THE JURY OF THE 15TH ARTE LAGUNA PRIZE

Bénédicte Alliot, Ph.D, was Assistant professor at Université Paris-Diderot, then the Director of the French Institute of South Africa in Johannesburg and the cultural attachée of the French Embassy in India in New Delhi (2002-2010).
She then worked at Institut français in Paris, coordinating State-to-State festivals, and City-to-City festivals. Since 2016, she is the Director General of the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, a residency centre welcoming simultaneously 326 artists from all over the world.

Nathalie Anglès is the Executive Director and co-founder of Residency Unlimited (RU). Founded in 2009, RU is a Brooklyn based non-profit organization that promotes exchange and diversity through its customized residency program and year-round public programs for US based and international artists and curators. A graduate of The École du MAGASIN curatorial studies program in Grenoble, (Le Magasin – Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble France), Nathalie has worked in institutions in the US and Europe. Her extensive experience in the field of artist residencies began managing the residency program for US based artists at the American Center in Paris, followed by a position as Director of Location One’s International Residency program in New York from 2000-2008. Nathalie also worked in a curatorial and administrative capacity in institutions such as École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts and Union centrale des Arts décoratifs in Paris as well as Sotheby’s London in the Impressionist and Modern art department. In 2008, Nathalie received the French government distinction Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

From 2006 to 2017 at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, he taught Curating Methodology in Campo, a course for curators, and was involved in the organization and development of exhibition projects in the institution’s spaces in Turin and Guarene d’Alba, in addition to the exhibitions of the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection abroad.
He was the curator of the Residency for Young Foreign Curators for three editions from 2015 to 2017.
From 2018 he took over the artistic direction of ART CITY Bologna, a series of exhibition events in the city taking place during Arte Fiera; he is a member of the board of directors of AMACI – Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums and of the coordination of the Forum of Italian Contemporary Art.
Among the exhibitions he recently curated: That’s IT! Sull’ultima generazione di artisti in Italia e a un metro e ottanta dal confine (22 June 2018 – 6 January 2019); Mika Rottenberg (31 January – 19 May 2019); Julian Charrière. All we Ever Wanted Was Everything and Everywhere (9 June – 8 September 2019); Cesare Pietroiusti. Un certo numero di cose / A Certain Number of Things (4 October 2019 – 6 January 2020); AGAINandAGAINandAGAINand con opere di Ed Atkins, Luca Francesconi, Apostolos Georgiou, Ragnar Kjartansson, Susan Philipsz, Cally Spooner, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (23 January – 3 May 2020).
Since 2020 collaborats with the University of Bologna as part of the Master AMaC – Arts, Museology and Curatorship.

Marcus Fairs is founder and editor-in-chief of Dezeen. He is the first digital journalist to be awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The honour, for “the enormous contribution he has made to architecture,” was bestowed in January 2017.
In 2018 he was named one of the 1,000 most influential people in London by the Evening Standard. Other accolades he has won include journalist of the year and business editor of the year.
A 3D design graduate, Marcus began his journalism career writing for architecture title Building Design and later for Building, where he rose to deputy editor. He also freelanced for publications including Blueprint, The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday and Conde Nast Traveller.
He launched Icon, the international architecture and design magazine, in 2003, and edited the publication until November 2006. Under Marcus, the magazine rapidly established itself as one of the world’s most influential and respected design journals, winning a string of awards including Launch of the Year and Designer of the Year in 2003 and Monthly Magazine of the Year in 2005 and 2006.
Marcus himself won numerous awards for Icon, including Journalist of the Year (2002) and Architectural Journalist of the Year (2004). He won a BSME award for Best Brand-Building Initiative in 2005.
Marcus regularly appears on radio and TV, writing and presenting a documentary about French designer Philippe Starck for the BBC in 2003 and appearing in the major BBC series Home in 2006. An accomplished public speaker, Marcus has spoken at conferences in London, Tokyo, New York, Stockholm and Cape Town, among others.
Marcus launched Dezeen at the end of November 2006 and the site has grown rapidly ever since, now attracting over two million unique visitors every month. It is widely regarded as the most influential and popular design website in the world.
In 2007 he was joined by Rupinder Bhogal and together they set up Dezeen Limited, which they now run as co-directors. They launched the recruitment site Dezeen Jobs in 2008, followed by Dezeen Watch Store in 2010.
As founder and editor-in-chief of Dezeen, Marcus has won awards including the BSME’s Business Web Editor of the Year in 2013. In the same year he was named one of the 100 most influential figures in the UK creative industries by the Hospital Club. In 2011, French magazine Architectural Digest placed him in the 100 Qui Comptent list of the most important figures in global design.
Books written by Marcus are Twenty-First Century Design (originally published in October 2006 and now in its third edition), Green Design (published March 2009), Dezeen Book of Ideas (published September 2001 and now sold out) and Dezeen Book of Interviews (published May 2013).

