ACCADEMIA XXI
Faculty and staff

Italian nationality, born in 1973, she lives between Genoa and Lugano. A journalist with an economic focus, a lawyer, and an expert in the international art market, she specializes in communication strategy. She has been a contract professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Genoa and has lectured for the Art Economy Master’s program at Il Sole 24 Ore. She collaborates with the Class Editori group, specifically for the publications Milano Finanza and Gentleman. Since 2008, she has co-hosted the television program Top Lot on Class TV CNBC. She has also contributed to Vanity Fair, Il Sole 24 Ore Art Economy, and more.

A lifelong entrepreneur, in 2000 he founded Almo Nature, which today ranks among the top pet food brands globally. In early 2018, he created the Fondazione Capellino for the protection of biodiversity, to which, together with his brother Lorenzo, he donated the company in June 2019. His long-held idea was to forge a new path, outlining a new economic model that he called the “Reintegration economy.”

Considered one of the most influential, prolific, and active architects internationally in the 20th and 21st centuries, the winner of numerous awards. These include the Pritzker Prize, presented to him by US President Bill Clinton at the White House in 1998, and the AIA Gold Medal in 2008.

Born in Turin in 1947, she began her career as an independent photographer in 1969, which led her to undertake various journeys across Europe, South America, the United States, and Africa. She has encountered and photographed political leaders, cultural figures, and internationally renowned artists. She has focused with particular attention on the faces and events of the female world. She investigated the decline of the peasant civilization in the poorest areas of Piedmont, the stories of Piedmontese emigration to Argentina, and photographed the great protagonists of 20th-century European culture, producing several books and exhibitions on these themes. 

Lawyer and photographer, specializing in civil-commercial law and photography law. For years, he has been engaged in spreading photographic culture, organizing themed events, curating exhibitions, and managing photographic projects. He is the founder and president of the Archivio Saglietti APS, an association dedicated to preserving and promoting the photographic archive of Ivo Saglietti and, more broadly, social and documentary photography (www.archiviosaglietti.it). He collaborates with Phocus Magazine and writes the column “Photography: Rights, Obligations, and Privacy” on the platform www.nocsensei.com. He has published essays and curated biographies with various publishing houses, including:
– Manuale di sopravvivenza per fotografi. Diritti, Obblighi, Privacy (Emuse, 2019 and 2024) G8/VENTI.
– Un sogno in sospeso (Emuse, 2021).
– Ivo Saglietti. Lo sguardo inquieto.
– Un fotografo in cammino (Postcart, 2021 and 2024).
– Paola Agosti. Itinerari. Il lungo viaggio di una fotografa (Postcart, 2023).
– W La Libertad. Fotografie di protesta (Postcart, 2024).
He is also the author of the photography-themed crime novel “Isabelita” (Bookabook, 2022).

One of the most internationally celebrated contemporary Italian photographers;  a photojournalist and a writer. His works are held in over fifty museums worldwide, including: Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, San Francisco, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam ecc.

