s Proms at Royal Albert Hall, London; the recording of his Body Mandala was selected by The New Yorker’s critic Alex Ross as one of the top 10 CDs of 2008 and won the Gramophone Award for best Contemporary CD of the year.

Roald Hoffmann

Nobel Prize in Chemistry, jointly with Kenichi Fukui (1981), Frank H. T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters, Emeritus at Cornell University. In addition to the Nobel Prize, the many honors awarded to Hoffmann throughout his exceptional scientific career include the National Medal of Science and the American Chemical Society’s A. C. Cope Award, which he has received in three different subfields of chemistry, the only person in the society’s history to have done so. The recipient of numerous honorary degrees, Hoffmann is the author of nearly 500 articles for scientific journals. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of many foreign academies. In his efforts to reach out to the general public, Hoffmann has participated in the production of a television course entitled The World of Chemistry, shown widely since 1990, and hosts a monthly café program in New York City, Entertaining Science. As a writer, Hoffmann has carved out a space between science, poetry, and philosophy, through many essays, three books of “popularized” science writing, and five collections of poetry. He is also an accomplished playwright: Oxygen, written with fellow chemist Carl Djerassi, has been produced in many countries and published in seven languages; a new play, Should’ve has had Canadian and Italian productions. Hoffmann’s literary work has been included in numerous anthologies, published in literary magazines, and translated widely.

James Ivory

Film director, co-founder of the film production company Merchant Ivory, with producer Ismail Merchant and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Among his award-winning films are A Room with a View (nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, winner of three; Best Film of the year by the Critic’s Circle Film Section of Great Britain, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the National Board of Review in the United States; winner of Italy’s Donatello Prize for Best Foreign Language Picture and Best Director); Howards End (nominated for nine Academy awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, winner of three; Best Picture at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BA F TA) Awards, as well as awards for Best Picture, Best Actress for Emma Thompson, and Best Director for Ivory from the National Board of Review); The Remains of the Day (Directors Guild of America’s highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award to Ivory; nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director). Ivory has directed six different actors in Oscar-nominated performances – Vanessa Redgrave, Denholm Elliott, Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, Joanne Woodward, and Anthony Hopkins – and has been nominated for multiple Golden Globe Awards and Golden Palm; he has twice won the Venice Film Festival and of the London Critics Circle Film Awards. A BAFTA Fellowship recognized Merchant-Ivory’s combination of the best of visual aesthetics with intelligence and a superb choice and direction of actors. Ivory’s most recent film, with Anthony Hopkins and Charlotte Gainsbourg, is City of Your Final Destination.

Sean Kelly

Founder of the Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. British-born, Kelly is a specialist on new trends in the arts, whether in finances, public-private partnerships, international biennales and art fairs, or internationalization of the art market. A former museum curator, Kelly has established a reputation for his commitment to artists whose work is ambitious, challenging, intellectual, and unconventional, and the Sean Kelly Gallery currently represents artists working in photography, video, performance, installation and painting. Since its inception in 1991, the gallery has mounted some 80 solo and 20 group exhibitions, including the work of nearly 100 artists, and coordinated as many exhibitions at prominent museums worldwide, e.g., Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Kunstwerke, Berlin; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sapporo, Japan; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Reina Sofia, Madrid; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. From its initial roster of artists including Marina Abramovic´, Joseph Kosuth, Julião Sarmento, it has grown to encompass James Casebere, Antony Gormley, Callum Innes and Frank Thiel, as well as the estates of Seydou Keïta and Robert Mapplethorpe. Sean Kelly Gallery artists have been included in major international exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial, Yokohama International Triennial, Carnegie International, and Documenta, and biennials in Istanbul, Moscow, São Paulo, and Sydney; eight gallery artists have been chosen as representatives for the preeminent Venice Biennale.