Critic and art curator. He works with galleries, institutions and public and private spaces for the organization and curation of exhibitions, meetings and conferences including Park Eun Sun: Infinito, personal exhibition at Kyro Art Gallery, Pietrasanta (LU) in August/September 2020 ; In the Matter of Color, a traveling exhibition that from 2018 to 2020 was held in the following places: Whitestone Gallery in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Palazzo Monferrato in Alessandria, Dep Art Gallery in Milan; Paolo Masi: Pittura, vibrazione e segno. 60 anni di ordinata casualità, FerrarinArte online exhibition, Legnago (VR) in collaboration with Kromya Art Gallery, Lugano (Switzerland) in February/March 2020; Sandi Renko Fuori dalle righe 1969-2019 at Palazzo Monferrato, Alessandria in January/February 2020; Wolfram Ullrich. Puro colore, pura forma at Dep Art Gallery in Milan in June / September 2018. He has been a member of the jury of several national and international art awards. Professor of history of art. Since 2004 he has been the curator, tutor and coordinator for the Artivisive San Fedele Award promoted by the San Fedele Foundation of Milan and addressed to young artists. From 2005 to 2017 he was a member of the jury of the Boccioni Prize organized by the L.A.S. “Umberto Boccioni” in Milan, collaborates with the “Federico Faruffini” Civic School of Art in Sesto San Giovanni (MI), the San Clemente Cultural Linguistic Center and the SantaGiulia Academy of Fine Arts in Brescia.
He regularly writes articles and reviews for contemporary art magazines: Espoarte (of which he is director of Web and Digital), Title, Juliet, Segno L’Urlo, Brianzalife.

Sophie Goltz is a curator and educator. She currently teaches as an Assistant Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media of Nanyang Technological University Singapore. Additionally, she has served as Deputy Director of Research and Academic Education at NTU Centre of Contemporary Art Singapore until 2020. She has held the position of the Artistic Director of Stadtkuratorin Hamburg (curator of the Art in Public Space programme Hamburg) from 2013 to 2016, while also teaching at the University of Arts Hamburg (HFBK). Before she worked as an Associate Curator and Head of Communication and Public Programmes at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK) while lecturing at the Art Academy Berlin-Weißensee and University of Arts Berlin (UdK). As an art educator, she worked for Documenta 11 and Documenta 12 (Kassel, 2002/2007), 3rd Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (Berlin, 2004), Project Migration (Cologne, 2004/2005). She curated exhibitions and research projects internationally, amongst others in Dresden, Berlin, Bologna, Hamburg, Madrid, Manila, Mexico-City, Sao Paulo, Santiago de Chile, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Vienna. Recent publications include, amongst other Passages; Art in Public Space Hamburg since 1981 (Leipzig, 2021), Culture City. Culture Scapes (together with Ute Meta Bauer and Khim Ong, Singapore, 2020), Conditions of Political Choreography (together with Marius Babias, Sergio Edelsztein, Chen Tamir, Tel Aviv/Berlin, 2018), Andreas Siekmann: To the Politics of the Excluded Fourth (together with Andreas Siekmann, Cologne, 2015). In 2020, she has been appointed as the Director of the International Summer Academy in Salzburg.

Began designing in Japan and Milano from 1969. Kita has designed many best-seller products from European and Japanese manufacturers world-wide. Many of his works are selected for permanent collections in world famous museums such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), etc. He has served as governmental advisor to Singapore, Thailand and China for their country’s revitalization of its design resource. He is also very active in revitalizing and promoting local Japanese traditional crafts and industries as well. Producer of the international trade fair for home and lifestyle renovation “Living & Design” and proponent of Japanese lifestyle renovation, the “RENOVETTA” project. Professor at The Osaka University of Arts. In 2015, his invitational exhibition “Il Lusso Della Natura” was held at Chiesa San Domenico Church in ALBA. Multi-international awards include the 1990 “Delta de Oro (Gold Prize)” Award of Spain and the ADI Lifetime Achievement Award “Compasso d’Oro alla carriera internazionale” in Italy in 2011. In 2016, he was invited to serve as ADI International Jury of Compasso d’Oro, Italy. He was bestowed with the honorary title of “Commendatore” by the Italian republic, in 2017.
Received an “Intellectual Property Achievement Awards” from Japan Patent Office (JPO) in 2018.
His recent publications include “Power of Design” (Nikkei Publishing Inc., 2007), “Local Industry + Design” (Gakugei Shuppan-Sha, 2009), “Venture for Design 1969 – Why I Went to Italy to Design” (Gakugei Shuppan-Sha, 2012), and many more.

Beate Reifenscheid, born 1961 in Gelsenkirchen, studied in Bochum and Madrid. After completing her doctorate, she worked as a trainee at the Saarland Museum in Saarbrücken, where she became head of the Graphic Collection and Public Relations in 1993. She is a lecturer at Saarland University and since 1997 director of the Ludwig Museum in the Deutschherrenhaus, Koblenz. She has been a lecturer in art history since 2000 and an honorary professor at the University of Koblenz-Landau since 2013.
From 2010 to 2016 Beate Reifenscheid was a member of the board and since 2017 she is president of ICOM Germany.
She was also a visiting professor at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in China from 2015 to 2018.