Editor’s letter: Andrew Tuck on crafting with intention

There are some words that, like a virile invasive plant, spring up in the most annoying of places. Often, just as you are busy removing an outbreak from one sentence, it will appear in another paragraph, out of place, an irksome addition to an otherwise fine clause. One of these words is “curate”. For me, the nadir came when someone sent us an email about a shop that offered a “curated collection of socks”. I recently read in another magazine about a cake shop where the buns and fondants had been “carefully curated” (these two words rarely make an appearance in text unless they can arrive arm-in-arm). In this issue of the magazine, however, which includes our annual art special, they are allowed free rein. This is its natural and proper home.

How you collect and show works of art in a new and meaningful manner, or offer fresh ways to respond to cultural artefacts, is always fascinating. But in this issue we have access to a remarkable project where the curation is next level, even if this is not the sole reason for the endeavour. 

Monocle’s Sophie Monaghan-Coombs recently spent several days with the team at the V&A East Storehouse as they readied this epic project for launch. In what was the press centre for the 2012 Olympics in east London, the esteemed institution has created a vast new storage facility for tens of thousands of pieces held in its collections, from tiles and paintings to sculptures and an entire ceiling of a Spanish church. The building is open to the public and objects long hidden from view are now proudly on display. There is a also a system where anyone, not just academics, can become curators, choosing pieces that they’d like to see from the collections. Head over to our Expo to see the scale of the ambition.

The V&A project is also part of a bigger story: an attempt to shift some of the city’s – the nation’s – most important cultural institutions into places where they can connect with people who might think such spaces were too aloof or precious for them. Sadler’s Wells Theatre has also opened an outpost here as part of the East Bank scheme. Together they’re responding to some big questions. How can culture, for example, reshape our cities as better places to live in? And how can you revive neighbourhoods and create hope?

This theme of remaking cities is picked up in our business pages, where our executive editor, Christopher Lord, reports on what Jony Ive is up to in San Francisco. The UK-born industrial designer created many of Apple’s most important products, including the iPhone, before leaving the company in 2019. He is now an advocate for the remaking of the town from where he runs his new business, LoveFrom, with Marc Newson. Ive has been buying up property around Jackson Square, an area badly hit by post-pandemic office vacancies, to the tune of an estimated $100m (€88m). He aims to bring jobs and vitality back to the streets. It’s a great interview that reminds you how just one or two people can ignite the fuse of change.

This issue also includes an interview with New Zealand’s prime minister, a tour of a remarkable house in the mountains outside Palma de Mallorca by Ohlab and a report on Indonesian beauty player Paragon. It’s what some would call “nicely curated”.

On a different note, we now have a new website that looks handsome on laptop and mobile, where we offer a full digital version of our magazine stories, plus access to unique content, including a series of insider city guides written by our correspondents. Please, take a tour of this new world. As always, please send me any ideas, reflections or suggestions – you can write to me at at@monocle.com. Have a good month.

Interview: Jony Ive joins OpenAI. The designer on his new venture in San Francisco

The hand of Jony Ive is all around us: on our desks, in our pockets, in our palms. More than any other living designer, Apple’s former design chief has shaped and contoured our day-to-day experience. Yet unlike the buzzing, attention-hungry iPhone – his most earth-shaking effigy – the man himself is much less forthcoming.

Interview-shy, Ive was never a fixture onstage during the Steve Jobs-era product launches. He often worried as a young designer in England that his chronic fear of public speaking would keep him from a career. Nevertheless, Ive spent 27 years drawing up the first iterations of everything from tablets to smartwatches. He changed the world – then fell off the radar. “When I left Apple, six years ago, I had the overwhelming conviction that my most important and useful work lay ahead of me,” says Ive, in his hesitant Essex accent that has persisted despite four decades of living and working in the US. “I just didn’t know yet what it was.”

The work, says Ive, is now starting to take shape. Monocle meets the designer in a bright white room in the Jackson Square neighbourhood on the edge of San Francisco’s Financial District. Through large windows that frame a blue sky, light pours onto an intricate wooden model of a single city block. We’re standing in a building halfway down Montgomery Street in a space that Lovefrom, the studio he founded in 2019 and which counts Australian designer Marc Newson as a collaborator, bought as the pandemic was dawning. Since then, Ive has been snapping up a vast chunk of real estate across downtown reckoned to be worth more than $100m (€88m) and equating to half a city block. It includes multiple offices, private residences and a fly-fishing shop called Lost Coast Outfitters. “I now have the guy whose name is on the patent for the aluminium MacBook coming in here, buying flies,” says owner George Revel, who speaks highly of his new landlord. 

The scale of acquisitions would be remarkable anywhere. But San Francisco has been brought to its knees in recent years. During the pandemic, many of the big-hitting tech businesses that have brought the city wealth and unparalleled productivity over the past two decades went remote and never returned. This left the urban core decayed, with boarded-up boutiques and streets devoid of workers or a reason for being. The Financial District, which buttresses Jackson Square, was hit hardest, with office vacancies soaring to 35 per cent; with that came an epidemic of homelessness, crime and drugs. “It hurts profoundly to see a person or an entity that you love suffering,” says Ive. “And I had benefitted from and learnt so much from San Francisco in my life.” 

By basing his growing business in the neighbourhood, he says he can contribute to the city revival and get people working in the downtown again. 

On the wooden model, thinly etched lines delineate the elegant façades of historic 19th-century buildings, which are currently being restored with the studio’s oversight. Such renovations are regarded as giving back to the neighbourhood. Attention has turned to the forlorn car park in the centre, with a construction team hard at work digging up the asphalt to create a landscaped area that Ive calls the Pavilion, where the Lovefrom team can gather for lunch and host friends from the area. “I’ve just always loved walled gardens,” says Ive, as we peer into the quadrangle at the centre of the model. The neighbourhood resounds with hammers, diggers and the clamour of industry again. But what is it all for? “At its most pedestrian, it is a tool to support our practice,” says Ive, as we walk between high-ceilinged rooms. So far, Lovefrom has worked on a string of prestigious if whimsical commissions: the seal for King Charles III’s coronation; a line of jackets for Moncler; the fitout for an all electric Ferrari. The 60-strong studio, which is currently housed in a bare-brick building on Montgomery Street, counts several A-team hires from the Jobs-era of Apple among its roster. A steep staircase in the centre of the room that leads to the studio is off-limits to all but true insiders. 

“Upstairs are the most remarkable industrial designers in the world,” says Ive. “The most remarkable user-interface designers, graphic designers, typographers, engineers and, my God,” he says, visibly moved at the thought, “I get to walk up those stairs every day.” As the team expands, Ive explains, they will move into one of the newly restored spaces over the next summer.

Yet the ambition here goes well beyond coats, cars and even city blocks. In 2023, it was reported that Ive had begun talking to Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI and developer of the ChatGPT large language model, which has become the poster-child firm for artificial intelligence and how it will supposedly remake the world. Reports suggest that they are collaborating on a phone-like device; something less disruptive to our social ways than a smartphone; something, even, without a screen. On all of this, Lovefrom declines to comment. Despite the paucity of detail, tech watchers describe this meeting of minds as a formidable and potentially highly disruptive force. Ive has reinvented the way we communicate before. Could he be about to do it again? From the outset, Ive and his team are clear that he will not be drawn on the AI work. On May 21, Lovefrom announced that the team behind it would be merging with OpenAI, with Ive taking on design and creative responsibilities across both OpenAI and the project, called io, “focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable.”

Secrecy was a hallmark of Jobs-era Apple and, at Lovefrom HQ, this mysterious AI project has all the mystique and air of importance of the space programme. Ive clearly believes that he and the team are onto something big. At one point, we are taken to Ernie’s, a fully-staffed in-house medical centre dedicated to keeping Lovefrom employees tip-top and at their wellbeing best. (Naturally it has rather exquisite branding). Named after a restaurant that once stood on the site and was apparently a favourite of Alfred Hitchcock, Ernie’s illustrates the scale of ambition behind Lovefrom’s dignified façade. “If you’re dealing in fragile concepts, the working environment has to be characterised by trust and care,” says Ive, who then quotes Freud. “‘Love and work, work and love; that’s all there is.’” What comes across on the day that Monocle spends with Lovefrom, is a sense of mission – alluded to but never stated – to create a different kind of founder-led business than the sort San Francisco has become associated with. That’s not just about wellness check-ins but also about how the business interacts with the city around it; how to be disruptive without being destructive.

