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The launch of The Lighthouse, Brooklyn, which provides a creative campus and studio playground for the creator generation

Neil Waller is co-founder and co-CEO of Whalar, a company that started in 2016 as an agency for social-media infuencers and has now become a cornerstone of the nexus of luxury and social media. He speaks to LUX about how creators and influencers are helping shape the future of the luxury experience

LUX: What does Whaler Group do?

Neil Waller: We focus on shaping the future of the creator economy. My co-founder and co-CEO, James Street, and I explore opportunities that aren’t obvious yet by pushing ideas, testing bold bets and bridging the future with today’s reality. James looks 24 months out, exploring what’s next; I focus six to 18 months ahead, turning those innovations into actionable strategies.

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

Our teams across the ecosystem turn the ideas into action, building the programmes, products and partnerships that creators and brands need. In short, we spot what’s next, help make it happen, and keep the business moving forward fast, creatively and a little ahead of the curve.

LUX: How have you stayed ahead of the game?

NW: Proximity to creators is our greatest advantage. That closeness gives us early insight into shifts in culture, platforms and monetisation, often before they’re obvious to the wider market. This agility allows us to anticipate change, move quickly and evolve alongside the creator economy, rather than react to it.

A portrait of Nick Waller, the co-founder and co-CEO of Whalar Group

LUX: Has Whalar Group helped create the new social-media marketing landscape?

NW: I remember when brands questioned if they even needed to be on Instagram, let alone invest in creators. Today, creator-led campaigns are multimillion-dollar, multi-platform initiatives integrated into the heart of brand strategy, spanning short-form, long-form and cultural activations. I’d like to think we’ve played a meaningful role in shaping today’s social-media marketing landscape and contributing to its growth in scale and sophistication.

LUX: How can luxury brands best benefit from social media now?

NW: Luxury brands today are moving beyond old top-down messaging to become culturally relevant, community-driven brands that reflect how modern luxury is experienced. Opportunity lies in honouring heritage while interpreting it through a contemporary lens, aligning legacy with the expectations of today’s audiences.

Brands like Jacquemus, Burberry and Loewe do this beautifully, approaching social and content with an entertainment-first mindset to capture hearts and reach broader, more value-driven audiences. These consumers spend half their watch time online with creators who make content for not to them, delivering experiences that resonate deeper than traditional ads, and are organically shared, discussed and remixed.

Creators enable luxury brands to speak to global audiences through diverse perspectives and lived experience. Brands can highlight craft, longevity and timelessness through culturally relevant storytelling. So don’t be surprised to see the rise of the Chief Entertainment Officer.

LUX: What do luxury brands get wrong?

Ontario-based TikTok dance stars and content creators Nathaniel James, Kadeem Hemmings and Nicholas McDonald of Basement Gang on CBC’s The Legacy Lounge

NW: Modern luxury consumers expect a 360° brand experience from goosebump-worthy social content to seamless in-store and online experiences. Some brands fall short in choosing creators based on personal taste, rather than strategy and cultural fit. The brands that win build ongoing cultural operating systems, not one-offs, and work with creators who authentically translate luxury for modern audiences. Online is prime time, so brands investing in creators over traditional ads can double ROI; those that don’t risk falling behind and losing consumer loyalty.

Ontario-based TikTok dance stars and content creators Nathaniel James, Kadeem Hemmings and Nicholas McDonald of Basement Gang on CBC’s The Legacy Lounge.

Read more: Making art in Palazzo Monti

LUX: What do creators get wrong?

NW: The key to success is clear alignment between creators and brands from the outset. Is the goal building an emotional connection with an audience or driving direct commerce? Both sides need to be explicit about objectives.

Impactful work happens when creators are treated as creative partners, not just distribution channels. We see more next-level collaborations where creators are integral to the brand ecosystem, like Dhar Mann being NFL Chief Kindness Officer. These “magic moments” show the power of integrating creators creatively and strategically. When brands and creators work with respect and shared vision, the result is culturally resonant and commercially effective.

Opening day at The Lighhouse, Brooklyn

LUX: Can you explain The Lighthouse?

NW: It’s Whalar Group’s first creative campus and studio playground for the creator generation, offering a platform to learn, make and belong. With Venice, CA, and Brooklyn, NY already open, it’s designed to empower creators and creative professionals with the space and tools they need to grow their businesses.

Each campus features state-of-the-art, mixed-use content studios and hosts programmes that encourage collaboration, learning and innovation. The Lighthouse gives creators and their teams a place to co-create, connect and lead, helping shape the future of creative culture while expanding their opportunities and capabilities.

LUX: What is your five-year vision?

NW: The most exciting aspect of the creator economy is creators evolving from solopreneurs into media and entertainment companies. They are not just building audiences but enterprises. I want us to be a supporting catalyst and active participant in building that future with creators.

LUX: What’s the greatest challenge with that?

NW: The challenge is maintaining ambition and innovation while ensuring ideas translate into business outcomes. It would be easy to coast, but we strive to keep an innovator’s mindset. Jeff Bezos was told he had “enough ideas to kill Amazon”, and that tension, making sure innovation drives growth, not just excitement, is what keeps the business moving forward.

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A portrait by Simon de Pury. With thanks to Alia Al-Senussi for the LUX introduction to Kulapat

Kulapat Yantrasast is the “starchitect”of the art world, designing a new department of the Louvre in Paris, the upcoming National Museum in New Delhi, and Dib Bangkok, the recent contemporary art museum in his native Thailand. In a scintillating conversation, the Thai master speaks with LUX Senior Contributing Editor Maria Sukkar about his East Asian philosophy and South Asian awareness of how outdoors and indoors can flow

Maria Sukkar: You’re one of the most thoughtful voices working at the intersection of architecture and culture. I thought we could speak about your beginnings. You trained under Tadao Ando. What stayed with you most from that experience?

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Kulapat Yantrasast: Thank you. I was born in Thailand and have lived in Japan for 15 years. And of those 15 years, eight were with Tadao Ando. So he’s my mentor and, to be honest, the only job I had until I started my own company. So, he really is my mentor in that strong sense. I think I learned most about the process of the synergy of discipline and freedom. It’s very Zen. So that’s a big part of what I feel. And his philosophy and his work go hand in hand. There’s a direct relationship between what he believes in and what the architecture conveys in terms of the philosophy.

MS: When did you realised that architecture could operate as a cultural and social force?

Dib Bangkok contemporary art museum, 2025 , by Kulapat Yantrasast’s Why Architecture

KY: I have always admired architecture that has the power to inspire and impact. When I was young back in Thailand, I was destined, like all Asian kids, to be a lawyer or a doctor. But I knew deep down I really wanted to work in creative fields and architecture.

I went to a lecture by a poet and asked him, “What’s your advice to someone who wants to become an architect?” He looked at the steps near where we were sitting and said, “If you can design these steps so that when people reach the top, they reach enlightenment, then I think you’re doing a good job.” That’s his answer.

Read more: Making art in Palazzo Monti

And I realised he meant that architecture has a power, that when you walk up something you can be inspired, you can be enlightened. So from that point on, I felt that it has such a potential, not only just to shelter people, but to inspire and to philosophise.

MS: How do you create these spaces that allow for contemplation, especially now, in a world that is increasingly fast and disconnected?

The Michael C Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2025 by Why Architecture

KY: I think, like all art, it comes from the passion or the feelings you have in yourself. From then, the work or the art or, here, the buildings can be the vehicle that helps convey that to others. So it needs that foundation. I can only have my own senses and experiences, and they are the anchor. Within that, the tools are at your disposal. The tools – the use of light, proportion, materials, and other ingredients of architecture – allow you to create an environment and allow people to feel peaceful, or uplifted. But it has to be something I myself feel.

I spent a lot of time and I paid a lot of attention to things, to everything I experienced, whether buildings or cities or a park – or any place. So I always remember that moment when the light came through. I’m very much in love with gardens. So when I’m in a garden or park, I remember those moments and, in my head, I always go back to that place, that particular experience, that I want to recreate.

MS: The word that comes to mind is fluidity: for you to be able to go from one experience, trying to recreate it, to the other. But also, I can see fluidity between the projects you create between art museums and urban environments. Was that always your intention?

Grand Rapids Art Museum, 2007 by Why Architecture

KY: Thank you. I love it, I’ve never used it before, but now I’m going to adopt it with your blessing. Because number one, I love water. I think water is the source of life, as we know, and fluidity. Sometimes people use the word flexibility, and flexibility is not as good as fluidity. Flexibility is like a play dough that you play with. Fluidity is really transformative.

I feel I became that way because when I went to Japan – I lived in Japan for 15 years – I would try to figure out what my energy is. I see my Thai roots as fluid, very flexible and fluid, eclectic. It’s Indochina, which is between India and China, and because of that there is a sense of fluidity and this kind of eclectic adaptation, so that you can respond to both big influences from these two big giants.

Read more: Photography in conversation with the new American West

When I go to Japan, even though I love Japan and I love how I feel, I feel everything is so rigid, so precise and so minimal. Within that, even though I love it and I work within it and it’s part of me, too, I feel sometimes that it can be lifeless, so I long for that kind of immersion of taste and smells and everything. That’s when I say, it’s my Thai roots showing. I think the fluidity perhaps comes from that bridge between the maximalism of Thai style and the minimalism of Japanese style.

A view from the Louvre’s new Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art Department by Why Architecture, to open in 2027

MS: So I’m going to let you in on a little secret. My father was an architect and a civil engineer and my maternal grandfather was also an architect and I was raised in that milieu where it’s about beautiful lines and beautiful structures. I’ve always thought that architecture sits at the crossroads between engineering and art because it’s creating, it’s not only calculating how many concrete tons you need to build the structure, which is not as poetic and romantic as being an architect, and many of your projects sit at this intersection between architecture and contemporary art. Do you approach a museum differently?

KY: Thank you. I love what you said about being the marriage or the balance between the structure or the logic and the aesthetic, which is the art itself. I feel very strongly that this is part of architecture and we need to do both.

For building an art museum, or a museum in general, I feel it has the greatest potential to inspire people because the subject is the art. To be honest, a lot of architects like to become artists, and a lot of times they think of the museum itself as the art, at the expense of the art within. Sometimes it doesn’t give fair accommodation and experience to the art inside the building. So I feel strongly that the power of architecture is not to compete with the art. The power of architecture is to create an environment that integrates everything else, because way back when, architecture was like the big sister to accommodate everyone: painting, sculpture, opera, music, food, everything can happen in one architecture.

In modern times, things became fragmented: painting goes to the gallery, opera goes to the opera house. I feel that in our generation, it’s our job to bring everything together again, back to the fluidity aspect.

Kulapat Yantrasast with curator Naomi Beckwith and artist Bracha L Ettinger

Within that notion, when I design museums, I see myself as a matchmaker. How do I bring people together? I care a lot about people who don’t go to museums, because those people perhaps need my help the most. I want them to feel welcome, not intimidated, and able to explore and get their potential out. I want the design of the museum to be uplifting, friendly, and allow them to be themselves. On the other hand, I also want the art to feel elevated, within the right proportion, with light and other elements. So as a matchmaker, I make both parts look good, and then I stay in the background to make sure the magic happens.

Read more: Artists through the eye of Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

MS: So, as the role of museums is changing, you’re part of the movement, which is redefining the museum’s role. They’re not repositories of objects any more, their role is beyond that, and you’re helping them change the definition of a boring, dingy, dark, old museum. If you wanted to define the new role of a museum, what would be Kulapat’s definition of that role?

KY: I think that the museum is somewhat an impact from 19th-century colonisation. It started, as you said, as a depository. So what I would say is it is moving from the museum as a temple to the museum as a cultural playground.

Kulapat Yantrasast photographed with artist Yoko Ono

What I like about the cultural playground is it’s not hierarchical. People know how to use it, and it’s not random. If you have 10 minutes, you can play with it. If you have an hour, you can do it. It becomes a place that allows you to get in touch with your own creative side. Just as a playground allows you to get in touch with yourself, the museum should be used that way.

The museum is one of our most important resources. People think about museums as a third place in the world today, a place between work and life. Sometimes we think about recreation and social life. But I feel the art potential is that we should go to museums to understand ourselves, to be ourselves.

Museums are also sites of empathy, which is so needed today. They are places where we go to see art from other people. We should be able to love not only art from our own people, but from others. I thought about that because I grew up in Thailand. My father’s Chinese, my mother’s Thai. Even though they’re close together and there’s no conflict, my mother didn’t actually like a lot of Chinese culture, except Chinese food.

Yantrasast with artist Kelly Akashi and art-world banker Agnes Lew

I say this because culture has the power to bring people together. We don’t care who they are, but we love that food, we love that music. I think that museums are – like the project we’re doing at the Louvre, where Byzantine, Roman and early Christian areas work together with the Islamic wing – trying to create that sense of empathy, so people can see that, if we look closely, we all come from similar roots.

Read more: Mercedes-Maybach S-Class Review

MS: This is beautiful what you just said, this democratisation of the museum space. Because museums could be quite intimidating for people, but we see more and more that people go to museums and they’re curious about what happens inside. But back to what you speak about, I spoke about empathy because your practice speaks about empathy. How do you think empathy translates into your architecture?

KY: First of all, people need to feel dignified. They need to feel that they’re welcome and can feel their own presence. Good spaces make you feel that, good spaces make you feel your life and your potential. Once you are comfortable, once you feel you have a place, then you are able to really look at other people in a loving and understanding way. That sense of care is important in architecture.

Kulapat Yantrasast with interior designer Kelly Wearstler, photographed in Jaipur

My pet peeve is that I really hate it when spaces are not designed well, when they make people hate each other. Even something as basic as a queuing system can make people feel peaceful and wait for their time, or make them rush and push each other. That’s something we can design. I sometimes joke in my office: you design a house for a couple, and they can love each other or hate each other, it’s in your hands. If you design something a little too small, or not the right proportion, or not the right layout of the bathroom or kitchen, people end up in conflict.

Within that, there is humanity and humility in design, in planning and in aesthetic architecture, which can really bring people to understand each other further, not only people from different backgrounds, but even people who live together, like a family.

I’m very interested in the seamless indoor-outdoor component, maybe because I’m from the global south, where the climate allows you, or wants you, to be indoor-outdoor. I’m not in a strict cold climate, where there’s a severity between the outside and the inside. So I have that view and experience of nature that way.

Kulapat Yantrasast’s personal sketch of DIB Bangkok, devoted to LUX

I want to go back to what you said, because the idea of ego, the idea of form, is so important in architecture. People love sexy forms. It’s like fashion, like other things. But what I always say in the office is: design the life, not the form. Don’t stop at form. Form is only your tool to design the life you want people to live.

MS: What about the role of landscape?

Read more: Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul at Sultanahmet Review

KY: We have a multidiscipline studio. One of them is landscape, and we include our landscape team in projects when we’re not working on landscape, because I like the way they think. It’s a very different approach, because landscape designers think holistically. They think about the context of the city, continuity from the city to the site, and they think about time.

A garden, when it is first created, may be the least beautiful, because it grows over time. Whereas architecture, the first day it opens may be the most beautiful, and then it degrades. Because of that, I want my architects to think about how a place works over time, when trees grow bigger, when materials degrade. I think the philosophy from landscape can inform a lot of architecture.

why-site.com

Pilotus, 2025, by Sara Berman. As part of Glyndebourne Festival 2026, the artist presents a solo exhibition, ‘Entanglements: Sara Berman on Billy Budd’, responding to Michael Grandage’s production of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd.

The self-portraits of artist and former fashion designer Sara Berman explore the politics of presentation and performance alongside an attention to fabric worthy of an Old Master. Here, she presents a work as LUX’s artist in residence, and curator Catherine Loewe reflects on the artist’s feminist practice

“‘Pilotus’, from the Latin ‘to steer’ or ‘steersman’. This piece dances between genres, abstracting the figurative notion of both portraiture and paint. As character and performance play a subversive role, so do the formal concerns of painting itself, with patterning and abstract forms coalescing into a figurative notion” Sara Berman, London.

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“Sara Berman’s captivating work catechises multiple characters, often through the use of costume, with the form of the mischievous Harlequin from commedia dell’arte as underlying archetype. Unravelling the constructed nature of role-play, Berman engages herself as both protagonist and muse – a process she refers to as ‘auto-fiction’. Berman is currently working with Glyndebourne as its commissioned artist for the season, placing her practice in dialogue with the world of opera and performance” Catherine Loewe, curator and founder of Loewe Contemporary, London.

www.sarabermanartist.com

Edoardo Monti photographed with a 1750 fresco at Palazzo Monti

Since Edoardo Monti started his Palazzo Monti artists’ residency in Brescia, northern Italy, in 2017, it has evolved to become one of the most tasteful, sophisticated and respected artist residencies in the world, supported by patrons such as local hero Umberta Gnutti Beretta. Many of the more than 250 young artists he has featured have since exploded on to the global art scene, and collectors keep a careful watch. As the Palazzo opens its third space this year, in a Brescia bunker, Monti tells LUX the story so far, and two key collectors comment on what makes it important

“I started the Palazzo Monti Residency quite instinctively – I wanted to live surrounded by artists, to create a space where they could feel free, supported and genuinely at home while working.

An artists’ living room at the Palazzo Monti with Slick Submissions, 2018, by Bea Bonafini

In terms of discovering the artists for the residency, it’s mutual – we find each other. I am drawn to artists with a certain sensitivity and urgency, something you feel immediately, before you can even explain it.

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Often, the relationship starts quite intuitively, but it develops over time into something much more layered. Many of the artists who pass through Palazzo Monti don’t just come for a residency – they stay connected, come back or evolve with us in different ways.

The palazzo’s nearby second space, Fertile, with La cena del cacciatore, 2024, by Luca Ceccherini, and Then Glut Thy Sorrow on a Morning Rose, 2022, by Delphine Hennelly

There’s a sense of continuity that becomes very important. For example, there have been artists who arrived at an early stage of their practice, using the residency as a moment of experimentation, and then returned later with a much more defined body of work, sometimes even exhibiting in the same spaces where they started. In other cases, collaborations have extended beyond Brescia, through exhibitions, introductions to collectors or simply ongoing dialogue.

In 50 years time, I would like history to say that Palazzo Monti was a place where artists felt seen early on, where important practices were nurtured quietly and where meaningful relationships began and lasted over time.”

– Edoardo Monti

The programme’s Fertile space with Nobody But You/Nobody’s Gonna Fuck Me Like Me, 2019, by Sophie Spedding

“Palazzo Monti stands out for its ability to nurture artists at a pivotal stage in their careers, thanks to Edoardo’s thoughtful and hands-on approach. The residency brings forward compelling practices. I am glad to have works by Konstantina Krikzoni, Georg Wilson, Natalia Gonzalez Martin, Anna Ruth, Charlotte Edey, Diane Dal-Pra, Lindsey Bull and Nour El Saleh in my collection, discovered through the programme”

Read more: Artists through the eye of Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

– Francesca Milani, collector and patron

The new gallery space Bundervik, set in a former air-raid shelter

“I see Edoardo Monti’s residency at Palazzo Monti as a vital platform for emerging artists, fostering meaningful dialogue and experimentation. His vision creates a rare balance between support and freedom. I have followed several artists from the programme closely and I am pleased to have work by Sara Birns, Oxana Tregubova, Konstantina Krikzoni and others in my collection”

– Warly Tomei, Venice-based collector and patron

palazzomonti.org

Reem El Roubi and Amir Daoud Abdellatif with 5.63° N, 0.00° E, 2025, by El Anatsui

Sudanese by birth, Reem El Roubi has become an influential and discerning advocate for African and West Asian art, and holds significant positions in some of the world’s most distinguished art institutions. She speaks to LUX about the importance of supporting culture

LUX: Why do you support artists?

Reem El Roubi: My husband Amir [Daoud Abdellatif] and I met many artists over the years, and see the art world as an ecosystem that fosters artists’ creativity, where collectors and patrons play a big role.

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

LUX: Do you consider yourself a patron of the arts and when did you realise that, if so?

RER: When I joined the Tate Africa Acquisitions Committee and became a patron of the Louvre Abu Dhabi and Sharjah Art Foundation in the UAE, though I have always supported artists.

Untitled, 1998, by Ahmed Shibrain. From the collection of Reem El Roubi and Amir Daoud Abdellatif

LUX: How can individuals best support artists in building their own collections?

RER: By investing in young, emerging and mid-career artists, as well as established ones. It’s powerful to see such artworks included alongside each other in private collections.

LUX: What mistakes have you made?

RER: Impulse buying without research and understanding of the artist’s practice.

LUX: African artists do not have the same infrastructure behind them as those from Europe or the US. Will this change?

RER: There are more and more galleries, institutions and foundations supporting artists from the African continent. Hopefully, that will lead to the development of an ecosystem to match that in Europe and the US. Artists such as El Anatsui and William Kentridge have shown the presence of such infrastructure.

LUX: Is there something called “African art” or is the continent too diverse for this term?

Figures from Procession, 1999, by William Kentridge.
From the collection of Reem El Roubi and Amir Daoud Abdellatif

RER: I do feel it is very difficult to generalise African Art. There is a clear distinction between each country with the richness of the culture, history and tribes. For example, I am a Sudanese woman who is an African and Arab.

LUX: What role has your committee at Tate played in supporting artists?

RER: Tate’s remits enable it to play a major role through building the national collection and bringing artists’ work to public attention. Tates Modern, Britain, St Ives and Liverpool have extensive partnerships and a global network.

Read more:

Read more: Photography in conversation with the new American West

LUX: What Sudanese artists do you admire?

RER: Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, who founded the Khartoum School in the 1960s alongside Ibrahim El-Salahi and Ahmed Shibrain. Kamala’s works focus on feminism, grief and zar rituals. Other significant artists include Mohamed Otaybi and Hussein Shariffe.

LUX: Government funding is in crisis. Are artists suffering?

Untitled, c 1964, by Ibrahim El-Salahi. From the collection of Reem El Roubi and Amir Daoud Abdellatif

RER: Yes, which is why art patronage has become increasingly important.

LUX: Will the Gulf ever have the institutional infrastructure of Europe or the US?

RER: This can already be seen in the UAE and Qatar. The Gulf has attracted top global and regional experts to form a unique relationship in creating institutional infrastructure. The success is also through the funding.

LUX: How is supporting artists best done?

RER: Institutions play a vital role in artists’ market valuation and the recognition of artists’ practices; individuals raise awareness and foster artists’ creativity through investments.

LUX: Do you have a strategy, or a dream?

RER: I see my role as more custodian than collector. I will continue my passion and see where this journey takes us.

tate.org.uk

louvreabudhabi.ae

sharjahart.org

Maryam Eisler and Alexei Riboud, whose photographs were at the heart of the exhibition The New American West: Photography in Conversation at 10 Corso Como, Milan

Myth, memory and a plurality of perspectives came together at 10 Corso Como, Milan, at events to celebrate the opening of The New American West: Photography in Conversation. The exhibition of photographs by Maryam Eisler and Alexei Riboud was presented alongside classic images of the genre by Paul Strand, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and more, revealing – across ever-intriguing evenings – the American West not as a single narrative, but an evolving and ever-intriguing idea

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Installation view of photographs by Alexei Riboud

“Presenting The New American West: Photography in Conversation at 10 Corso Como was truly transformative. With an amazing curatorial and architectural team, the show was designed like a solar system that placed the contemporary dialogue – between my and Alexei [Riboud]’s work – at its heart.

This arrangement radiated out into the art-historical context, giving fresh relevance to the story of the American West and helping viewers understand that unfolding dialogue between past and present, not to mention the ever-evolving narrative of the West.”

– Maryam Eisler, photographer

Howard Greenberg, Maryam Eisler, Alessio de Navasques, Tiziana Fausti, Gianluca Borghi, Carrie Scott and Alexei Riboud at the opening of The New American West: Photography in Conversation

“‘The New American West: Photography in Conversation’ has landed at the right spot: 10 Corso Como is a place of conversation; a global dialogue across time and among design, fashion, books and photography.

The American West is at a crossroads of cultures and populations and so is this historic concept store and space. The American West is a place of meditation and similarly 10 Corso Como invites you to reflect on global creation and to assess bridges between the arts”

– Alexei Riboud, photographer

Parker Calvert and Clayton Calvert with a photograph by Maryam Eisler

“This is the version of the exhibition I always dreamed we could launch. Alessio [de Navasques, co-curator] and Howard [Greenberg, co-curator] embraced it with such generosity and collaboration, and together we made it stronger.

Read more: Artists through the eye of Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

At 10 Corso Como the photographs finally breathe – the story of the American West unfolding across the walls”

– Carrie Scott, co-curator, ‘The New American West: Photography in Conversation’

Harsch Kumar Sood, Carrie Scott, Robert Popper pictured at the opening

“Bringing together photographers across generations has been an exceptional experience, rethinking the West as a lens on what America means today.

Working with Howard Greenberg’s archive was a true honour, and engaging with Alexei and Maryam’s contemporary perspectives has been equally rewarding. I’m genuinely pleased with both the result and its reception.”

– Alessio de Navasques, co-curator, ‘The New American West: Photography in Conversation’

maryameisler.com

alexeiriboud.com

Can and Sevda Elgiz, who have created the first private contemporary art museum in Turkey

Sevda and Can Elgiz are the prime philanthropists of the Istanbul contemporary art world, pioneers who, since 2001, have taken their private collection public via their eponymous private museum. Here, they tell LUX about supporting Turkish artists, and showing Turkish art to the world

LUX: Are you philanthropists, or collectors, or both?

Sevda Elgiz: We began our journey as collectors. Over time, we realised that supporting artists also requires a philanthropic commitment. Today, we see ourselves as both.

Follow LUX on Instagram: @luxthemagazine

LUX: Can, you come from a family with a significant background in art and culture. How has this affected your desire to do what you do?

Can Elgiz: As an architect, I believe that contemporary art is a part of architecture. My family has origins in Lesvos island, where it is said that my great-grandfather was also a philanthropist in his time. In honour of his memory, we organised exhibitions there at the Municipal Gallery of Mytilene.

A portrait of Sevda Elgiz at the Elgiz Museum

LUX: How does what you do support artists and how do you feel when you see the effects?

SE: In our space, which is open to the public as a private-collection museum, we give visibility to artists. We show both local and international artists with equal importance. One of our most significant initiatives is the open call, which we announce every year for sculptors to exhibit on our terrace, where large-scale works find a rare platform.

LUX: Is private patronage always essential for artists?

SE: Definitely. Artists need to be properly exhibited in national and international shows. They need catalogues, beautiful artist books and organised talks that help them become recognised.

LUX: How different is it supporting sculpture, and what are the complexities?

SE: Since we support large-scale sculptures, we face logistical and exhibiting difficulties. We can only exhibit around 30 sculptures at a time, and these are selected by a jury. We regret not being able to include many of them.

Sevda and Can Elgiz amongst the collection

LUX: Do you ever work with other art philanthropists?

SE: There are few non-profit art institutions that act as philanthropists. The major one is Lucien Arkas. He is a successful businessman from Izmır and has a wide collection of art, glass, sculpture, carpets and so on, and he has made museums in Izmir to share these with the public.

We did an exchange of our collections and exhibited them in our respective museums. That was a great project – and is to be continued in future. With T-One Association, of which I am a co-founder, we send young artists for residency and educational courses abroad.

Read more: Artists through the eye of Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

Recently we also did a collaboration with Alejandra Castro Rioseco’s MIA Collection to support women artists. We have around 150 friends and benefactors of Elgiz Museum who support our projects, and we extend our resources to art students.

LUX: Do you still acquire and collect and, if so, what is your focus?

SE: A collection never seems complete. Contemporary art collections are eclectic and reflect the inner world of the collector. Rather than a focus, our collection is guided by personal emotions.

Can Elgiz on the terrace, where sculptors have the opportunity to exhibit their large-scale work

LUX: What is your relationship with museums and institutions in Turkey and globally?

SE: Over the past 25 years, we have organised significant exhibitions by borrowing important works from major museums abroad, and we have also supported Turkish artists to exhibit internationally. The most significant one was a solo exhibition of Abdurrahman Öztoprak at Ca’Pesaro museum in Venice in 2008.

LUX: Are Turkish artists under-recognised locally and also internationally?

SE: We have many talented artists. Thanks to the Istanbul Biennial, as well as the growing number of foundations and museums, Turkish artists are gaining more recognition.

LUX: Do you feel you have made a significant difference – and how?

SE: We believe we have made a meaningful contribution by dedicating our terrace as a consistent platform for sculptors to present their work to the public.

Can Elgiz at the Permanent Collection, with works by Turkish and international artists

LUX: What has been your greatest challenge?

SE: Converting our contemporary art collection into a private museum open to the public was a challenge, when such initiatives were rare in Turkey. We think this has inspired other collectors to engage with contemporary art and open their collections to the public.

Read more: Mercedes-Maybach S-Class Review

Today, we are extremely happy when we see children and students coming to our museum and making use of our library, Archvarium.

LUX: What do you plan next?

SE: Our main commitment will be to support sculptors, which remains a vital part of our programme. We hope for a world shaped by peace, so that people can continue collecting, sharing and celebrating a passion for art.

elgizmuseum.org

Anastasia Mouawad, fifth generation member of family jeweller to the stars Mouawad, on what’s lighting up her summer. Produced by HRH Princess Lamya Al Saud

1. Mouawad Flower of Eternity Collection in turquoise

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2. Hermès Musc Pallida Essence de Parfum, Eau de Parfum and Body Cream

3. Kasa Lin Chabco Purple Sunglasses

5. L’Alingi Marina Bag

6. SimiHaze Beauty Lip and Cheek Colour Pigment in Lily

7. Ouai Wave Spray

8. Andrea Wazen Carol Mule 75 in Blue

9. Sarah’s Bag Golden Oasis Gold Jacket

10. Emi Jay Sweetheart Clip in Pink Cherry Pie

www.mouawad.com

Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo with We are the Revolution, 2000, by Maurizio Cattelan
, from her own collection

One of the world’s leading art philanthropists and patrons, Turin-based Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is a leading light of Italian contemporary art, Here, she shares the inside track on six artists who have caught her eye this year

Benni Bosetto (B. 1987, Merate, Italy)

With a practice ranging from drawing and sculpture to installation and performance, Benni Bosetto is one of the Italian artists I have been following with the most interest and I have also collected her works. I believe her research around the theme of the body, explored from an original perspective, is attuned to the current global tendencies.

Saturday Total Eclipse, 2021, by Benni Bosetto

Jem Perucchini (B. 1995, Tekeze, Ethiopia)

The works of Jem Perucchini, an Italian artist born in Ethiopia whose first institutional solo exhibition I presented at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in 2025, harmoniously combine references to the Renaissance and the 20th century, with Byzantine influences derived from his Ethiopian origins.

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I am fascinated by the way his paintings evoke a spirituality that draws on classical and ancient sources, interpreting them from a contemporary perspective.

Anemone (The Letter), 2024, by Jem Perucchini

Giulia Cenci (B. 1988, Cortona, Italy)

Giulia Cenci is one of the young Italian artists who have received considerable international acclaim in recent years, having exhibited at institutions such as the Venice Biennale, the High Line in New York and Mudam Luxembourg.

In her work she innovates the language of sculpture, mixing recycled materials with dust, resins or aluminium and often working on impressive site-specific projects. I have supported her practice by co-producing her installation for the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and acquiring works for my collection.

Scalata, 2021-2022, by Giulia Cenci

Pol Taburet (B. 1997, Paris, France)

Among the stars of a new generation of painters, Pol Taburet is a French artist of Guadeloupean origin who has captured global attention with his paintings populated by timeless figures.

Read more: Mercedes-Maybach S-Class Review

I was so immediately impressed by his powerful imagery – a combination of influences from Caribbean traditions, classical Western painting and contemporary culture – that I organised an exhibition of his work with Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Madrid at the Pabellón de los Hexágonos, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Desire and Stones, 2025, by Pol Taburet

Xin Liu (B. 1991, Xinjiang, China)

A Chinese artist and engineer, Xin Liu presents a new exhibition at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo this spring, in collaboration with K11 Art Hong Kong. I am interested in her practice because of its connection with ecology and sustainability.

Experimenting with hi-tech materials, she produces incredible sculptures that transform over time by activating chemical process or biodegradation.

