Team - Connecting Cultures

Anna DetheridgeFounder and President

Founder and President of Connecting Cultures, Anna Detheridge is an author and cultural activist who spearheads projects uniting sustainability and culture in addition to being a scholar and critic of the visual arts. Before founding Connecting Cultures, Anna was the editor of the arts section (Domenicale) of Il Sole 24 Ore from 1985 to 2003. She has taught visual arts at the Politecnico di Milano and at Università Bocconi and has curated numerous important exhibitions, including the International Biennial of Photography in Torino in 2003, the exhibition The Global Village at the Musée des Beaux Art in Montréal and the Public Art: Spatial Relationships exhibition in Italy in 2003 at the Cittadellarte-Pistoletto Foundation in Biella.

Chiara LattuadaProject Manager

With a degree in Art History from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milano, Chiara is a Project Manager for Connecting Cultures. She is responsible for Out of Fashion, a platform for research, training and promotion of sustainability in fashion, and coordinated Sartoria Migrante, a project in which Italian designers and artisans ofÂ Â different origins worked together to create sustainable design capsule collections. She currently is an assistant curator for the Au Revoir project, winner of the Italian Council competition (6. 2019 edition).

Laura RivaExecutive Director

Graduated in History and Art Criticism at Università degli Studi of Milan, Laura is Connecting Cultures’ general director and curator. Among the projects “Art, Heritage and Interculture”, a prize for young artists and cultural institutions; Dencity, a project funded by Fondazione Cariplo realized with Dynamoscopio and Cooperativa A77; “Words without action poison the Soul” by Eva Frapiccini, an art project on the topic of legality, winner of the Italian Council competition launched by MiBACT (1st edition 2017), in collaboration with Associazione Isole of Palermo.  In 2019 she coordinated “Out of Place”, a training course about cultural planning and she’s currently curating “Au Revoir”, an art project by the artist Ettore Favini, winner of the Italian Council competition (6th edition 2019).
In 2019 she planned “Out of Place”, a training course about cultural planning and she’s currently the lead curator of “Au Revoir”, an art project by the artist Ettore Favini, winner of the Italian Council competition (6th edition 2019).

Jane OberwagerAdvisor

With an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (USA) and expertise in marketing strategy, Jane works with Connecting Cultures as an Advisor, focussing on strategic planning, marketing, and fundraising. She launched and manages the Advisory Board for the association .

Paola BaronioCommunication Manager

A professional journalist since 1993, Paola has worked for many years with specialized publications and in online communications. She was editor-in-chief of Dueruote, a monthly magazine edited by Editoriale Domus. She currently manages the content and look of the websites connectingcultures.it e outoffashion.it and the communication function for Connecting Cultures. While working as a freelance journalist, Paola discovered a passion for sustainable fashion. She is among the authors of Fashion Change, a definitive guidebook on conscious and sustainable fashion edited by Connecting Cultures. In 2014 she launched her lifestyle blog lamiacameraconvista.com.

Costanza MeliCurator

An art historian and independent curator, Costanza founded the Isole Association in Sicily, which promotes contemporary art and culture of the region. A lecturer at IED – Istituto Europeo del Design in Rome, nell’ambito del CFA in Curatela museale e di eventi. As an editor she has curated numerous publications and directed the international magazine SuccoAcido. Costanza has published critical essays with Il Mulino, duepunti edizioni; Lithos; Patron editore; Nero edizioni; La Scuola and she has contributed to catalogo della 57. International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.