It may well sound high-minded and unmistakably West Coast in tone but powerful people are breezing through these brick hallways, whether that’s Laurene Powell Jobs, the philanthropist widow of the late Steve, or cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who recently put on a private concert for the staff, the neighbourhood and a few high-profile friends. Officious men in black coats and earpieces are often seen waiting in front of the Lovefrom building. Those out of the loop of Ive’s plans walk past and wonder, what is he building in there?

All this brings a sense of momentum to an area that, just two years ago, was bereft. At Postscript, an elegant market and café that opened across the road from Lovefrom in late 2023, there’s a buzz among the outdoor tables. “Well, you know Jony’s just signed for another one,” says a woman, holding court over coffee with a well-heeled-looking group of out-of-towners.

Around the corner, a vast new Paul Smith boutique has just opened and there are more shops, cafés and studios moving in. Back in January, Ghazi Shami, the CEO and founder of record label Empire Distribution, purchased the historic One Montgomery building for $24.5m (€21.5m), saying that he intends to create his headquarters and restaurants inside, while the Transamerica Pyramid, following a restoration by Foster and Partners that was completed in 2024, is attracting big-office clients back to the centre. According to Bloomberg, real-estate developers Brick & Timber Collective are planning $500m of investment and restoration all around Jackson Square. 

Ive, of course, isn’t solely responsible for this; the city is poised for another tech boom as an AI gold rush smoulders with possibility. All over San Francisco, AI start-ups stare down from the billboards. But Lovefrom’s investments were a bold act of belief in the city when the chips were down.

He is keen to make it clear that this shouldn’t be seen as property development. “There’s no fiscal benefit for us in investing in these buildings; these aren’t a means to an end, if that end is generating revenue,” says Ive. “There are also much more cost-effective ways of providing space for the design team. The reason we’re investing in these buildings is because we really love this neighbourhood and believe that it deserves investment.” Jackson Square was where the designer first landed in the US in 1989, on a bursary after his graduation from Newcastle Polytechnic (now Northumbria University). The first shop he visited on US Shores was William Stout Architectural Books, which sits across the road from Lovefrom’s new office on the street where he vowed to one day have a studio, almost 40 years ago. 

The bookshop was recently acquired by the Eames Institute, which administers the legacy of California designers Ray and Charles Eames, with the view to preserve and safeguard this long-standing architectural resource for the future, especially as San Francisco’s downtown kicks back into gear.

“The customers walking through the door have been getting younger over the past six months,” says Erik Heywood, retail director for the Eames Institute and William Stout. “That doesn’t always happen with a 50-year-old business.” Lauren Smith, the chief experience officer for Eames, agrees that there is a new energy downtown, heralded by the arrival of Lovefrom. “It feels like we’re on the brink of something.” Continuing the idea of giving back to the neighbourhood that it now calls home, Lovefrom is refreshing Stout’s branding (gratis, of course) and has done the same with the menus at Quince, a much-lauded restaurant and Ive favourite. “Jony and I share the opinion that we have to be stewards of the neighbourhood,” says co-founder Lindsay Tusk, who planted a flag in Jackson Square in 2003 and now has multiple restaurants dotted around the area. “There is a lot of curiosity about what Jony is working on; it’s attracting a group of highly creative individuals and people want to be around that.”Jackson Square itself could be described as the guts of San Francisco. The neighbourhood was founded in 1849 amid the first big gold rush, an era when the genteel Italianate buildings served as the nucleus of the so-called Barbary Coast, a red-light district that catered to sailors and prospectors seeking somewhere to splash their lucre. Under the asphalt, holding up the futurist struts of the Transamerica Pyramid, are the compacted remains of tall ships whose owners sailed to the New World in search of fortune and then abandoned their galleons when they got there. What is now the Financial District was built on this reclaimed land, and on Hotaling Street, the oldest lane in the city, there are wavy marks etched into the pavement showing where the tide once rose to.

Those beginnings set the mould for San Francisco’s boom-and-bust rhythm. It has always been a place where fortunes are made and lost, and the city is often left picking up the pieces once the gold runs out. 

Prior to the crisis wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, the dotcom bubble of the 1990s was the most recent modern equivalent. Long-time residents, who have seen high- rolling days before say that the energy coursing through San Francisco right now around artificial intelligence has the whiff of exactly one of those upswing moments.

Ive remained at Apple for several years after Jobs’ death in 2011 and watched the behemoth balloon into a company that was very different from its beginnings. On its route to becoming the world’s first trillion-dollar company, Apple has cranked out products including augmented-reality headsets and a personal-trainer service; it became a
platform for and producer of films and released new iterations of the iPhone every year. Some of those who came up through Apple say that it lost something along the way – perhaps the focus that its co-founder once extolled as a driving virtue. It went from being a maker of products intended to simplify one’s life to, quite simply, another tech company, albeit the world’s biggest.

San Francisco changed in tandem. The barefoot, Buddhist founders of the dotcom days were slowly replaced by a new generation of bolshier entrepreneurs. Birkenstocks were out; gilets were in. The modern city was never a cheap place to be but, in about 2011, it went into overdrive as rents and salaries climbed precipitously high and many longstanding residents were priced out. The social fabric frayed as a homelessness crisis went unchecked, compounded by the rise of fentanyl and a leniency towards drugs coupled with profound inequality.

Still, the mass flight of businesses in 2020 irks Ive. “I don’t like fair-weather friends,” he says. “Those people who just consume and declare themselves a friend and [then leave] as soon as it gets inconvenient or challenging.” The whims of the technology industry, however, are only partly to blame for what happened to San Francisco. The authorities are still trying to get a handle on the open-air drug markets that were left to proliferate downtown. Meanwhile, parts of Union Square are still beset by social problems, even as things are improving. But as one long-standing resident of Jackson Square sees it: “What nobody wants to say in this progressive place is that, basically, the city finally got tough.” Many still need to be convinced that San Francisco is changing. 

New mayor Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi’s fortune who takes a dollar a year from city hall, immediately set to work cracking down on crime in the city centre upon his appointment in January – and the data suggests that his efforts are working. But he has his work cut out for him. “I’m calling companies around this country and saying, ‘What can we do to get you back here?’” Lurie tells Monocle, in a month that saw the Bay Area-based property firm Realtor.com announce it was moving to Texas. “I am laser-focused on making sure that we bring [big] business back, which will help our small businesses too. But I want those companies to be part of the community.” 

Lurie references what Ive is doing in Jackson Square as an example of how this can be done. But what if this old gold-rush town booms and busts again – if the AI bubble bursts and businesses head for the hills? “There’s no better place to do business,” he says. “When you come here, you need to be involved. But we saw what happened when businesses fled and we, at times, took that for granted here. That will no longer be the case.”

Over the years, plenty of ink has been spilled about the death of San Francisco – some of it fair, some of it less so. “There was a tendency to overstate the issues – but there were problems and real suffering,” says Ive. “My goal isn’t to shift the narrative, though. My goal is to help shift the city.” 

Every object has a story to tell – and V&A London’s new storage facility is designed to serve as a museum

At one point during the installation of the Torrijos ceiling in V&A East Storehouse, 12 different parts of the carved wooden roof dangled from chain hoists. With painstaking care, a team of technicians clad in hi-vis and hard hats slowly tried to manipulate them into place.

We don’t often look at ceilings, the sides of buildings or entire rooms, for that matter, and consider them “objects”. The meaning of the word, however, begins to expand as you wander through this new museum-cum-warehouse. V&A East Storehouse is the latest member of the V&A family, a storied British institution founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Unlike its existing museums in London, Stoke-on-Trent and Dundee, V&A East Storehouse is more like a storage facility that has been designed to allow visitors inside. There are publicly accessible art storage facilities elsewhere, most notably the Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, but nothing on the scale of this new institution.

V&A East Storehouse was born, in part, out of necessity. In 2015 the UK government announced plans to sell off Blythe House, a government-owned London storage facility that has housed most of the V&A’s stored collection since the mid-1980s. About 600,000 objects, books and archival collections would have to be relocated; some larger objects, such as the Torrijos ceiling, were being kept in storage in Wiltshire and these were swept along into the plan. “You don’t move a collection of this size and scale very often,” says Tim Reeve, deputy director and chief operating officer of the V&A. “It made us think that we had to go as big and be as ambitious as we could.”

That ambition eventually translated into unboxing the 500-year-old Torrijos ceiling to install its eight interlocking arches and corner pieces (or squinches) here. The ceiling was created in the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, for a palace near Toledo. Just before the palace was demolished, the ceiling – one of four – was acquired by a London art dealer and, in 1905, sold to the V&A. For more than 80 years, the Torrijos ceiling was installed in the museum until, in 1993, it was dismantled and packed into 40 large crates.

