I went to the London School of Economics intending to become a lawyer. But studying anthropology planted a seed. I became fascinated by culture.

I grew up between London, New York and Greece, in a family whose roots on the Cycladic island of Andros go back generations and are closely tied to Greece’s maritime and cultural history. What has forever fascinated me about my family is how many of its characters defied easy description. Shipowners and entrepreneurs, certainly, but also free spirits, unconventional thinkers and early collectors of modern art. Some were genuine mavericks. I grew up with the sense that a person could have several lives, sometimes quite surprising ones, within a single lifetime. Art was always around me, but it took me years to find my own relationship with it.

That happened in my mid-thirties. After 15 years of ‘adulting’ - trying to prove my worth in others’ terms, how smart I was, how independent I was, how conventional I was, searching for my groove, trying to fit a mold, it was in New York, where I’d become accustomed to thinking in terms of efficiency and outcomes, and going through a particularly disruptive period, I began to look at art differently. I began to find reassurance in recognizing my own emotions in objects made by people who had lived hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years before me. The things I had thought of as weaknesses or distractions began to seem like completely ordinary parts of being human. I had a moment of enlightenment when I returned to my beloved Greece after the Covid debacle, and attended the opening of Kallos at the Museum for Cycladic Art. This was not just an exhibition, it was the love story of what it means to be fully human, as written by the Ancient Greeks and reinterpreted by a brave and passionate team at the museum. Kallos means beauty inside and out - without one the other is meant less. Now how much more perfectly can you describe the human endeavour?

I still think about the person who painted on a cave wall and the graffiti artist who sprays a subway wall. The impulse to make an image, to leave something of ourselves behind, seems to have been with us for an extraordinarily long time. Why do we feel compelled to do it? And why are we moved by what someone else has made?

Those questions have stayed with me. They’ve found their way into my work at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, founded by my great-aunt Dolly Goulandris, where I now lead international engagement from New York. They’ve also found their way into my work as a film producer. I’ve been an executive producer on The Voice of Hind Rajab, Hollywoodgate and Claire Denis’s The Fence, with productions receiving recognition from the Academy Awards, BAFTAs and Emmys.

I serve on the boards of Venetian Heritage, Alliance Francaise, the Eternity Foundation and the Cycladic Art Foundation, and advise the Cycladic Identity initiative. I write on Substack about art, culture and what makes a life flourish. I’m working on a book, and with my friend Sarah I host a monthly series of conversations about art and the inner life.

Behind all of this is a conviction that has grown stronger over time: culture is not an ornament to a good life but part of what makes one.

As an only child, I was usually found buried in a book, my constant companion, half-listening to the conversations of the grown-ups around me. I remember my grandfather in his extraordinary Lausanne library, surrounded by books. Maybe that’s where I first developed the habit of listening, observing and then retreating into my own thoughts.

I still work much the same way. I go out into the world, meet people, encounter art and follow ideas wherever they lead. But the synthesis happens in my library. It’s where I read, research and begin to see connections between things that at first seemed unrelated. I definitely move by intuition, or rather by what lights me up. It usually leads me to the most interesting things.

I’ve never really stopped being a student.

I think of this place, where you have landed - as an extension of the library of my life. Somewhere to share what I’ve encountered, what I’m reading and ideas I’m still working out.