William Nix is the Chairman of the Creative Projects Group, which operates as a creative incubator for the development and production of motion pictures, television programs, music, interactive videogames, live entertainment, multimedia installations and events. He is currently involved with two features, one as Executive Producer of a "globally collaborative" film entitled Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, which is being theatrically released in 2015. It involves Oscar and other award-winning animators, narrators, composers and musicians from around the world who were led by Roger Allers, the Oscar-nominated animation director (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast), and Producers Salma Hayek, Clark Peterson, Pepe Tamez and Ron Senkowski. He is also the Producer of a biographical feature, entitled Gibran, which is currently in pre-production with principal photography targeted for 2016. Will was the Executive Producer of Firedancer, a dramatic feature film about the Afghan Diaspora in the U.S. It was the first Afghan feature film to be submitted for Oscar consideration. The film had its world premiere in Kabul and its U.S. premiere at the Tribecca Film Festival in New York. He served in the same capacity on the companion documentary, Return to Afghanistan, which premiered at the U.N. Film Festival in New York. He was both production counsel and Executive Producer for the Spanish language documentary feature, !Ya Basta!, about the abduction phenomenon in Mexico, which premiered at SXSW. In collaboration with composer/producer, Odette Springer, he is developing an Internet-based transmedia production currently-entitled Voice of the Child. The work will gather children's individual and collective voices, on film and in song, in order to show their perspectives, wisdom and power to heal the world. Will is also developing several multimedia installations and event projects, including one entitled Fluid Experience with celebrated photographer, Matthew Jordan Smith as the Creative Director. Will is Executive Producer of a PBS-destined documentary program entitled This is Ragtime: The Birth of American Music as well as a ten-part cable television documentary series entitled Rag to Rock: The Golden Age of American Music and a biographical feature film entitled Jelly Roll, all with Ragtime virtuoso Terry Waldo and an outstanding Advisory Board. He is serving in the same capacity for two television series entitled Hell's Horn and Road to Houston, which is in development.
Will is an executive and attorney with extensive experience in corporate formation, operations and business affairs, as well as being an experienced litigator and ADR practitioner with substantial expertise in the entertainment, media, sports, intellectual property and creativity fields. He served as Co-Chair of Baker Botts LLP's Entertainment, Media and Sports Practice Group, as VP of Legal and Business Affairs for NBA Properties and as Senior Vice-President & COO of the network of nearly 2,000 employees and representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America's global Content Protection Group. He has worked closely with Internet/Software businesses as a strategist and operational advisor for many years. Will has a Masters degree in History/Teaching and has taught in the public schools of Washington, D.C. as well as graduate level law school and other domestic and international courses as a regular professional panelist. He has published, lectured and been widely interviewed on television, radio and in print. He is a lifetime voting Member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and a Member of the Academy of Television Arts and Science (ATAS), the National Academy of Recording Arts and Science (NARAS), the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS) and a documentary and feature film producer who actively serves on Award Nominating Screening Juries for both the International Documentary Association (IDA) and AMPAS.
For further background information, see: www.creativeprojectsgroup.com
Over the past 40 years Landau Traveling Exhibitions has presented more than 500 exhibitions at museums throughout the United States, Canada and the world. The Landau family has been active in the international art world for more than 50 years. The highly-acclaimed Felix Landau Gallery in Los Angeles during the 1950’s & 60’s introduced, represented and exhibited the best of the 20th century’s American, European, and international modern master and contemporary artists. In 1967 Mitzi Landau began circulating the GASTON LACHAISE: SCULPTURE & DRAWINGS exhibition for the Lachaise Foundation and Landau Traveling Exhibitions was launched. The Lachaise exhibition has now been presented at more than 130 museums. Jeffrey Landau joined the business in 1989 as Managing Director of operations and is in charge of the new arts communications division, Art Resource Technologies, taking Landau into the 21st Century. LTE continues to represent museum exhibitions, universities, arts organizations, corporations, estates, foundations, private collections, 20th Century masterworks and contemporary artist. http://www.a-r-t.com/
Stuart and Beverly Denenberg are art collectors and exhibitors, and leaders in the community, with world reputations for their integrity and expertise. In Los Angeles, they realized their "vision ...to have a private gallery with exhibition space and a residence all in one," Stuart says. For Beverly, a third-generation Southern Californian and a founding director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, living in a landmark building struck an instant chord. The couple visited the property the next morning, and two days later they handed the real estate agent a check. "It was instant building karma," Stuart says. Iliad Antik and Denenberg Fine Arts gallery, which opened last November, showcases an art collection ranging from early 16th century master drawings to Impressionist and 20th century Modernist paintings. In addition, the gallery is filled with museum-quality Austro-Hungarian Viennese Biedermeier furnishings of the early 1800s from Iliad Antik in New York City...The renovated modernist building acts as a perfect foil for these 19th century Biedermeier furnishings, which are characterized by elegant forms, beautiful veneers and mirror-like finishes. Clients get a chance to see the antique furnishings and Old Masters in a modern contemporary setting," Denenberg says. See full article, from which this is excerpted and edited, at: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/may/04/magazine/tm-home18.