When the ceiling was unboxed, some of the timber framework had warped and the pieces no longer matched up. “We had some sketchy old plans but there are about 150 pieces. It was just a massive jigsaw,” says museum technician Allen Irvine. “I’ve worked with the V&A for 21 years and that’s one of the most difficult installations we’ve ever had.” Completing the jigsaw – modelling how the octagonal dome fits together, building additional timber to support it, working with conservators and fixing the six-by-six metre ceiling in its tight space – took three months. “It’s an absolutely dazzling piece,” says Reeve. “Now we see it, I think we all feel guilty that it’s been off public display for so long.”

The Torrijos ceiling is one of five “large objects” that have been incorporated into the architecture of this space. They are testament to the ambition of the building’s design as well as that of past V&A collectors. They include an office designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and an example of a fitted kitchen from 1920s Frankfurt. The section of the façade from Robin Hood Gardens, an iconic east London brutalist tower block that was demolished between 2017 and 2025, was the first thing installed here more than three years ago, when the museum was just a building site. Now that 12-tonne concrete façade fragment lives in the centre of V&A East Storehouse, looming over the stairs through which visitors climb to arrive at the collection hall.

Hear four young people reflect on their experience telling the stories of Robin Hood Gardens alongside the V&A on The Urbanist:

It’s a theatrical entrance amplified by the way the space seems suddenly flooded with natural light. But in fact this is provided by a lightbox created with a huge stretched Barrisol ceiling (“If size matters, this is the largest Barrisol ceiling certainly in Europe, maybe even the world,” says Reeve). It gives the perfect illusion of daylight without having to worry about capricious British weather. The museum’s hollowed-out core is the first space that visitors will experience, which makes V&A East Storehouse “a typical building inside-out,” says Elizabeth Diller, a partner at Diller Scofidio and Renfro, the New York-based architect firm behind the project. “In most public institutions, if one goes deeper and deeper into the footprint, one goes into more private spaces,” she says. Here, the further out you move, the less accessible it becomes. The inside-outness of the layout “gives the public a sense of trespass”, says Diller.

As you arrive, it’s hard to know where to look. The publicly accessible galleys, which surround the central space, are lined with industrial shelving units whose rack ends hint at the variety within. Glance around the room and you’ll see an elaborate Dutch “giraffe piano”, a Memphis Milano lamp, a Venetian bust and a multicoloured rubbish bin extricated from Glastonbury Festival. “There is something for everyone,” says Reeve. Where the objects go and who they sit next to has been lightly curated but visitors will take themselves on a self-guided tour. There’s no exhibition per se, no one story to be learnt or single message to take away. “Part of the motivation of the project, and what gave us great joy, was to figure out a way of expressing the vastness and eclecticism of the collection in a way that could be sublime,” says Diller.

For the displays, the architects “took as a model the eclecticism of a cabinet of curiosities”, says Diller. Made popular in Renaissance Europe, these were rooms in which collectors brought together their prized objects for the enlightenment and entertainment of others. At V&A East Storehouse, the simple, stripped-back appearance of the displays adds to the feeling that you’re drawing back a curtain and going behind the scenes. Objects are displayed in wooden crates and on specially designed palettes. Busts are strapped into place with criss-crossing cushioned seatbelts. Every object has a simple luggage tag tied to it with a code that can be looked up on the V&A’s digital database.

The public experience of V&A East Storehouse as a museum exists side by side with its purpose as a working storage facility. A glass floor in the central area, which gives the illusion of being propped up by a vast and ornate Mughal-era colonnade, gives visitors a view of what’s happening below. There, forklifts and other machinery roam the lower labyrinths of the building (it took over two years, says technical manager Matthew Clarke, to find the necessary equipment to handle heavy objects in narrow aisles without a standard palette size). When Monocle visits, we watch a 19th-century French vase with detailed goat heads for handles being manoeuvred onto a forklift and lifted into place. Once the museum opens, visitors will continue to see the technical team at work as they rotate the displays and move objects for exhibitions or to go on loan.

Deeper into the building, there are conservation studios, reading rooms and a cloth workers centre, all of which are publicly accessible. Overlooking the conservation studios is a window for visitors to peek at what’s going on inside. These studios are also equipped with headsets and cameras that conservators can use to give curious visitors more details about what they’re working on. Museum-goers might be used to seeing the work of curators but Reeve hopes to demystify other roles, such as conservators or technicians. “It’s getting visitors into all corners of what we do to care for a collection of this size and scale,” he says.

As well as exposing the lesser-known activities of museums, V&A East Storehouse extends an open invitation to visitors to take a closer look at its collection through the Order an Object service. Kate Parsons, director of conservation, collections care and access at the V&A, describes a new part of her role as providing “meaningful and equitable access to every part of every object on this site”. Everything in the building has been logged and anyone can search through the digital catalogue, put up to five objects in a “virtual crate”, then choose a time and date to come in and have a look. “A booking is a booking,” says Parsons. “It’s not a request. You decide you’re going to see these five objects and we enable access.” What that means in practice depends on why an object has piqued your interest. If you’re a cabinetmaker, says Parsons, you might want to see the back of a drawer to find out how it’s been made. If you’re researching shoes for a television drama, you might want a face-to-face with one of the 3,500 pairs here. But you don’t have to be a cabinetmaker or researcher to use the service. “We are very clear that there’s no need for credentials or a reason to look at something,” says Parsons. “People can choose to see things just because it might make them happy.”

Parsons has just finished the recruitment process for the staff who will enable this access. Those who were chosen didn’t need to have experience in museums. Instead, prospective employees were asked to talk about an object they own that is precious to them and how they keep it safe. “That simple question was amazing in terms of the stories we heard,” says Parsons. Important, too, was recruiting from the local area. “We want people who are living and working in East London to feel like this can be part of their lives, as a hobby but also a profession,” says Reeve. Keeping things local, the museum café is run by East London bakery E5 Bakehouse. And V&A East Storehouse isn’t the only new institution here. Dance venue Sadler’s Wells East opened earlier this year, while the David Bowie Centre will be finished later in 2025 on the Storehouse site. Next year, V&A East Museum, a more traditional museum that will act as a sister venue to Storehouse, will open too. “East London has a great creative heritage,” says Reeve. “But research tells us that a large population in East London are not museum-goers. We want to make them feel welcome here.” 

As Reeve walks past one corner of the collection hall, he throws his arms wide, encompassing a Piaggio scooter customised by architect Daniel Libeskind, a drum kit that belonged to Keith Moon and a vase with sphinx-shaped handles. Thousands of miles and hundreds of years of history swept up in one arm span. On show, too, are the straps, screws and supports that hold all these objects in place. “This is what it’s all about,” he says, beaming.

It’s these objects that take centre stage here, and the hundreds of thousands of them at V&A East Storehouse tell us infinite stories. Stories that can’t be heard from outside the locked doors of a closed storage facility. Stories that aren’t just of the objects themselves but of all those who’ve had a hand in helping them along the way. The hands that sketched, stitched, carved, crafted, restored; that used an object, made it famous, threw it away, decided that it was worth keeping or, lovingly, winched it into place.

Hear an audio version of this story with extra interviews on The Urbanist:

Underrated pillars of the contemporary-art world

The Archivist
Silvia Omedes
Barcelona

While Spain’s Centro Nacional de Fotografía may be set to open in Soria in 2026, surprisingly, the country lacks a national museum dedicated to photography. In 2001, Silvia Omedes decided to do something to support documentary photographers and established her photojournalism archive and showroom, Fundació Photographic Social Vision, in Barcelona. “We think of our premises as a bubble of resistance because we’re defending important photography that would otherwise never see the light of day,” she says.

The non-profit focuses on documentary work created between the 1960s and the 1980s, a period that encompassed Spain’s political transition from dictatorship to democracy. “Franco controlled culture to such an extent that we’re still undoing this oppression today,” says Omedes, who thinks that the art form is still not entirely respected in Spain. “At Arco Madrid, Spain’s international contemporary art fair, we still see very little photography,” she says, similarly bemoaning Spanish museums for not showcasing enough of the medium. “If we want to get home-grown photographers into private collections, they need visibility in the public ones first.”

The foundation currently represents 10 archives. It owns the rights to the estate of Joana Biarnés, Spain’s first female photojournalist. Since 2013 the team has been preserving Biarnés’s vast archive by treating the negatives. The foundation is funded partly through its own services, projects and private sponsors, and partly by the Spanish and autonomous governments of Catalonia, and the grant bears Biarnés’s name in honour of her contributions to the canon.