The Permanent and Insatiable, 2025, by Xin Liu, installation view, Moody Center for the Arts, Houston

Adji Dieye (B. 1991, Milan, Italy)

The Italian Senegalese artist Adji Dieye investigates the founding narratives of nation states and their current influence on personal and collective identities. For me, the strength of her work lies in its political, research-based background and in her combination of photography and sculpture.

Read more: Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul at Sultanahmet Review

She prints images on fabric, creating installations that reflect on colonial and postcolonial history. The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo will be holding a solo exhibition of Dieye’s work in September 2026, in collaboration with Associazione Genesi.

From Culture Lost and Learned by Heart, 2021, by Adji Dieye, installation view, C/O Berlin

Works can be viewed through fsrr.org

LUX Correspondent Annie Preston with the Mercedes-Maybach S-class

LUX’s Annie Preston swaps her chic little Mini for 5.3 meters of rolling serenity in the form of a Mercedes-Maybach S-class

I drive a Mini convertible. It is small, it is nippy, it is the sort of car you can park anywhere in London if you squint hard enough and believe in yourself. So, when I was invited to the media launch of the new Mercedes-Maybach S-Class, I felt a bit like a Shetland pony owner being handed the reins of a Grand National winner. What, exactly, was I meant to do with all this car?

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The answer, as it turns out, is very little, and that is precisely the point. The Maybach asks you to occupy it. Sliding into the rear cabin for the first time, doors closing themselves with a soft, ceremonial hush, I understood immediately that this was not a car built for me to do anything to it. It was built for it to do things for me.

The Mercedes-Maybach S 680 runs on a V-eight-cylinder engine, producing 450 kilowatts and 850 newton metres

Which brings me to the horsepower, because one must be responsible. Under the bonnet of the range-topping Mercedes-Maybach S 680 sits a newly evolved V-eight-cylinder engine producing 450 kilowatts and 850 newton metres plus 205 newton metres, numbers that mean, in practice, that this cocoon of calm, roughly the weight of a small elephant, can still put a smug little Porsche in its mirrors if the mood takes it.

There is even, in selected markets, a V12 still on offer for those who consider eight cylinders a personal insult. My Mini, for context, has four cylinders and an opinion about speed bumps. The Maybach simply does not acknowledge that speed bumps exist.

LUX correspondent Annie Preston with the Mercedes-Maybach S 680

The launch took place along the rolling hills of the Côte d’Azur, which felt right for a car that seems to regard tarmac as more of a polite suggestion than a surface. There was a moment, somewhere between one sun-soaked bend and the next, where the road dipped, and the Maybach simply absorbed it, not so much driving as gliding, the faintest bounce underneath us like a boat easing over a gentle swell rather than a car meeting the road at all. I will say nothing else of the day itself, other than it involved a great deal of sitting very still, gliding along as if on water, and being thoroughly content about it.

Read more: A trip to D Maris Bay

Inside, the Maybach cocooning effect, Mercedes’ own term, and one I now use unprompted in conversation, is achieved through a small orchestra of materials. There is newly available leather-free upholstery, including a high-grade “Mirville” textile, paired with deep white piping and open quilted diamond stitching, which felt suspiciously like sitting inside a very expensive cloud.

The interior of the Mercedes-Maybach S 680 is described by Mercedes as “cocooning”

Open-pore oak trims the centre console; the rear seats come with their own climate zones, their own screens, their own small kingdom of buttons, which I did not touch for fear of accidentally ejecting myself. Silver-plated Robbe & Berking champagne flutes sit in bespoke holders behind the rear armrest, kept perfectly chilled by a dedicated refrigerated compartment, a detail so unnecessary, so gloriously over-engineered, that I found myself rather moved by it.

Ambient lighting shifts through 199 LEDs and 64 individually selectable colours, including a rose-gold hue that appears, rather charmingly, to have been invented specifically to flatter the Maybach badge on the steering wheel. The new MBUX Superscreen glows beneath the dash like something from a very tasteful spaceship, and the whole cabin hums with the sense that someone, somewhere, has thought about this rather harder than is strictly necessary, which, in the world of Maybach, is rather the entire point.

Annie Preston took the Mercedes-Maybach S 680 for the ultimate ride through the hills of Côte d’Azur

This is a throne room on wheels, endlessly considerate of the person sitting in the back, that our readers will always find themselves in, whether gliding to a gallery opening or being delivered, unhurried and unruffled, to dinner. I was simply testing it out on their behalf.

Read more: Linder through the highball glass

I may not be trading in my Mini anytime soon. But I will admit that reversing out of the car park afterwards, back to my small, cheerful convertible, felt for one brief moment rather like stepping out of a Luxury hotel suite and back into a rather charming tent.

mercedes-benz.co.uk

mercedes-maybach.com