James Landon

A partner in the Atlanta office of the law firm Jones Day, where his practice is centered on executive compensation, employee benefits, and family and estate planning, Landon serves as General Counsel of the Woodruff Arts Center, and is the primary lawyer for the High Museum of Art, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Alliance Theatre, and Young Audiences. He is a Trustee of the Atlanta Botanical Garden and the Academy of Medicine, and has previously served as Trustee and Chairman of the Hambidge Center, Trustee of the Atlanta Historical Society, and the Center for Puppetry Arts, and a member of the Board of the Atlanta Symphony. Landon represented the Woodruff Arts Center in its negotiations with the city of Atlanta to build a performing arts facility for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and handled the negotiations and contract with the Louvre in Paris to bring 185 treasures, including a 17th century portrait by Raphael, to the High Museum. An explorer who has climbed the Matterhorn and Mount Yarigitake in Japan and trekked to the base of Everest and in the volcanoes of Ecuador, he is also a collector of Oriental and Near Eastern calligraphy. Landon is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World, as well as in The Best Lawyers in America, Georgia Super Lawyers, and Who’s Who Legal 2007.

Barbara A. MacAdam

Deputy editor of ARTnews, the oldest and most widely read international art magazine, she has written mostly on topics in contemporary art, ranging from exhibition reviews to profiles of contemporary artists such as sculptors David Rabinowitch, Petah Coyne, Mark di Suvero, and Joseph Kosuth, and painters David Reed and Nancy Haynes, to trends in art, including the return of abstraction and the new deconstructivism in sculpture. She has also worked as executive editor of Art + Auction and has been an editor at Review: Latin American Literature and Arts and at New York magazine. She has also written on art, design, and literature for, among others, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Newsday, The Wall Street Journal and ID magazine; she is the author of New York’s New and Avant-Garde Art Galleries (written under the name Barbara Stone). In 2001 GreyLight Sound and the Whitney Museum of American Art produced the CD Dennis Oppenheim in Conversation with Barbara A. MacAdam; a second CD, Eric Fischl, is forthcoming (2008). MacAdam’s catalogues and brochures include John Phillips and Lawrence Fane (Kouros Gallery); Madeline Denaro (Fort Lauderdale Museum); “Videomix” and “Pop Thru Out” (Arario Gallery in Seoul, Korea); “Elke Solomon,” “If You Were Here,” “Hot + Cool,” “Staging the Real,” and “Drawing the Line” (Gallery W 52); “Monumental Drawing” (Blue Star Art Center, San Antonio, Texas); and Isidro Blasco (Contrasts Gallery, Shanghai). She has been on the Selection Committees for such honors as the Skowhegan artist awards and is on the Rhode Island School of Design’s Awards Committee for the Athena Awards for excellence in art and design.

Stephen K. Scher

Art historian and industrialist. Former chair of the Art Department, Brown University; former President and Chief Executive Officer, Scher Chemicals; specialist in late medieval art and Renaissance portrait medals, and frequent lecturer on these subjects. Scher organized the exhibition The Currency of Fame for The Frick Collection, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Gallery of Scotland, and edited and contributed to the catalogue; organized the exhibition and wrote the catalogue for The Proud Republic: Dutch Medals of the Golden Age for The Frick Collection; organized and contributed to the catalogue for the exhibition The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century for the Rhode Island School of Design Museum; contributed to Perspectives on the Renaissance Medal, and has written numerous articles on these subjects for scholarly journals. Scher has been a guest curator at The Frick Collection and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D C), and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) is on the Visiting Committees of the Departments of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Medieval Art and the Cloisters, Paper Conservation, and Object Conservation. He helped organize and contributed to the catalogue of the exhibition Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Scher is a member the Council of The Frick Collection, chair of the Saltus Medal Committee and a lecturer for the Graduate Seminar at the American Numismatic Society as well as the founder of the Stephen K. Scher Lecture on the History of the Medal.