Looking ahead, the foundation’s focus is to digitise its archives so that they can be shared online. “We have had a presence at Anne Clergue Galerie and Les Rencontres d’Arles photography festival but our archives don’t have international visibility,” says Omedes. Lacking the capacity to represent more portfolios, the foundation teaches archive owners how to manage theirs independently. “The government doesn’t offer support so the heirs of large photography collections come to us for help with IP issues, grants and portfolios,” she says. “But we can’t help them all.”

“Politicians are finally listening to us,” says Omedes, who hopes that the archive becomes a lens through which to better understand Spanish society. “Photography teaches us that there’s no future without visiting the past.”
fundacionpsv.org

The Consultant
Edward Mitterrand
Geneva

The Mitterrand name might be synonymous with French politics but Edward, a relative of late president François Mitterrand, chose commercial art instead. His art-dealer father, Jean-Gabriel, established Galerie Mitterrand in Paris’s Marais district in 1988, and together they founded the Domaine du Muy sculpture park in the south of France in 2014.

Alongside these projects, Mitterrand began working on an advisory basis, drawing on his learnings as a gallerist. Mitterrand Art Advisory works with individuals, interior architects and financial institutions. “We’re not in the high-volume market,” he says. “I only advise four or five clients at a time because I continue to dedicate time to the Paris gallery.” 

Mitterrand took the helm of Galerie Mitterrand in 2021 from his father. He now works with clients who are curating for the walls of their office or home, ensuring that he develops a thorough understanding of their taste so that he can source works from private owners, dealers and auctions.

Based in Geneva, Mitterrand has direct access to artworks because of his background as a gallerist but his services are independent. The real value of employing a consultant, he says, is in the mitigation of intellectual, shipping and tax risks. “Some buyers think that we should cut the middleman and go straight to the galleries,” he says. “But there’s an element of risk at every stage of the art-buying process.” 

And without the same overheads as galleries, advisors are relatively inexpensive. His best tip? “Take it slowly. There are only so many walls in your house and once they’re filled, there’s no going back.”
advisory.art

The Guardian
Ben Jun 
Seoul

Since the arrival of Frieze Seoul in 2022, the South Korean capital has been busy establishing its reputation on the international art scene. Now The FreePort, a new storage facility located within the Free Trade Zone, hopes to provide the cutting-edge infrastructure that’s needed to transform the city into a global art hub. Its vice-president, Ben Jun, tells us why now feels like a tipping point for Seoul’s artistic ambitions.

What does The FreePort offer?
We have one of the largest and most advanced art-storage facilities in Asia, covering 40,000 sq m. We’re located within the Incheon Free Trade Zone and directly connected to Incheon Airport, so we’re very convenient. There are biometric access controls, 24/7 surveillance, a climate-controlled environment and even a butler service for high-net-worth collectors and public institutions. 

Why does Seoul need this infrastructure?
We are a family business and my father has been in the industry for more than 30 years. We found it hard to use the traditional art-logistics companies here when we needed them and they seemed to focus on their existing clients rather than new ones. We wanted to create a more friendly, personalised service. 

What are your long-term hopes for Seoul’s art scene?
We hope to make the city a competitive art centre. We want it to be the next Hong Kong. But we also want to show that our collectors here are not just interested in investment; they’re also people who are really looking for cultural experiences.
thefreeport.com

The Museum Director
Arturo Galansino 
Florence

When contemporary artworks are buddied up with their historical ancestors, context is crucial. One of the sector’s evergreen questions is, “How do you show new art in an old place?” Among the museum directors who can be relied on to answer this wisely is Arturo Galansino, the director-general of Florence’s Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi. Galansino is currently presenting Tracey Emin’s wide-ranging Sex and Solitude exhibition within the walls of the Renaissance marvel. 

The British artist originally planned to “focus on her new output – a reborn passion for painting and sculpture”, says Galansino. “These are very traditional techniques, so it made sense to represent them in a historical environment.” 

Could the 16th-century Palazzo Strozzi, with its wealth of Renaissance history, encourage an artist to take the long view of their career? “In the end, her show includes more tapestry and embroidery, as well as her work as a poet,” says Galansino. “So the exhibition has become a way to look at her whole career in a thematic, rather than a chronological, way.”

Since 2015, the Palazzo Strozzi has been staging a series of radical shows by titans of contemporary art, including China’s Ai Weiwei, Danish-born Olafur Eliasson and US painter and sculptor Jeff Koons (who visited Galansino the day before monocle speaks to him and is, according to the director-general, “a very good friend of Florence”).

When the Palazzo Strozzi showed Electronic Renaissance – an exhibition by the late, great US video artist Bill Viola that explicitly celebrated the city and its art history – in 2017, the theme of new art in old places truly clicked for Galansino. “In Bill’s case, the Old Masters were so inspirational for him,” he says. “The dialogue between new and old was – and remains – so strong.”

Next up, former enfant terrible Emin will give up the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi to the 15th-century work of Fra Angelico, the early-Renaissance altarpiece maestro and Dominican friar. “What does Angelico offer us?” says Galansino. “Brilliant perspective.”

‘Tracey Emin: Sex and Solitude’ runs at the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi until 20 July. ‘Angelico’ opens on 26 September.
palazzostrozzi.org

The Framer
Frame London
London

Frame London’s premises are tucked away in an unassuming corner of east London populated with building merchants, but its humble appearance belies the artistry within. Its founders, Harry Burden, Vicky Bulmer and Emily Taylor, craft wooden, acrylic and aluminium frames for some of the world’s most prestigious galleries and art fairs. “Creating a bespoke frame is as personal as tailoring a Savile Row suit,” says Burden, who, with Bulmer, trained and worked at the Royal Academy of Arts’ framing department until it was dissolved in 2014.

Frame London came next. “After working for an institution, we wanted to have our own service that wouldn’t be driven by commercial targets,” says Bulmer. Their skills in carpentry, framing and mounting made for a successful start-up that has now grown to 12 employees and worked with the likes of New York’s Grimm and David Zwirner, Stevenson gallery in South Africa and Melbourne’s Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Commissions have included a medieval altarpiece framed in situ at London’s V&A and wall paintings in the Houses of Parliament, plus some wacky challenges, such as a fossilised fish and a mummified cat. For artist Caroline Walker, the team made a 3.5-metre-long collapsible frame for a diptych that could travel in two pieces to New York and then be reassembled.

“We want to encourage longevity,” says Taylor. Frame London makes bespoke wood mouldings, finishes and museum-grade conservation wheat-starch glue (for mounting works on paper) in-house. “It’s labour intensive and time consuming but clients know they’re investing in something that will age gracefully,” she says. It shows there’s a healthy appetite for craftmanship. “You might still choose a mass-produced Ikea frame but that’s a different proposition,” says Burden.
framelondon.com

A fair to remember: Highlights from this year’s Art Basel in Basel

To differentiate it from its global spin-offs, the Swiss version of Art Basel was rechristened Art Basel in Basel in 2013. Despite the repetitive nature of the title, the fair, on from 19 to 22 June, remains the pre-eminent art event of the year. This year’s edition promises to live up to its reputation with 289 galleries from 42 countries and territories, new sections and a public reception for the first Art Basel Awards, which celebrate trailblazers across the sector. 

Outside of the fair, there’s a host of buzzy satellite events and museum shows that are worth a visit, including your last chance to see a major exhibition dedicated to the artist-architect Le Corbusier in Bern. Here, we pick the best of the bunch, take the temperature of the art market with the fair’s director and spill the best spots for a cocktail at the end of a long day in the halls of Messe Basel.

Q&A
Maike Cruse
Director, Art Basel in Basel

This is the second edition of Art Basel in Basel with Maike Cruse in charge. The German-born director previously worked as communications director at Art Basel between 2008 and 2011. Here, Cruse reveals what she’s looking forward to this year, takes a view on the art market and offers her favourite place to go dancing in Basel. 

What are some of your highlights?
Nine galleries are participating for the first time in the gallery sector, which is always exciting. I’m particularly looking forward to Galerie Le Minotaure from Paris, which will focus on 20th-century geometric abstraction and works by László Moholy-Nagy, as well as The Third Gallery Aya from Osaka, which is presenting pioneering Japanese female photographers. The new sector, Premiere, will see galleries showcase works from the past five years – ultra-contemporary pieces from emerging voices. There, the Gypsum Gallery from Cairo will bring together two artists whose work is inspired by volcanic landscapes. 

What else is new? 
This is the first Art Basel Awards, which is an all-year initiative that celebrates boundary-pushing artists, curators, museum patrons and others who are driving the future of contemporary art. In Basel, we will celebrate our 36 medallists and bring them together for public talks and presentations.

