Giovanni Maria "Gianni" Versace was an Italian fashion designer, socialite and businessman. He was the founder of Versace, an international luxury-fashion house that produces accessories, fragrances, make-up, home furnishings and clothes. He also designed costumes for theatre and films. As a friend of Eric Clapton, Princess Diana, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Madonna, Elton John, Tupac Shakur, Joan Collins and many other celebrities, he was one of the first designers to link fashion to the music world. He and his partner Antonio D'Amico were regulars on the international party scene. The place where he was born and raised, Reggio di Calabria, greatly influenced his career.
Catherine Sue Opie is an American fine art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Edward Joseph Ruscha IV is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film. He is also noted for creating several artist's books. Ruscha lives and works in Culver City, California.
The Hispanic Society of America operates a museum and reference library for the study of the arts and cultures of Spain and Portugal and their former colonies in Latin America, the Spanish East Indies, and Portuguese India. Despite the name, it has never functioned as a learned society.
Chapin School is an all-girls independent day school in New York City's Upper East Side neighborhood in Manhattan.
The Getty Research Institute (GRI), located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts".
Carman Hall is a dormitory located on Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus and currently houses first-year students from Columbia College as well as the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Alexander Junior Grant, professionally known as Alex da Kid or by.ALEXANDER, is a British music producer from Wood Green, London. He has gained recognition for producing several hit singles for artists of multiple music genres, such as Dr. Dre, Nicki Minaj, B.o.B, Eminem, Matthew Koma ("Stars"), Diddy, Imagine Dragons and Cheryl.
Sanford Biggers is an American interdisciplinary artist who works in film and video, installation, sculpture, music, and performance. A Los Angeles native, he has lived and worked in New York City since 1999.
Yeohlee Teng is an American fashion designer originally from Malaysia and of Chinese heritage. She received the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for fashion design in 2004. Her work has been displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Victoria & Albert, London.
Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi is an Emirati educator, art collector, scholar, and columnist. Sultan is a member of the ruling Al Qasimi family of Sharjah.
Mary Sibande is a South African artist based in Johannesburg. Her art consists of sculptures, paintings, photography, and design. Sibande uses these mediums and techniques to help depict the human form and explore the construction of identity in a postcolonial South African context. In addition, Sibande focuses on using her work to show her personal experiences while living through Apartheid. Her art also attempts to critique stereotypical depictions of women, particularly black women.
Marla Hamburg Kennedy is an American art curator, dealer and publisher specializing in contemporary art and photography. She is also an author and has published 30 photography and fine art books. She is the founder and owner of Hamburg Kennedy Photographs, HK Art Advisory, and Picture This Publications located in New York City.
Desmond Napoles is a former American child drag performer known by the stage name Desmond is Amazing. Napoles has been performing since they were eight years old and is an LGBTQ activist.
Rika Burnham is head of education at the Frick Collection in New York City. In 2018, she was a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute. Previously, Burnham worked as the project director of the Teaching Institute for Museum Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as a museum educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and as an adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a widely published scholar in the field of Museum education.
Nicholas Birns is a scholar of literature, including fantasy and Australian literature. As a Tolkien scholar he has written on a variety of topics including "The Scouring of the Shire" and Tolkien's biblical sources. His analysis of the writings of Anthony Powell and Roberto Bolaño has been admired by scholars.
John W. Kluge Jr. is an American venture capitalist, philanthropist, and activist.
Agnes Hsin Mei Hsu-Tang is a Taiwan-born American archaeologist and art historian. On October 19, 2021, she became the first person of Asian heritage to be elected board chair of one of the oldest historical institutions in America, the New-York Historical Society, founded in 1804. She is chairwoman of the New-York Historical Society board of trustees and Co-chair of The Met Museum's Objects Conservation Visiting Committee. She is a distinguished consulting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Hsu-Tang works in cultural heritage protection and rescue and has advised UNESCO and the U.S. Cultural Property Advisory Committee during the Obama Administration. Hsu-Tang received IIE's Centennial Medal in 2019 for her longtime work in cultural protection and rescue. She co-founded the Hsu-Tang Library for Classical Chinese Literature at Oxford University, the Tang Center for Silk Road Studies at Berkeley, and the Tang Center for Early China at Columbia University.
Eric Eisner is an American entertainment industry lawyer and executive who served as president of The Geffen Film Company and Island World Inc. He also founded the Young Eisner Scholars (YES) program.
