Silvia Barisione is Chief Curator at The Wolfsonian–FIU. During her tenure she has curated many exhibitions, including The Rebirth of Rome; Modern Dutch Design; and Made in Italy: MITA Textile Design 1926–1976, organized in collaboration with The Wolfsoniana, The Wolfsonian’s sister institution in Genoa, Italy, where she served as founding curator. Silvia earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in art history and German literature from the University of Genoa. Her research focuses primarily on 20th-century decorative arts and design.
In 2014, Silvia was bestowed the Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia (Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy) by the Italian government, which is awarded to outstanding expatriates promoting Italian culture and elevating national prestige abroad.
Jennifer Farah joined Knight Foundation in 2022 as director of arts. She is a design innovator whose career has been focused on leading and teaching the development of sustainable, participatory technologies that scale for great impact.
Most recently, Jennifer built a leading edge food technology company, SproutsIO Inc., where she was recognized through selection as a Wired Innovation Fellow, INK Fellow and Cartier Women’s Initiative Finalist, among other accolades.
Trained as an architect at the University of Miami and then Columbia University, Jennifer practiced architecture for a number of years before returning to academia to develop novel research at the MIT Media Lab that formed the genesis of SproutsIO Inc.
Along the way she has worked for large scale firms and institutions like Arquitectonica Intl. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was a partner in the research and design studio fluxxlab that advanced innovative energy solutions, in addition to being selected as a resident artist at Eybeam Art & Technology Center.
François Noudelmann is a professor at New York University, where he teaches European philosophy and runs La Maison Française. A former president of the Collège International de Philosophie, he was also a radio producer at the national radio France-Culture for eleven years. The author of numerous essays translated into a dozen languages, he has notably published The Philosopher’s Touch, Sartre, Nietzsche and Barthes at the Piano (Columbia University Press, 2012), The Genius of Lies (Max Milo, 2024), and Can We Make Truth Great Again? (Max Milo 2025). As a writer, he wrote Les Enfants de Cadillac (Gallimard, 2021), an autobiographical novel on three generations of Jews in France.