New architectures, new museums

A graduate of the École Polytechnique and the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Antoine Picon is also an architect and a PhD in history. A historian of architecture, cities, and technologies, he is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He was president of the Fondation Le Corbusier from 2013 to 2024. Antoine Picon Antoine Picon has published numerous articles and books on the history of engineering, utopian thought, architecture, and cities. A focus of his studies is the relationship between architectural practice and scientific and technological developments. Antoine Picon has been a member of the Académie des Technologies since 2010 and of the Académie d’Architecture since 2015. In 2014, he was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and since 2024 he has also been an honorary doctor of the Estonian Academy of Arts.

Elizabeth Diller is a partner of Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). Alongside partner Ricardo Scofidio, Diller’s cross-genre work has been distinguished with TIME’s "100 Most Influential People" list and the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship awarded in the field of architecture. She has also received the Wolf Prize in Architecture. Most recently, she led two cultural works significant to New York: The Shed and the expansion of MoMA. Diller also co- created, -directed and -produced The Mile-Long Opera, an immersive choral work staged on the High Line. Diller is a member of the UN Council on Urban Initiatives and a Professor of Architectural Design at Princeton University.

Alisa LaGamma is the Ceil and Michael E. Pulitzer Curator in Charge of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her work there over the last twenty-five years has expanded the collection and developed over a dozen influential exhibitions instrumental to the appreciation of sub-Saharan African art and culture. She proposed and oversaw the Metropolitan Museum’s capital project to re-envision the Wing’s permanent galleries devoted to the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing completed in May of 2025. In 2012 the Bard Graduate Center recognized this with the Iris Award for Outstanding Scholarship.

Andrea Viliani is a contemporary art historian, critic and curator. He has been appointed in 2022 as Director of the MUCIV-Museum of Civilizations of Rome, which brings together the Italian national collections of prehistory, geo-palaeontology and litho-mineralogy, African, American, Asian and Oceanian arts and cultures, popular Italian arts and traditions, up to the testimonies of Italian colonial history, currently being studied and re-catalogued. In 2020 Viliani co-conceived, and is currently the co-curator, of Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters, the first long-term project dedicated to contemporary arts at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. In 2020-2021 he was Head and Curator of the CRRI-Castello di Rivoli Research Centre and previously Director of the Donnaregina Foundation for Contemporary Arts/MADRE Museum of Naples (2013-2019) and of the Civic Gallery Foundation-Research Center on Contemporariness, Trento (2009-2012), Curator at the MAMbo-Museum of Modern Art, Bologna (2005-2009) and Assistant Curator at the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art (2000-2005).

Samantha Hardingham is an independent architectural designer, writer, curator, scholar and educator. Her research interests lie in the ideas and expressions of a wide range of experimental practices, and how they can be captured as a resource for future audiences. The generation of both form and content of publications and associated exhibitions are central to her practice. She is an authority on the work of architect Cedric Price (1934-2003), most notably having written and produced a ten-year research project that became the award-winning two-volume Cedric Price Works 1954 – 2003: a forward minded-retrospective (AA/CCA, 2016), consolidating Price’s place on architectural history bookshelves as self-proclaimed “anti-architect no.1”.

Cyril Desroche joined the Ateliers Jean Nouvel in March 2000. He participated in numerous projects during their phases of conception, study, and construction: the Nantes Law Courts, the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Museum in Paris, the Danish Radio Concert Hall in Copenhagen, the Le Havre Aquatic Complex, and Bucklersbury House in London, a 150,000 m2 project directed by the Atelier Foster Nouvel, an agency that teamed Jean Nouvel and Norman Foster, created specifically for this project. In 2005, Cyril Desroche left the Ateliers Jean Nouvel for California, where he joined Frank Gehry’s studio. For six years, he worked principally on the development of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, and then on projects for the Luma Foundation in Arles and the Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi. In 2011, he returned to the Ateliers Jean Nouvel and joined the team for the Paris Philharmonic Hall project. In 2015, he was appointed project director in the team for the creation of new exhibition spaces for the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris.

A graduate of the École d’Architecture de la Ville et des Territoires Paris-Est, Mathieu Forest joined the Ateliers Jean Nouvel in 1997. He has participated in numerous projects, such as the Zlaty Andel building in Prague, the Danish Radio Concert Hall in Copenhagen, the Archipel Theatre in Perpignan, the Nouvel KLCC in Kuala Lumpur, as well as various competitions, among them the redevelopment of the Halles district in Paris and the new Gazprom headquarters in St. Petersburg. From 2007 to 2015, he was project director for the construction of the Paris Philharmonic Hall, then for the preliminary studies and competition for the National Art Museum of China in Beijing and the Museum of Art Pudong in Shanghai. Since 2015, he has been the studio director in charge of the transformation of the Palais-Royal building for the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.

After studying history and archaeology in Paris, Emmanuel Kasarhérou returned to Nouméa, where in 1985 he was appointed curator of the Museum of New Caledonia, a museum dedicated to Kanak culture and the cultures of the Pacific. In 1994, he joined the Agency for the Development of Kanak Culture, where he was appointed Cultural Director in charge of the artistic project and the preparation of the Tjibaou Cultural Center. Designed by the architect Renzo Piano, the Tjibaou Cultural Center, which opened in 1998, works in the fields of contemporary art and the performing arts, as well as in research and in the preservation of tangible and intangible heritage. From 2006 to 2011, Emmanuel Kasarhérou served as its Director General. In 2011, he joined the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, where he curated the exhibition “Kanak. Art is a Word.” In 2014, he became Deputy Director of Heritage and Collections. On May 27, 2020, Emmanuel Kasarhérou was appointed President of the musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac.