Kami is a Co-Chair of Trustees and runs the foundation's advisory arm, providing bespoke culture strategies and philanthropy advisory to foundations, private collectors, artists, institutions, governments and international companies. Kami’s career in the art market and the Arts & Culture public sector spans over 15 years across Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Tate, the Royal Academy of Arts, blue-chip galleries and artist studios. Her expertise includes high-level fundraising, private and national collections of contemporary art, international network of patrons, new governance structures and funding mechanisms, international partnerships. Kami holds two MA (Art History & Philosophy: Linguistics) and is pursuing the Executive MSc in Social Business & Entrepreneurship at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), focusing on philanthropy, new business models, systems thinking and social impact.
Sébastien is the Foundation's Founder and its Co-Chair of Trustees. Alongside, he is the Managing partner of advisory firm Montabonel & Partners and the CEO, Artistic Director of the Island. He has led his team to develop and execute strategies to advance complex global organisations’ goals and he advised governments on cultural policy initiatives. He built one of the most important private collections of minimal and conceptual art in Europe (2013-19). He also initiated foundations and private museums, devised strategies for artists’ estates, curated seminal exhibitions, and organised international think tanks and symposia with leading figures in the art world. He is a guest lecturer at Graduate and Postgraduate Programmes, he publishes artist books via his publishing company Alaska Editions which he set up in 2007, writes for art publications, exhibition catalogues, and sits on selection and nomination committees for various national and international prizes.
Chris is a specialist advisor, consultant and researcher in areas such as strategy for major investments in R&D, creative technology sector, cultural industries. From 2017-22 Chris was Director of Digital, Communications and Technology at the National Gallery, London. He was a Sr. Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, with which he ran National Gallery X, an innovation lab for the future of art and technology. He was an AHRC Creative Industries Fellow in 2021-22. He was named one of the top 10 museum influencers by Blooloop in 2022 and an Ericsson 5G Trailblazer in 2021. Chris has a PHD from the University of Bristol and a Masters in Innovation Economics from UCL.
Shezad is a multidisciplinary artist, working across film, painting, neon, sculpture and more recently virtual reality to deconstruct systems of image, language, site and narrative. Fascinated by ecologies and architecture, he takes a philosophical approach in his work, asking questions and exploring alternative futures through what he calls “world building” and “imagineering.” His practice is animated by research and by collaboration with multiple audiences and communities to delve into embodiment, history, and narrative.
Shezad trained at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art before undertaking a PhD at Leeds Metropolitan University. He is a research fellow in experimental media at the University of Westminster. His works have been shown and collected internationally, including at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Sharjah Biennial.
Megan is a Co-Founder & Director of the line, an ambitious public art project in east London. It combines large-scale, site-specific contemporary art commissions with a unique educational and wellbeing programmes. The project was established to democratise access to art by introducing sculptures that were previously hidden from public view into the public realm for audiences to experience for free. Collaboration with local stakeholders and grassroots organisations were key to the development of The Line and continue to be fundamental to its success.
Prior to starting The Line, Megan was a gallerist. She launched The Piper Gallery in 2012 and worked collaboratively with other galleries and arts organisations, including New Art Centre and Frestonian Gallery. She is a founding member of the Association of Women in the Arts and was formerly a Governor of Elmhurst Ballet School in Birmingham.
Paulina is the Head of Visual Arts and Music at the Polish Cultural Institute, London. During her over 15-year-long tenure at the Institute, she has played a critical role in transforming it into a dynamic hub for cultural exchange. Her and team's efforts have resulted in over 3000 diverse events, engaging nearly three million audiences across the UK, and fostering enduring partnerships between Polish and British organizations.
Freda and Izak are prominent collectors and patrons of the arts. Their holdings include works by John Bellany, Daniel Richter, Sara Lucas, Anselm Kiefer, Thomas Schutte, Daniel Silver and many well known and as well emerging artists. As collectors and patrons, they are known for the breath of their knowledge, direct support of the artists community and their hospitality.
Alfredo is a cultural entrepreneur, curator, writer, broadcaster and publisher working at the intersection of contemporary art, the Verse, film and video, performance, photography, mass media culture, and online media formats including art adopting the blockchain technology such as NFT and crypto art. He currently holds several positions, including director of Mostyn, the leading institution for contemporary art in Wales; Advisor to the British Council Visual Arts Acquisition Committee, UK Government Art Collection; President of IKT–International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art; Executive Committee Member of AICA–International Association of Art Critics; Executive Committee Member of ICOM UK–International Council of Museums.
Alfredo has a PhD in Communication Design and Photography from the European Centre for Photography, University of South Wales, Cardiff, and is Visiting Lecturer at major universities and art colleges throughout Europe and the Americas.
Thomas is a Director at the legendary Konrad Fischer Galerie. Prior, he studied art history, archaeology and history in Bonn, Zurich, and New York City, and worked for the Museum of Contemporary History in Bonn and for the Osthaus Museum in Hagen. Alongside, he co-ran an art space in Cologne together with Heike Kropff and Peter Daners, and taught art history and theory of architecture at RWTH in Aachen.
Thomas has worked closely with some of the seminal artists of the 20th and 21st century, helping shape their careers, markets and legacies.
Matthieu is an art historian and curator. He received his PhD from the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) for his thesis on Perceptual Art. He taught at Sorbonne-Université, ENSAPC (Paris-Cergy), ENSAD (Paris), Schools of Fine Arts (of Rouen and Angoulême). He received grants by Terra Foundation, Danish Foundation, ProHelvetia and Institut Français. He previously was a Research Fellow at the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte and at the Institut National d'Histoire de l’Art in Paris.
Among his notable large-scale exhibition projects is “Dynamo. A Century of Light and Movement in Art. 1913–2013”, presented at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais in Paris in 2013. This exhibition featured almost 150 prominent visual artists who explored the realms of perception and space. Another remarkable undertaking was “Suspension. A History of Abstract Hanging Sculpture. 1918–2018”, which displayed over 50 works and was the first ever gathering of this sculptural type at the Palais d’Iéna. In the exhibition “The Brutal Play”, held at the Foundation CAB in Brussels, he presented sculptural works by various artists spanning the constructivist era, 1960s minimalism, and the present day – “Brutalist sculpture” in parallel with Brutalist architecture. Since 2014, he has proposed and designed several museum-quality exhibitions to inaugurate representations by the Perrotin galleries in Paris and New York City, including for Hans Hartung and Jesús Rafael Soto.
Michael is the Head of Philanthropy at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London.