Art, music, literature, the city and a strike. What’s on in Europe, in October
SEPTEMBER 19-OCTOBER 19. WORLD PRESS PHOTO / GRONINGEN, THE NETHERLANDS What have we done? 70 years of the world in photographs There’s always a World Press Photo exhibition somewhere around the world, but “What Have We Done? Unpacking Seven Decades of World Press Photo,” in Groningen, curated by photographer Cristina de Middel, does something different. […]
Why Europe needs its university more than ever
The stuff of legends Many legends surround the European University Institute (EUI) and its Florence campus. Some are whimsical, others macabre. One says that in the gardens of Villa Schifanoia, Boccaccio wrote the Decameron, daydreaming of lustful encounters in the Florentine heat. At Villa Salviati, the tale goes, a noblewoman ordered the murder of her […]
Italy can help free Boualem Sansal
Boualem Sansal is today the most famous forgotten hostage. An 80-year-old Franco-Algerian writer, world-renowned, recipient of several literary prizes including that of the French Academy in 2015, the German Booksellers’ Peace Prize in Frankfurt, and the Cino Del Duca Prize in 2025, he received training as an engineer and economist. Once a senior civil servant […]
Harnessing Cloud, data and AI: the new engines of progress
When it comes to investments in artificial intelligence (AI), the numbers are staggering. “Stargate”, a US initiative to build the largest AI data centers the world has ever seen, aims to invest $500-billion over the next four years. Saudi-Arabia and the United Arab Emirates just announced plans to buy hundreds of thousands of advanced AI […]
How to authenticate a work of art and still buy a fake
The blue-chip art trade is so wonderfully cosmopolitan that even the fakes have illustrious international provenances. In fact, the real reason why this ridiculously corrupt and secretive industry cannot be regulated is that it doesn’t have a home. We’re always selling a picture from Tokyo, through a broker in Los Angeles, to a buyer in […]
Ukrainian resistance in a work of art
Ukrainian artists spent almost a year preparing to exhibit the gigantic “Black Cloud” structure at Burning Man, the independent artistic event held annually in the American desert, in the state of Nevada. Oleksiy Sai created a large-scale structure, weighing seven tons and standing 15 meters tall, composed of 45 suspended black fabric clouds that occasionally […]
Orbán’s new challenger might beat him at his own game
Next April, Hungarians will head to the polls while the war is still raging next door. The election is shaping up as a key moment, with a new opposition candidate seen as having the first realistic chance of challenging Orbán’s grip on power and helping the country back on a path towards democracy. At the […]
Europe’s arduous race for AI data centers
Having grown up in Italian region of Veneto in the nineties, I learned to know the warehouse (“el capanòn” in the local language) as the universal unit of measurement for Efficiency and Prosperity. Did you have a plot of land and were tired of being a farmer? “Put up a capanòn,” which you could then […]
When AI joins the classroom
From those who ban cell phones in class to those who instead encourage them, Europe’s approach to artificial intelligence in schools proceeds in scattered order, and the risk of a continental divide in digital literacy weighs on the future of young Europeans. In some European Union countries, artificial intelligence’s arrival in the classroom is already […]
António Costa makes a monument to compromise
Pragmatism and vision. Rules and moderation. Ambition and seduction. Much can be associated with António Costa, President of the European Council since December 1, 2024. Among the Union’s leaders, caught between President Ursula von der Leyen and High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, Costa always seems to stay one step behind. […]