After taking the violin exam under the guidance of Maestro Zoran Milenkovic, she began studying singing at the ‘F. A. Bomporti’ Conservatory of Music in Trento, in 1996, later studying under the guidance of Maestro Paola Fornasari. She attended various Masterclasses with Franca Mattiucci, Luigi Alva, Renato Bruson, Piero Cappuccilli, Maria Chiara, Ghena Dimitrova and Gabriella Tucci. A pupil of soprano Alida Ferrarini, she studied with Raina Kabaivanska, Lella Cuberli and now with Gabriella Ravazzi. As a young winner of the Aslico European Competition, she made her debut in the roles of Adina in Elisir d’Amore and Sophie in Werther in the Circuito Lirico Lombardo and at the Carlo Felice in Genoa as Giannetta in L’Elisir d’amore, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro in 2005, then Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, Norina in Don Pasquale, Mimì in La bohéme, Micaela in Carmen, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. She inaugurated the 2006/07 Season of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples as Nannetta in Falstaff conducted by Jeffrey Tate, and subsequently debuted in major Italian theatres (Turin, Bologna, Parma, Arena di Verona, Macerata, Circuito Lombardo. ..) in operas such as L’Elisir d’amore, Così fan tutte, Don Pasquale, Die Zauberflöte, Un ballo in maschera, La bohéme, Falstaff, Romeo et Juliette, Gianni Schicchi; she also sang in Bologna in a new production of Orphée et Eurydice alongside Roberto Alagna, recorded for Deutsche Grammophone. Since 2021, she has been the coordinator and teacher of the Accademia di alto perfezionamento of the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. She made her debuts at the Teatro alla Scala and Covent Garden in new productions of Un Ballo in Maschera, which she will also sing at the Rome Opera House and at La Fenice for the opening of the 2017 Season conducted by Myung-Whun Chung, before returning to Covent Garden for a new Così fan tutte. Her recent and future engagements include Le Nozze di Figaro (Susanna) at the Cartagena Festival, La Wally in Piacenza, L’ elisir d’amore and her debut as Liù in Turandot at the Carlo Felice, Werther in Palermo, her debut as Contessa in Le nozze di Figaro, Un ballo in maschera in Venice, Il Corsaro in Piacenza, Micaela in Carmen at the Arena di Verona, and Adina again at the Macao Festival, Così fan tutte at the Covent Garden conducted by Stefano Montanari, again Contessa at the Maggio Musicale in Florence and in Ravenna with Maestro Riccardo Muti, Gianni Schicchi, La bohème, Nedda in Pagliacci and Mimì at the Carlo Felice, Alice in Falstaff in the Circuito Emiliano, her debut as Amelia in Simon Boccanegra at the Massimo di Palermo, Fedora at the Teatro alla Scala, an Opera Gala at the Astana Opera, Così fan tutte (Fiordiligi) at the NNTT in Tokyo, La rondine with the London Symphony Orchestra with Maestro Antonio Pappano and L’opera seria at Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Since March 2020 she cover the role of teacher and head of the Carlo Felice Academy for Opera Singers in Genova, which aim is to prepare for the debut of young people in a main role in selected title of the main season of the Opera House. Since 2021 she is teacher and artistic consultant of the masterclass project for the Andrea Bocelli Foundation and in 2023 she has been invited as a guest teacher first at the Wexford Opera Academy and immediately after at the Royal College of London where she will also return in October 2024. In October 2024 she was invited as a guest speaker at the V Conference of Theater Interactional Language Teaching in Madrid.

A journalist, has been engaged in promoting shared reading for over twenty years. He organizes and leads reading groups in various public libraries and associations, currently at the Sormani Central Library in Milan. He conducts training courses on organizing reading groups for the Italian Library Association, as well as for institutions and associations. Since 2000, he has been running a website dedicated to public reading, gruppodilettura.com, and has published two books with Editrice Bibliografica. Since 2020, he has been intertwining theoretical studies and shared reading practices with the diverse phenomenon of autobiographical writing. He is set to publish a book on this topic in 2025.

Tenured Professor of Philosophy of Being and Thought, Topics in the History of Philosophy I and II – Higher Institute of Religious Sciences of Liguria; Metaphysics/Theodicy – Affiliated Theological Institute of Genoa / Theological Faculty of Northern Italy, Milan. Adjunct Professor of History of Medieval Philosophy – University of Genoa, School of Humanities, Department of Antiquity, Philosophy and History (DAFIST) Member of Académie Saint-Anselme of Aosta.

Educated in a British all-girls boarding school, she hold a Master’s in Business Administration and another in Economics, plus started a PhD in Development Economics, she started working with the United Nations and the Red Cross across four countries in three different continents. After years of field experience in international organizations, she transitioned into the private sector, working in architectural practices to foundations. She has two economic publications and she speaks 5 languages fluently.

Graduated in Art History, his professional journey has been shaped by his multiple interests, leading him from the world of entertainment to that of museums and private institutions, as well as editorial activities and university teaching.

His career in the auction world began in 2008 in the European Public Relations department of Christie’s in London. In 2013, he moved to Hong Kong, where he worked for three years as Head of the President’s Office at Christie’s Asia, before returning to Italy in 2016.

Passionate about art, architecture, design and literature, he is always happy to serve as an auctioneer for charity events.

Director of Palazzo Ducale Fondazione per la Cultura in Genoa since 2024. She was previously Director of the Museum of Digital Art in Milan and Director of Artissima, International Fair of Contemporary Art. Ilaria Bonacossa is a curator and art critic. She graduated in Contemporary Art History from the University of Milan and, after completing a Master’s in Curatorial Studies at Bard College, USA, she collaborated in New York with the Whitney Museum. She worked as a curator for seven years at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, was Artistic Director of the Villa Croce Museum in Genoa from 2012 to 2017, and since 2014 has been curator of the permanent contemporary art installations for Antinori Art Projects.