How does Art Basel in Basel retain its top spot in the art calendar?
It’s the quality of the fair. We have a rigorous selection process and it’s the Art Basel fair with the broadest programme. This includes galleries presenting modern art but also we have sectors, like Unlimited [dedicated to monumental and immersive works], which are unique in the world of art fairs. 

Your view on the art market today?
What we are seeing at the moment is cautious optimism. There has been a democratisation of the market: we are seeing new and younger buyers coming into it. 

Where do you go out in the city?
My favourite is the Campari bar at the Kunsthalle restaurant. Head to Chez Donati for Italian food, Peng for dumplings or Chanthaburi for the best Asian food. And for dancing, nothing beats techno club Nordstern.  

Breaking new ground
Art Basel has a strong track record of championing emerging galleries. This year there are 18 new galleries being thrown into the mix. Here, we pick three worth checking out. 

1.
Gallery Artbeat
Tbilisi
Keeping things close to home, Gallery Artbeat offers a solo exhibition by Georgian artist Nika Kutateladze. His contemplative paintings – typically darkly pigmented, otherworldly portraits – take inspiration from his time spent in small rural communities in the mountains of Georgia. The immersive presentation will be staged in a reconstructed living room typically found in a Gurian village. 
Find the gallery in the Statements section

2.
Polka Galerie
Paris
Italian photographers Luigi Ghirri and Franco Fontana will be brought together at the booth of Paris’s Polka Galerie. The Ghirri prints examine landscapes as an extension of the people who inhabit them in his trademark naturalistic manner. In contrast, his contemporary Fontana takes his cue from stylistic movements such as minimalism and abstract expressionism. 
Find the gallery in the Feature section

3.
Galerie Eli Kerr
Montreal
The first gallery hailing from Montréal to exhibit at the fair in its 55-year history, Galerie Eli Kerr will show an intriguing installation by Lebanese video artist and writer Joyce Joumaa. Joumaa’s work explores Lebanon’s energy crisis through repurposed circuit-breaker boxes, which showcase photographs of quotidian urban scenes in Beirut and Tripoli.
Find the gallery in the Statements section

Museum shows to catch
There is plenty to enjoy under the roof of Messe Basel but if you need a break from the hubbub, these are the museum shows to see while you’re in town. 

1.
‘Vija Celmins’ 
Fondation Beyeler, Basel

A calming contrast to the fair is always to be found at Basel’s Fondation Beyeler, which has idyllic surroundings. During Art Basel, it will present a comprehensive retrospective of Latvian-born artist Vija Celmins. The show will bring together works from the 1960s to the present day and includes sculpture, painting and drawing. 
15 June to 21 September 

2.
‘Midnight Zone’
Museum Tinguely, Basel 

“Midnight Zone”, French-Swiss artist Julian Charrière’s solo show at Museum Tinguely, muses on how humans inhabit the world and how, in turn, the world inhabits us. Underwater ecologies are presented through photography, film and sculpture. All promise to envelop you in a kaleidoscope of blue and encourage reflection on our relationship with the natural world. 
11 June to 2 November 

3.
‘Le Corbusier. The Order of Things’
Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
Just an hour’s train ride from Basel, the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern has devoted a major exhibition to Le Corbusier. The show includes both iconic pieces and unseen works, and is a chance to revel in the sketches and original designs of this pioneer of modern architecture. 
Until 22 June 

Artist spotlight
Lonnie Holley

The work of American septuagenarian artist and musician Lonnie Holley has gained well-deserved traction in recent years. At this year’s fair, London-based gallery Edel Assanti will present a solo show of his colourful paintings and unusual sculptures made from salvaged materials. Holley’s artistic practice also includes film and music so it’s worth visiting his installations in the Unlimited sector to grasp the diversity of his work. His art reflects his extraordinary life, which includes being incarcerated at the Alabama Industrial Home for Negro Children in his youth.

“He is someone who has lived a life that few of us could possibly imagine,” says Charlie Fellowes, co-founder of Edel Assanti. “And he delves into these experiences to unpack them in a way which invites meaningful discourse on race, ancestral memory and our engagement with technology. That is something that we have to cherish.”

Q&A
Lee Cavaliere
Director,Volta Art Fair

Alternative art fair Volta is also known for promoting cutting-edge creativity. We speak to director Lee Cavaliere to find out more. 

How does Volta compare to other fairs?
We don’t see ourselves as a satellite. This is our 20th year and it’s a testament to our agility and connectedness with the emerging and middle market. 

How has the fair changed?
We’re now in a bigger venue and we have 70 galleries from 29 countries. It’s still a digestible size, which gives people time to meet the galleries and artists. 

What is your favourite spot in Basel?
I love Basel because it’s walkable and you can easily discover things. Museum Bistro Rollerhof has seats on the square by Museum der Kulturen so you can sit, eat and watch the world go by. 
Volta runs from 18 to 22 June; voltaartfairs.com

Ways of seeing: Six must-visit exhibition spaces from South Korea to Switzerland

1.
The conversation starter
MACAAL
Morocco 

Othman Lazraq guides us under an arch made from mud bricks – part of a structure that sits below the central atrium of his family’s private museum. “Installing this was a mess,” he says. “Artist Salima Naji built it, brick by brick, one month before our reopening at the start of the year.” Touching the temple-like structure, which emulates ancient building techniques from places such as Mali or the Maghreb, Lazraq offers a clue to the museum’s mission. “This isn’t just heritage,” he says “It’s alive.”

The Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL) opened in 2016 as an extension of the Lazraq family’s art foundation (the family is one of Morocco’s largest property developers). The museum brings its extensive art collection, which now spans 2,500 works, into public view.

Part of Lazraq’s job as both founder and director has been reconciling political and social sensitivities around history and gender with the collection’s occasionally transgressive content. “Every cultural institution is placed in the middle of social discourse,” he says. “But our approach is always deft and inclusive.” In Morocco, this attitude is vital as the majority of the population has never set foot inside a museum. Special attention has been paid to ensure that the audience’s questions and concerns are answered and assuaged by MACAAL’s friendly guides, and additional information has been designed to deepen dialogue.

After seven years finding its footing, the museum was closed by Lazraq in 2023 as a chance for a structural and conceptual reset. Serendipitous timing meant that the entire collection was safely packaged and stored only two weeks before a magnitude-6.8 earthquake rocked the region. During the two-year hiatus, everything from the museum’s financial model to the curated programme was scrutinised. A scenographer was enlisted to redesign the layout to be more accessible and playful; display cases were lowered to child height and the museum’s artistic director, Meriem Berrada, commissioned video documentaries for each of the permanent collections’ seven sections to provide an additional layer of visual narration. 

The multidisciplinary and occasionally controversial works (one playful piece explores the taboo subject of folkloric witchcraft) challenge ingrained perceptions around African art but there’s a distinctly celebratory tone here too. “I’m a proud Moroccan but there’s a lot of missing context around who we are and where we’ve come from,” says Lazraq. “I want to make our museum as open as possible, to spark conversations and to stand out as a neutral, safe space for reflection and imagination.”

On the edge of a golf course about 15 minutes’ drive from Marrakech’s medina, MACAAL’s setting is serene. Lazraq, who has led the family’s art foundation for over 15 years (since the age of 21) is always rethinking how the museum can work. Every Friday it hosts a family-style couscous lunch, inviting the community and anyone else who wants to experience culture through the disarming focus of food. “I never wanted to create a highbrow, exclusionary space,” he says, pointing to the employment of “cultural mediators” tasked with bringing groups from schools, women’s associations and social organisations for workshops and visits. “We’re creating a true social ecosystem. Hopefully we’re also becoming a source of inspiration for the next generation.”
macaal.org

2.
The audio-visual space
Efie Gallery
Dubai 

The Ghanaian director of Dubai’s Efie Gallery, Kwame Mintah, doesn’t like looking at art in silence. “Galleries tend to be managed by creative people but they can feel sterile without any music,” he says. Mintah grew up listening to genres such as highlife and Afrobeat and decided to weave those sounds into the artistic experience of his gallery. Founded in 2021 by Mintah with his mother, Valentina, and brother, Kobi, Efie Gallery has had a permanent space in Dubai since 2022. Now the family has moved its operations to a bigger outpost, which will provide more space for their 2,000 vinyl records and diverse roster of visual artists of African origin.

