Massimiliano Gioni – Italian Art Director

As the artistic director of New York’s New Museum and the ebullient director of the Trussardi Foundation, Massimiliano Gioni is super busy. In the past year, Gioni has curated an exhibition of Lebanese retail giant Tony Salame private collection called the New Skin.

Within the New Museum is an exhibition of tapestries, a display of Nicole Eisenman’s narrative paintings, a mise-en-scene by Goshka Macuga, and a three-floor survey of the videos by Anri Sala. In fact, Gioni and a few colleagues from New York also curated The Equilibrists, which is a survey of young Greek art located at the Benaki Museum in Athens. On the other hand, he is not so busy in Milan as the artistic director, putting on just a few exhibitions. In 2016, Gioni was named one of the year’s most influential people in the contemporary art world by ArtReview magazine.

The masculine name Massimiliano is the Italian version of Maximilian, which is taken from the Roman name Maximilianus that was derived from Maximus. The masculine name Maximus is another Roman family name that is derived from the Latin word maximum that mean “greatest”. The name was given to a 3rd-century martyr and saint.

On the other hand, back in the 15th century, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III named his son and heir with the name Massimiliano, which was a blend of the names from two Roman generals – Fabius Maximus and Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus. The Roman Cognomen Aemilianus is often used in Spanish and Italian name Emiliano that was derived from the Latin aemulus meaning “rival”.