-Born Rome, UK citizenship
-MA Oxford University, MA Courtauld Institute, London University.
-Journalist, editor and publisher. Author of numerous articles
on art, the politics of art, conservation, and the politics of Venice in: The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, The Art Newspaper, Il Giornale dell’Arte, La Repubblica, New York Review of Books etc.
Author of The Victoria & Albert Museum, the Making of the Collection
(1980); Renaissance Jewels, Gold Boxes and Objets de Vertu in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (1984)
Career
-1973-86: Curator, Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London.
Curator of the exhibitions, “Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance”, V&A, 1982; “Treasures of the Hermitage”, Villa Favorita, Lugano, 1986
-2011 Co-curator, with Elena Foster, of the exhibition “Real Venice”, a collateral exhibition of the 2011 Venice Biennale in the monastery of San Giorgio and in Somerset House, London, 2011, which commissioned artists working in the medium of photography to create images of Venice and donate them for sale by Venice in Peril.
-1986-1990: Editor in chief of Apollo Magazine.
-1990: Founded The Art Newspaper for the Turin publishing house Umberto
Allemandi e C. spa and edited it until 1992, then 1994-2003, when she joined the board of the parent company.
-2018-now Honorary Chairman of U. Allemandi Publishing & Co. Ltd, publishers of The Art Newspaper.
Voluntary activities
-1999-2012 Chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund, which restores monuments and works of art in Venice and funds research into flooding, tourism, demographic change etc in the city.
-2011-16 A Governor [trustee] of the Courtauld Institute, one of the leading centres in the world for the teaching of history of art.
-Former trustee of the Cass Sculpture Foundation.
-Member of the Advisory Board of the Sotheby’s Institute.
-2000-2002 Member of Ministerial Advisory Panel on Illicit Trade, counselling the government oncriminal aspects of the trade in art, and, especially, antiquities (this led to the UK signing the Unesco Convention of 1970).
-2000-18 Trustee of the Gilbert Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum.
-2017-now Trustee of FAI UK (the British arm of the Italian equivalent of the National Trust).
Honours and Awards
-1982 Elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA)
-1992 Winner of the National Art Collections Fund annual prize.
-2003 Commendatore della Stella di Solidarietà italiana (now the Stella d’Italia)
-2006 Winner of the Arts and Media Section of the 16th European Woman of Achievement Awards.
-2011 Winner of “Advocate Award” from the International Institute for Conservation.
-2011 Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to the arts
-2013 Co-winner of the Istituto Veneto prize for the best piece of journalism about Venice that year, awarded to “The Coming Death of Venice?”, New York Review of Books, June 2013.
-2019 Fellow, Istituto Veneto per le Scienze, Lettere ed Arti