“The commercial art world can be sceptical of unorthodox forms,” says Mintah. He initially wanted to downplay the listening concept but the enthusiastic reception received by a smaller version in the original venue means that it now takes centre stage in the new location. “Growing up in Ghana, art wasn’t contained in galleries,” says Mintah. “It was all around us.” The new space’s immersive listening room has five hi-fi speakers. Visitors will find shellac and vinyl records and cassettes, dating from the 1940s until the present day, including those by Ghanaian musician ET Mensah, a pioneer of the highlife genre. Originating in the 19th century, highlife laid the foundations for many popular genres, such as Afrobeat.

Mintah hopes that the new gallery will bolster the underexplored cultural connections between the UAE and Africa. “Dubai is a blank canvas where you can construct your own narrative of African art,” he says. Efie is showing the likes of Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui, Kenyan visual artist Maggie Otieno and Ethiopian photographer Aïda Muluneh. Each has curated ambient playlists to accompany their shows.

“The Efie Gallery isn’t a satellite for the African diaspora,” says Mintah. “We want to engage directly with the region. With our unusual gallery concept, we leaned into the unknown. Ultimately we hope to add something fresh to the canon.”
efiegallery.com

3.
The regional showcase
Ichion Contemporary
Japan 

Sandwiched between an office building and a church, Ichion Contemporary’s slim, ambitious architecture celebrates the avant-garde spirit of Osaka. The new gallery, which opened in January, was founded by Ichion Jo, the 35-year-old vice-president of Jo’s Auctions. Originally dealing primarily in Chinese antiques, the Osaka-based auction house has become increasingly active in collecting and trading modern art in recent years, including that of the Gutai group and other works from Kansai.

“We noticed that while Japanese postwar artists were becoming more highly valued, they were not so in the international market,” says Jo. “But after the Guggenheim exhibition in New York (Gutai: Splendid Playground, 2013) their prices jumped in an instant.” Sensing a shift in the market, Jo began researching and planning a gallery to showcase such works. And when a narrow patch of land, barely four metres in width, became available in Nozaki-cho, he approached renowned architect Tadao Ando to turn it into a reality.

The distinctive concrete building offers a unique experience across six levels, placing viewers close to the works. The inaugural exhibition showcased the Gutai Art Association, while future exhibitions will focus on Kansai’s pioneering avant-garde artists, as well as the emerging talents building on their legacy. The gallery’s unconventional setting and innovative spirit promises new discoveries for artists and audiences alike.
ichion-contemporary.com

4.
The photographic archive
Photo SeMA
South Korea

A building that mimics the contours of a camera aperture makes for a striking architectural statement – and a fitting venue for South Korea’s first public photography museum. Opening on 29 May, the Photography Seoul Museum of Art (Photo SeMA) encompasses about 7,000 sq m across three above-ground and two subterranean levels. The building was designed by Vienna-based architect Mladen Jadric and realised in collaboration with South Korean architect Yoon Geun-ju, director of 1990uao. Drawing inspiration from the mechanism of a camera aperture, the museum’s twisted monolithic form departs from conventional right angles, with walls and floors rising fluidly along a curve. Jadric says that there are more similarities between the practices of architecture and photography than you might expect. “Photography is an image drawn with light and architecture is a play of forms unfolding under light,” he tells Monocle.

Photo SeMA’s director, Han Jung-hee, says that the museum’s mission is “to establish the 140-year history of Korean photographic art”. The institution identified more than 2,000 photographers active between 1880 and 1980 and acquired about 21,000 images and archival materials. “Our goal was to collect landscapes and portraits that offer a visual record of their era,” says curator Son Hyun-jung. Those procurements included the archive of Im In-sik, a photographer of the Korean War, and Park Young-sook, a pioneering figure in feminist photography. Photo SeMA will finally bring into focus the rich history of South Korean photography.
sema.seoul.go.kr

5.
The Italian outpost
Thaddaeus Ropac
Milan

The neoclassical Palazzo Belgioioso is the sumptuous location for Austrian gallery Thaddaeus Ropac’s new Milan outpost. Elena Bonanno di Linguaglossa, its executive director, is brimming with excitement when she shows Monocle around the unfinished site. “I’ve never been able to hold a brush but I’ve always had a curiosity for contemporary art,” she says. “My grandmother worked as an assistant for Belgian painter Paul Delvaux. I was fascinated by the stories she told me.”

For Bonanno di Linguaglossa, taking a role under Thaddaeus Ropac was an easy decision. “There’s no one like him in the industry,” she says. When Monocle visits, the space is still under renovation but the neoclassical crown mouldings and large bay windows overlooking the quiet courtyard give a taste of what’s to come. Works will be exhibited in two grand rooms on the first floor, and sculptures will be displayed in the public courtyard. 

Milan has a growing presence of international artists, buyers and gallerists tapping into the community of wealthy collectors who have chosen Italy’s financial capital as their home. “It’s the moment to be here,” says Bonanno di Linguaglossa.
ropac.net

6.
The photographer’s home
Studio Naegeli
Gstaad

Over the past century, the timber-hewn chalets that line Gstaad’s main promenade have slowly transformed into a string of luxury fashion maisons but Chalet Naegeli is a notable exception. Founded in 1914 as an Alpine photography repository, it’s the former studio-residence of photographer Jacques Naegeli, who documented Gstaad’s transition from humble farming village to glitzy ski resort. 

The premises became a bank in the 1970s but, last winter, Naegeli’s great-grandson, Christian Högl, and his wife, Anna, brought the chalet back to life as Studio Naegeli, a documentation project aimed at reviving the photographer’s archive. 

The Högls aren’t just looking to the past. The two-storey site will host programmes alongside a global roster of galleries focusing on modern art. When Monocle stops by, the debut collaboration with Galerie Mitterrand in Paris is preparing to open and 15 artworks have been shipped over. These include works by François-Xavier Lalanne, Jean Dubuffet, Günther Förg and Yayoi Kusama.

There is momentum here to refocus Gstaad’s identity around its artistic heritage, and the town has buy-in from an international crowd of holidaymakers. Visitors from France, the US, Canada and Hong Kong pass by when Monocle visits Studio Naegeli. “A lot of visitors here have second homes in Gstaad, so the tourism feels more personal,” says Anna, who previously worked as international liaison for the Moscow Art Fair and as a curator in Bern. “Gstaad is home to a concentrated group of collectors, which encourages a friendly climate for purchasing art.” 

Just like Jacques once did, Christian and Anna live above their beloved chalet-gallery. “When Jacques lived here, the house was alive with creative spirit,” says Anna. “We hope to reconnect Chalet Naegeli with its artistic and cultural heritage.”
studionaegeli.com

The hidden waterworks beneath Rome’s world-famous fountain

“Can you guess which way it is to Piazza di Spagna from here?” says Davide d’Alonzo, our guide and technical manager at Acea, Rome’s water-management company. His face is illuminated in the darkness by a large flashlight. “The answer is that you have to look at the way the water is flowing,” he says, pointing into the murky tunnels in the direction of Rome’s landmark square. In truth, it’s not easy to get one’s bearings. 

Only moments ago, we had left our personal belongings behind (save for my Monocle notepad and pen), donned white hard hats, dark rubber suits and Wellington boots, and stepped through an inconspicuous door near Rome’s Villa Medici. An impressive spiral staircase takes us down 112 steps to a tunnel 25 metres below ground. We find ourselves beneath the Italian capital’s streets and inside one of Europe’s oldest functioning aqueducts, the Acqua Vergine, whose water has been celebrated throughout the ages for its purity. Dating from 19 bce, it is a masterpiece of classical engineering and Monocle has been granted rare access. 

Originally used to meet the needs of the metropolis’s noble families, the aqueduct continues to supply water to the city’s parks and gardens, and performs a task that visitors particularly appreciate: replenishing some of Rome’s most important fountains, from those on Via del Corso to the one in front of the Quirinale presidential palace. As we wade waist-deep through the water, D’Alonzo instructs us to walk slowly without lifting our feet too much. The reason for caution, he explains, is that we are not only moving against the current but also because the water, after travelling for some 20km from its source east of the city, comes out at Rome’s famed Trevi Fountain. And we wouldn’t want to muddy the waters, would we? 

Being here is a privilege: while a phalanx of tourists is queuing above ground to take selfies in front of the crystal-clear waters and sculpted travertine of the famed fountain, we are down here with just a couple of guides and our photographer. The only sound is the water dripping from the tunnel’s roof, stalactites hanging overhead. Suddenly we hear a disconcerting rumble that wrests us away from our Roman reverie. “Don’t worry, that’s just the metro,” says D’Alonzo, pointing to parts of the aqueduct that have been strengthened with concrete to counter this relatively recent addition to the city’s subterranean infrastructure. As we wander slowly beneath Rome, D’Alonzo schools us in the history of the Vergine. It was built in just two years by the Romans, who relied on a series of wells for the water supply. 

