speak Memory - a conversation across Time
Speak Memory - A Conversation Across Time an exhibition curated by Deborah Needleman for Salone 2025, Milan.
Generously sponsored by LVMH Metieres D’arts and hosted by Cabana Magazine’s editor in chief, Martina Mondadori. The setting was Martina Mondadori’s childhood home; the interiors gloriously designed and painted by the artist and architect, Renzo Mongiardino. Each room is an exquisite jewel-box of painted decorative arts including Pietre Dure and Boiserie.
Speak Memory refers to the title of Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir of his childhood in Tsarist Russia, a book concerned with the myriad ways we live in conversation with memory and history.
Nabokov was less well known as an entomologist spending six years at Harvard’s Museum of Natural History as the curator of the butterfly collections. This was my starting point for a conversation across time.