Ellen Sorrin

Ellen Sorrin is Director of the George Balanchine Trust as well as Managing Director of the New York Choreographic Institute (an affiliate of New York City Ballet). In addition, she is a member of the Ballet Advisory Committee of The Jerome Robbins Trust. Previously she was Director of Education and Director of Special Projects at New York City Ballet. She is President of The Hemsley Lighting Programs, a foundation dedicated to lighting design students entering the professional arena. She is also the author of Food Matters, a blog concerned with food and family traditions. She has produced in-house film tributes for New York City Ballet on George Balanchine, Tanaquil Le Clercq, Lincoln Kirstein and Jerome Robbins. She produced a short film for the CityArts series PBS affiliate WNET/Thirteen about costume maker Barbara Matera. In 1987, prior to coming to NYCB, she produced Dancing for Life, the New York dance community’s response to AIDS, directed by Jerome Robbins. Before working in the arts, she was a classroom teacher in the New York City Public School system for six years, heading up an alternative classroom for the Drug Abuse Prevention Program, a concept that led to the creation of charter schools to address children who were served best in smaller classes with more attention to their psychological needs.

Robert Storr

Dean of the Yale University School of Art and Professor of painting printmaking; Consulting Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Director of the 2007 Venice Biennale, the first American-born curator invited to assume that position. Previously he served as a curator and then as senior curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1990 to 2002, where, among other exhibitions, he organized retrospectives of Elizabeth Murray, Gerhard Richter, Max Beckmann, Chuck Close, Tony Smith, and Robert Ryman, in addition to coordinating the Projects series. In 2002 he was named the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and has also taught at CUNY Graduate Center, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, The Rhode Island School of Design, Maryland Institute and College of Art, Tyler School of Art, New York Studio School, and Harvard University. A frequent lecturer in the United States and abroad, since 1981 he has been a contributing editor at Art in America and writes often for Artforum, Parkett, Art Press (Paris), and Frieze (London). Storr has written numerous catalogues, articles, and books, including the forthcoming Intimate Geometries: The Work and Life of Louise Bourgeois. He is the recipient of a Penny McCall Foundation Grant for painting, a Norton Family Foundation Curator Grant, and honorary doctorates, as well as awards from the American Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, a special AICA award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Art Criticism, an ICI Agnes Gund Curatorial Award, and the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. In 2000 the French Ministry of Culture named him Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

Cantwell Faulkner Muckenfuss III

Specialist in not-for-profit organizations. Partner in the Washington, DC, office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher L L P, where he focuses on the representation of financial institutions. Before joining the firm in 1981, Muckenfuss was Senior Deputy Comptroller for policy at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (1978- 81) and Special Assistant to the Director (1974-77) and Counsel to the Chairman (1977-78) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In 1979, he received the Department of the Treasury Special Achievement Award, and in 1980, he was awarded the Presidential Rank Award. He is a founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of City First Bank of D C, a community development bank, and is Chairman of the Board of City First Enterprises, Inc., the non-profit controlling shareholder of City First Bank. He is a former co-Chair of the International Banking and Finance Committee, Section of International Law and Practice, American Bar Association, and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Review of Banking and Financial Services and the Editorial Advisory Board of Electronic Banking Law and Commerce Report. He has served as a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and as a member of the Core Consultative Group of the Global Bank Insolvency Initiative of the World Bank. Muckenfuss is a founder and former chair of the Petra Foundation, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Round House Theater. A frequent speaker at financial services conferences and seminars, he is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School.

Deborah Widener

Twenty-five years of expertise in financing strategies, in both private and public markets as well as domestic and international markets, she is currently serving as an Independent Director for Cylene Pharmaceuticals and NDS Surgical Imaging and is a member of both Boards’ audit committees serving as a financial expert under Sarbanes Oxley. Previously, Widener was an investment banking Managing Director leading the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology sectors at Adams, Harkness. She has also been an investment banking Managing Director of Robertson, Stephens & Co. and of Kidder, Peabody & Co. Widener also has considerable direct investment expertise. As President of General Electric Capital Corp.’s Financial Service Group, she made and managed billions of dollars in leveraged investments. Under her leadership, this business unit grew assets at a rate of 140% per annum to $3.5 billion and produced $450 million in income net of reserves over three years. In 2006 she was named by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the state’s Water Board. She also serves as a director on the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute Leadership Council.