Our day comes to a close with a visit to the water station by the Trevi Fountain, where the aqueduct ends. Inside the building, 18th-century pipes are still visible, their size and pressure dependent on each noble family’s status and ability to pay.

From our vantage point behind the fountain, we look through little windows to see people gathered on the other side of the water. And yet there’s no doubt where I would rather be: contemplating the unseen side of this famous city and the slow passage of the aqueduct’s watery cargo on its 23-hour journey to one of Rome’s busiest squares. The ancient Vergine, quite literally, keeps the city moving.

Interview: Christopher Luxon says debate over New Zealand’s founding document is finished

In 2023, New Zealand’s voters chose National Party leader Christopher Luxon to become their 42nd prime minister. With the country in recession, their decision might be seen as pragmatic – Luxon had decades of experience in the world of business, having served as the CEO of national flag carrier Air New Zealand between 2012 and 2019, before stepping down to run for parliament. He was elected as an MP in 2020 and became the leader of the opposition the following year. His swift rise reflects that of his internationally better-known predecessor, Jacinda Ardern. But that’s where their similarities largely end.

After a period when New Zealand was seen as a bastion of progressive internationalism, the country, like many others, has turned inwards, focusing on domestic issues such as the economy and housing. Another hot topic, which has dominated the first two years of Luxon’s term, is the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. Some on the right have criticised New Zealand’s founding document for affording too many rights and protections to the country’s indigenous Maori population – a complaint that has led to heated scenes in parliament and protests on the streets.

Late last year, Luxon acceded to the demands of a coalition partner, the right-wing act New Zealand party, to hold a parliamentary vote on rewriting some of the treaty’s principles. The bill caused the prime minister’s personal approval rating to plummet. Just days after it was definitively voted down in April, Monocle joined Luxon on a meet-and-greet trip to the city of New Plymouth, a centre of dairy farming and energy exploration. Following a barbecue at a bee farm, we sat down to discuss Ardern, Donald Trump and the Treaty of Waitangi.

We were surprised to learn that you fly commercial.
Yes, it’s the way to get around in New Zealand. We travel commercial because it’s efficient but it’s also a great way to meet and talk to people. It’s always good to get out there – into the provinces, where people can tell you what’s going on. It’s an important aspect of being a politician, just as it was for me as a business leader. You need to see what’s going on, to hear about the challenges that people are facing and also about the opportunities.

From an international perspective, New Zealand was put on the map by Jacinda Ardern and the progressive, empathetic image that she had on the global stage. Did you take any lessons from her time as prime minister?
Everyone does it differently because you inherit the country at a specific time. You play the cards that you’re given and have to deal with the situation that you have in front of you. In our case, we inherited a pretty poor economy from the Ardern-Hipkins years [Chris Hipkins was Ardern’s successor as prime minister and is now the leader of the New Zealand  Labour Party]. That’s why New Zealanders voted them out. It has been challenging to work through a recession and get the country out of that economic mess. But the key thing for New Zealand and its place in the world is that it punches above its weight.

There seemed to be a disconnect with Ardern: abroad, she was seen as a visionary progressive with a strong set of values but, at home, her popularity waned with the economy. What you’re seeing across global politics is that populations are increasingly frustrated with politicians who only have nice bumper stickers and soundbites. Voters want things to get done: they want to see results and improvements to their everyday lives, especially coming out of the coronavirus experience, which left us with high inflation, high interest rates and, in our case, a recession.

Donald Trump’s second term has already had an enormous effect on economies across the globe, particularly through tariffs. How exposed is New Zealand?
We’re relatively well positioned. We believe very strongly that tariffs aren’t good. We are free traders. Alongside Singapore, New Zealand was among the initial countries that established what’s called the CPTPP [Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership], which is probably the most comprehensive free-trade agreement that the world has at the moment. The free movement of goods and services is a good thing. Therefore, we don’t advocate for tariffs. What we’re trying to do is to ensure that we stay very cool, calm and collected as we work our way through those issues with the US administration. We have a good relationship with the Americans and will continue to have positive and constructive ties with them. We might disagree when it comes to [tariffs] but we can still have a very good relationship going forward.

What are New Zealand’s major exports to the US?
We have three: red meat, wine and dairy. We sell premium products and expect to continue to do so.

What is your relationship like with China? Do you have a lot of eggs in that basket, in terms of both trade and security?
We have a very longstanding and important relationship with China. It is our largest trading partner and we co-operate in areas around trade, the climate and renewables. But we also acknowledge that we have different political histories, cultures and values. China is one of the countries in this multipolar world that is now shaping global politics. So we call out those differences. I have done so with the country’s president, Xi Jinping – publicly, privately, consistently and predictably. Where we have issues or points of difference, we are not afraid to raise them. Of course, we continue to look for areas where we can co-operate but we disagree where we must.

In your eyes, what are the core values that define being a Kiwi?
It’s all about fairness: we just believe that everyone deserves a fair shot. We don’t like it when people rise too high or fall too low, so we keep things pretty even. We’re highly innovative and creative. We’re also very resourceful. We can talk to kings and paupers. We don’t have a lot of time for hierarchy and self-imposed status. We take people as they are.

I have lived in Sydney, then I was in London, Chicago, Toronto and then New York. When you come from a small country, you tend to have a more generalist set of skills. You also value people and understand those who are different from you. So you’re quite happy walking across a room and hearing some of the points of view that others have. Curiosity has served me very well, as has my Kiwi-ness. They have contributed to my success in my business career and my ability to take things on and learn. In the process of doing so, you pick up the good things from other countries and cultures that you see and build them into your game.

How committed is New Zealand to the Five Eyes intelligence partnership with the US, UK, Canada and Australia? Have the recent revelations about the White House’s Signal group-chat leak given you any hesitation?
We are very comfortable in Five Eyes. We have been collaborating with our partners, in an intelligence sense, for a long time. We want to ensure that we are making our own contributions and are following through with investment in our intelligence services but also in our broader defence capabilities as well. We are very proud of these relationships and they’re important for New Zealand. The alliance helps to keep New Zealanders safe.

So, knowing how the intelligence information is handled, managed and cared for by our allies, I have every confidence in Five Eyes. I’m very comfortable with the ways in which our partners use what we provide them with – and also with how we use the information that they give us. 

After Washington’s recent decision to cut US international development projects in the Pacific, Australia had to jump in and take over, which it did.What is New Zealand’s role in terms of development in the region? Do you foresee that you’ll have to take on a bigger role – or a greater share of it – in the future?
We think that it’s important for the US to reinstate that funding and to continue with its work in the Pacific. We have raised this with the US administration and made our case. Meanwhile, both Australia and New Zealand have been increasing aid spending in the region. We have deep relationships with the Pacific and I have spent a lot of time there. Auckland is actually the biggest Polynesian city in the world. We understand how the Pacific thinks because, in many ways, it’s how New Zealand thinks. We can grasp its issues and that makes us a very valuable partner. 

You have a new golden-visa scheme. Can you tell us a little about it?
One of the things that we need to do in order to lift our standard of living and economic productivity is to welcome more direct foreign investment to New Zealand. There are two parts to this. First, there was our recent Infrastructure Investor Summit, which was about making the pitch to sovereign wealth and pension funds to partner with government to build crucial infrastructure in the country. The second part is to say to high-net-worth individuals, “Look, there are pathways to residency here if you make investments in productivity enhancing assets in the country.” 

When we had a similar thing going on in the past, we would get a NZ$2.2bn [€1.2bn] investment from high-net-worth individuals, initially as part of the visa process – but then, once they were here in the market and were comfortable, and had built networks, they would invest almost the same amount of money again. When we have a foreign investor here partnering with a New Zealand firm, there’s an injection of capital that enables growth, and there’s often knowledge transfer as well.

I saw a fantastic business collaboration a couple of weeks ago in a place called Cromwell, near Queenstown. A New Zealand building company had partnered with a Swiss firm on the on-site manufacturing of buildings that were up to four- or five-storeys high. That brought in capital and also some Swiss thinking. Plus, it created opportunities for our products to go out into the world.

Another issue that New Zealand is facing domestically is housing. Between 40 and 50 per cent of Kiwis can’t afford to own their own home. How are you working to mitigate this?
The housing market is complex. First and foremost, we have plenty of land in this country. We are the size of the UK and Japan but with only five-and-a-bit million people living here. So a lot of this is about working with our councils to unlock the land, to rezone it, to allow and plan for 30 years of growth. It’s a supply-side problem. We have artificially constrained supply, which has driven up prices.

