Paola Antonelli is an Italian author, editor, architect, and curator. She is of Lombard ancestry. She is the Senior Curator of the Department of Architecture & Design, as well as the Director of Research and Development at The Museum of Modern Art, New York City.
Antonelli was recognized with an AIGA Medal in 2015 for “expanding the influence of design in everyday life by sharing fresh and incisive observations and curating provocative exhibitions at MoMA”. She was rated one of the one hundred most powerful people in the world of art by Art Review and Surface Magazine.
Although a recipient of a laurea degree in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano University in 1990, she has never worked as an architect. Antonelli has curated several architecture and design exhibitions in Italy, France, and Japan. She has been a contributing editor for Domus magazine (1987–91) and the design editor of Abitare magazine (1992–94). She has also contributed articles to several publications, among them Metropolis, the Harvard Design Review, I.D. magazine, Paper, Metropolitan Home, Harper’s Bazaar, and Nest. In 2014 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art.
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The Museum of Modern Art is a place that fuels creativity, ignites minds, and provides inspiration. With extraordinary exhibitions and the world’s finest collection of modern and contemporary art, MoMA is dedicated to the conversation between the past and the present, the established and the experimental.