Richard G. Asthalter

An American lawyer in Paris for almost thirty-five years, Asthalter specializes in international financial transactions, mergers and acquisitions, and capital markets. He is a member of the Paris and New York bars, was Managing Partner of the Paris office of Sullivan & Cromwell for more than twenty years, and is currently Of Counsel to the firm. Asthalter graduated from Yale College, Yale Law School, and Oxford University (Trinity College). He was President of the American Chamber of Commerce in France from 1993 to 1996 and is a member of the Advisory Council of AmCham. He is currently a Governor of the American Hospital of Paris and is Secretary to the Board. In 1999, Asthalter was named Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur for his contribution to the economic development of France and to French-American relations.

John Gilbert Donaldson, Jr.

Gil Donaldson is Co-Managing Director with James Ivory of Merchant Ivory Productions France. Since 1998, Donaldson has acted as Senior European Advisor to the New York investment firm Bessemer Trust Company; he is also a Founding Partner of LD Investissement, a Paris-based real estate investment fund and managed Donaldson Polakoff Immobilier and DPF Holdings, Paris-based real estate development companies. Donaldson has served in a variety of capacities in the film industry and was involved in the executive production of films such as Louis Malle’s Vanya on 42nd Street, James Ivory’s Jefferson in Paris, A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, and Ismail Merchant’s Cotton Mary. More recently Donaldson produced the critically-acclaimed Schimkent Hotel by Charles de Meaux. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the American University of Paris, the Board of Visitors of the Savannah College of Art and Design, and the Board of the Center for the Study of International Communications (CECI). He is Secretary, Treasurer, and founding trustee of the Merchant and Ivory Foundation.

Elizabeth Hochman

Born and raised in New York City, Hochman studied ballet at the The School of American Ballet. She graduated from The Spence School and received her B.A. from Harvard University in History and International Relations (1980), an M.A. from Columbia University in International Relations (1983), and a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law (1986). She has worked as a lawyer in New York and Paris, specializing in international finance, trusts and estates, and real estate matters. She has served as Head of The Friends of The American Library in Paris and as a Board Member of The American Academy.

Zakiya Powell

Executive Producer for media and other projects. Zakiya Powell is Director of Squared Circle Limited, which arranges financing for high quality feature films, packaging both the business and creative elements of projects in conjunction with their production teams. She is also Director of PLAZA Media Group and PLAZA Screen Partners, companies that offer matched funds to international film projects seeking production finance. An independent film distribution and financing consultant, Powell works worldwide in every facet of film and distribution, and has been a frequent guest panelist and lecturer in the UK and internationally on marketing, distribution, and financing. Her past experience includes Advisor for the European Media Programme's EAVE courses, and as participant in the Arts Council of England Lottery Awards selection process as a member of the expert assessment team; a member of the European film Commission's Expert Working Group on film finance; and a member of the selection committee and lecturer at The Maurits Binger Film Institute in Amsterdam. Powell was also Co-founder and joint Managing Director for Mayfair Entertainment International Limited, an International film distribution company where she participated in the acquisition of films such as Richard Loncraine's Richard III and Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd Street; as Managing Director of Zakiya & Associates Limited, a film and television marketing company, she led a team of publicity and marketing professionals handling a portfolio that included films such as A Room with a View, Shoa, Au Revoir les Enfants, and Kenneth Brannagh's production of Henry V. Among the company's corporate clients were Merchant Ivory Productions, The San Sebastian International Film Festival, Panavision Europe, the British Film Institute, and personalities such as Ben Kingsley and Sir Anthony Hopkins. She is a Patron of The Satyajit Ray Foundation and a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).