The Treaty Principles Bill, which aimed to rewrite some of the points in the Treaty of Waitangi, was recently resoundingly voted down in parliament. What are your reflections on that?
We operate in a mixed-member proportional political system here, similar to in Western European countries. There are six political parties in our parliament, each with strong and differing views. My party is the largest and we formed a coalition government with two minor ones. We have strong alignment on many things but there are areas where we differ and it was part of the coalition agreements that we have to compromise. So we had a debate about the issue. One party wanted to hold a full national referendum on the bill. We found a compromise, which was a first and then second reading in parliament.

Where will you go from here on the issue? The ACT party’s leader, David Seymour, who instigated the bill, has vowed to keep it alive.
No, we’re finished. We’re done. We had the conversation, had the debate and discussion. We’re moving on.

In your opinion, what is the role of New Zealand’s Maori population? And also the Maori language, the Waitangi Treaty and Waitangi Day?
It’s very important. The Treaty of Waitangi is our country’s founding document. It’s about the relationship between iwi – Maori tribes – the Crown and the government. It’s a crucial piece and we have wrestled with it for 185 years. It has made our country much better, much more tolerant. I’m very proud of it. 

When I look at the history of race relations in many other countries across the globe, I think that the Treaty of Waitangi has served New Zealand incredibly well. It hasn’t been easy: we’re debating the interpretation of the treaty and what it means in the modern world. But we’re not afraid of those conversations and shouldn’t be.

One final question: the film director James Cameron recently became a citizen of New Zealand. Are you expecting a potential influx of applications from the US?
We’ve got him – I mean, why wouldn’t you want to be a New Zealand citizen? This is the best country on Earth. We welcome people from all around the world. When they come to this country and experience it, and see a way of life that’s different from what they have known at home, you can see them fall in love with it. Kiwis are open and friendly, and welcome everybody. If people can contribute here and they want to be citizens, we welcome them because we are much richer and better in all senses by virtue of the waves of immigration here. I’m proud of anyone who wants to be a New Zealand citizen.

Different strokes: the unique canvas works of Pol Taburet and Claire Oswalt

The art of the eerie
Pol Taburet
Paris

When Pol Taburet was a child, his mother would take him to look around museums. It was
a natural choice of activity for her: she was a museum guard at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. “She wasn’t educated in art,” says Taburet. “But working all the time in those rooms, you become sensitive to the paintings.” That sensitivity, and an insatiable enthusiasm for the medium, has clearly trickled down.

When Monocle visits Taburet’s studio on the outskirts of Paris, we catch the 28-year-old in the middle of a busy period. He’s just wrapped up a solo exhibition at Madrid’s Pabellón de los Hexágonos – huge paintings that were created specifically for the church-like space. Now he’s finalising the paintings and sculptures for a show at Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin. Next, he’ll be off to Brazil to spend two months creating work to display at the São Paulo Biennial from September.

In his paintings, Taburet typically depicts ghostly figures. Sometimes they sit around the bright white of a tablecloth, in other works figures float and body parts freewheel across the canvas. For someone as warm and effervescent as Taburet, the works seem to have a dark underbelly. But he insists that it’s honesty, rather than darkness, on show. “I am trying to paint something real,” he says. Even if there is a sense of violence within the work, there’s a softness to it too. It’s “violence with gloss on top”, he says. “It makes it easier to look at.”

Francis Bacon is an obvious comparison but Taburet has found more inspiration in the likes of Edvard Munch or Roberto Matta. Taburet is also influenced by what he finds in books such as 1993’s L’art Océanien, a doorstopper full of interesting shapes and faces. But if he had to pick one enduring influence, there’s little competition: South Park. “When you want to talk to children, you have to have this efficiency of information,” he says. “South Park is the best for that, only using round, square and rectangle shapes. But so much is happening.” Taburet thinks that it’s this meeting of venerated art history and childish cartoons that has led to his individuality as an artist. He’s humbled by his success and how his work – “this dark humour, these freaky images”– seems to speak to so many people.

Parts of a whole
Claire Oswalt
Austin

Texan painter Claire Oswalt ascribes to the theory that all art is generated by the subconscious. “People often ask me where the inspiration for my colours comes from,” she says from her studio in Austin. “And I have absolutely no idea.” After long stints in Los Angeles and New York, the 46-year-old returned to her hometown. Though the Texan capital is an enclave of creativity and progressivism in a state not famed for such things, it is a very different environment from the two megacities that dominate America’s artistic output. Still, any attempts by Monocle to impose a geographical stamp on Oswalt’s work are politely rebuffed. “I don’t feel like my location has much to do with it,” she says. “There’s a quote from the Wim Wenders’ movie Wings of Desire, in which a character says, ‘‘Behind closed eyes, close your eyes once more.’ And I feel like that’s the place from which I’m working.”

Despite this, the colours of Oswalt’s recent output seem to be more informed by the natural than the interior world. And though the scale of the collaged paintings speaks to the western US tradition of grand vistas, their nature and construction are anything but brash or broad brushstroke. Indeed, each honours “that tiny moment of making that first mark on the paper”. This first mark comes after a painstaking process involving the accumulation of dozens, or even hundreds, of pieces of paper piled high on her studio floor. “It’s quite a live thing,” she says. “When I start to move them around, that’s when these abstract pieces emerge… And the edges of these collage papers become the seams of my work.”

Oswalt attributes the methodical, even mathematical, way of producing work to her grandparents. Her grandfather was an engineer who made stained glass in his free time, while her grandmother was an oil painter. “And that kind of dichotomy of math and painterly aspects carried through for me.” 

She describes the final process of bringing all the components of her collages together as symphonic. “I’m fascinated by this idea that, especially in a symphony setting, you can have one instrument, one note, and then you put it all together and you’ve created an opera.”

Why can’t young people dance?

For years the media was obsessed with all the things that the millennial generation was supposedly killing, from fabric softener and home ownership to mayonnaise. But now their successors, Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012), have been handed an even graver charge: being unable to dance. In a series of videos that went viral on social media in April, incredulous observers filmed groups of young people standing completely still or glued to their screens on the dance floors of nightclubs. How is it that the so-called Tiktok generation – named for an app that owes much of its success to carefully choreographed dance challenges – is incapable of losing itself to the music?

Well, for one, outside of North Korea or a Texas rodeo, dance floors are not made for regimented routines.They’re a place to escape the lines of life, anonymous amid a mass of bodies and beats. This abandon is much more difficult if you’re under constant surveillance, of course. When you grow up under the all-seeing eye of social media, you develop a fear of being filmed doing something stupid. We used to dance like no one was watching; now we dance like everyone is. In Europe clubs are increasingly insisting on placing stickers over phone cameras so that nobody has to worry about ending up a laughing stock the next day.

Then there’s the fact that clubbing is facing an existential crisis, in part fuelled by the younger generation’s general apathy towards nightlife. In the UK alone, some 400 night clubs have closed over the past five years, about a third of the country’s total. We can blame the pandemic for a chunk of that (and we can blame consequent lockdowns for the younger generation missing out on early clubbing experiences) but there are other factors at play. A major one is that young people can’t afford to go out like they used to: Danish nightlife conglomerate Rekom Group’s research suggests that over 77 per cent of British people have cut down on late nights out due to the cost-of-living crisis. 

Given that they came of age during successive lockdowns and were thrust into a world in which they can’t afford to go out, how can we expect Gen Z to know what to do in a club once they get there? Many, it seems, can’t even rely on the social lubricant that is alcohol. A recent survey of 18 to 24-year-olds by market-reserach firm Yougov highlighted this cohort as the most sober group among adults, with 39 per cent of respondents not drinking any alcohol at all. And when they are drinking, Gen Z are increasingly drawn to strange concoctions, such as Malibu and milk. I can’t imagine a worse time to throw your body around than after a big swig of any combination of milk and liquor. As for the other kind of white stuff, some reports claim that Gen Z are less likely to consume class A drugs than previous generations. Though some say otherwise, with anecdotal reports suggesting that younger people favour drugs such as hallucinogens and ketamine, both of which aren’t generally associated with the desire to dance. 

Ultimately, social media will never tell us the full story. “Every new generation has a subtly different relationship with club culture compared to those who came before them,” Ed Gillett, author of Party Lines: Dance Music and the Making of Modern Britain, tells Monocle. “There have always been boring, sterile clubs full of disinterested people and rubbish dancers.” That said, the current generation of aspiring party people does face a number of obstacles to throwing their hands in the air like they just don’t care. And if the dance floor can so easily be murdered, what chance does mayonnaise have?