About me

I was born in Oxford in 1968, to a French mother and an American father, whose parents were both Hungarian immigrants. Though I grew up in Chicago, we spent summers in France with my mother’s family. As a teenager, I lived in Upstate New York, where I worked construction many weekends and every summer.

My education was a little unusual, including stints in the Montessori, Free School, elite-prep and Waldorf systems. For the better part of what should have been 5th grade, I was schooled in cars, tents and motels, all the while avoiding truant officers. I studied political science at Haverford, a great Quaker college, with one year abroad at The University of Kent (a “red brick” British university). I moved to NYC and worked in macro-level market research, got bored, and then went to Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. So began my first career, writing the articles populating this site. In 1998, I moved to Switzerland for personal reasons, and went freelance.

In 2007 - surprising everyone, including myself - I was chosen as part of a triumvirate leading Art Basel. A year later, I became co-director, and then from 2012 to 2022, I led the whole organization. During my Art Basel tenure, I oversaw the launches of Art Basel Hong Kong (2013) and Art Basel Paris (2022), guided the organization through the Covid-19 pandemic and two global financial crises, and championed initiatives that broadened its cultural impact including a collaboration with Kickstarter, the place-making projects Art Basel Cities Buenos Aires and Art Week Tokyo, and the launch of Arcual, a blockchain-based digital rights company co-founded by MCH Group, Art Basel’s parent company, and the Luma Foundation.

I went independent in 2023, working on a wide range of projects in culture, including advising foundations, building art-driven brand strategies, and doing projects with artists. And like my parents, I love to teach. For more on that see the site’s Education section. Three things I don’t do, despite frequent requests: buying and selling art, leading companies full-time and running fairs. But I know people…