The Denenbergs' expertise in respect to the artworks of Kahlil Gibran led them to be selected to organize and guide the transfer of original artworks of Kahlil Gibran to the Carlos Slim Foundation and the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City, where they are now part of the museum's permanent collection (see: http://www.soumaya.com.mx/menu/cuicuilco/cu.html). Mr. Slim, and his Foundation, have been great admirers and supporters of Gibran and the work of the Gibran National Committee in Lebanon (see: http://al-shorfa.com/en_GB/articles/meii/features/main/2010/03/22/feature-03).
Jean Gibran, a teacher, researched and co-authored the intimate biography entitled Kahlil Gibran: His Life and World (Interlink Books, first edition 1974; New York Graphic Society, Ltd., revised edition, 1991) with her late husband, the artist Kahlil George Gibran, described as the "definitive biography of Kahlil Gibran," tracing the phenomenon of a first-generation immigrant succeeding in twentieth-century American Arts and Letters." Her husband, cousin to the elder Gibran and his namesake, was a distinguished Boston sculptor who, "over a thirty-year period...was entrusted with a formidable body of manuscripts, letters, drawings and memorabilia" of the poet and artist. For further information on this biographical collaboration with her late husband as well as information on his artworks, please see: http://www.kahlilgibran.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahlil_Gibran_(sculptor) and Love Made Visible.
She is working with the Gibran International Art Exhibition Tour Producers as Consulting Advisor in matters related to the art works of the elder Kahlil Gibran. She is also working closely with the screenwriters and Producer of the Gibran biographical feature film production (see: www.thegibranfilm.com) Jean lives in Boston, a few blocks from Tyler Street where the author's family lived and close to Our Lady of the Cedars, the Maronite Catholic Church they attended, as well as the Quincy School where the elder Gibran's teachers first recognized his many talents.
She continues to contribute to several educational journals. Jean is a Golden Apple Teacher and Business Week Awardee for Innovative Teaching, a former Secretary of the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. She also co-authored the third edition of that organization's Guidebook.
Tania Sammons is the Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Historic Sites for the Telfair Museums. She oversees the decorative arts collection at all three Telfair Museums' sites, including the production of original exhibitions and catalogs. Tania works in all areas of museum operations, including curation, education, marketing, development and finances and serves as staff representative on the Friends of the Owens-Thomas House Board. In addition to curatorial and management responsibilities described above, she also provides project direction, strategic planning and fundraising support for Telfair Museums' Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Tania has overseen several exhibitions of the Telfair's collection of Kahlil Gibran's visual artworks, most recently the one entitled Visions of the Prophet: The Visual Art of Kahlil Gibran at the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia (see: www.hmoa.org/exhibition/visions-of-the-prophet-the-visual-art-of-kahlil-gibran (November 2-February 9, 2014). Some of the publications she has overseen and authored include: Kahlil Gibran: The Artist" The Art of Kahlil Gibran, Telfair Books (December 2010), Un plan plus eleve: les vies de Kahlil Gibran et de Mary Haskell, Kahlil Gibran, artist et visionnaire, Institut Du Monde Arabe, Paris, France(1998) and Mary Haskell and Kahlil Gibran, To Discover Beauty: The Art of Kahlil Gibran, Telfair Museum of Art (1994).
Joseph JaJa is the Director of the Gibran National Museum in Bsharri, Lebanon (www.gibrankhalilgibran.org/). The Museum has a long an interesting history. In 1932, the content of Gibran's studio in New York, including his furniture, his personal belongings, his private library, his manuscripts and 440 original paintings, were transferred to his native town Bsharri. Today, these items form the contents of the Museum. Originally, a grotto for monks seeking shelter in the 7th Century, the Mar Sarkis (Saint Sergious) hermitage, became Gibran Kahlil Gibran's tomb, and was later turned into his museum. In 1926, while in New York, Gibran decided to buy the monastery for his retirement and the hermitage as his final resting place. Upon his request, his sister Mariana purchased both the monastery and the hermitage. On August 22, 1931, Gibran's mortal remains reached Bsharri. However, the transformation of the new monastery into a museum did not occur until 1975, when the Gibran National Committee restored the monastery and built a new wing on the eastern side. The floors of the Museum were linked through an internal staircase to create a harmonious space where the works of Gibran are now exhibited. In 1995, the Museum was further enlarged and supplied with up-to-date lighting, air-conditioning and other equipment that enabled it to exhibit the entire collection of Gibran's manuscript, drawings and paintings. A plan for the entire site, including extensions, a parking and an access-road was executed in the Summer of 2003 with the aim of preserving this part of the Lebanese heritage as a cultural and tourist destination. The Museum currently hosts concerts and other cultural events as part of its activities in fulfillment of its general mission.
As part of its international outreach efforts, the Gibran National Museum's paintings, manuscripts and personal objects of Gibran were exhibited in Sao Paulo, Brazil in a presentation entitled 130 Anos De Kahlil Gibran, which was held at the Latin American Memorial. Sixty one items: fifty two artworks, eight manuscripts and one personal effect including two postcards, letters, documents and original notebooks of Gibran were shipped directly from the Gibran Museum in Lebanon to Sao Paolo and then exhibited there from May 3-June 26, 2013. The exhibition was financed by the Ministry of Culture of Brazil and organized by the Lebanese-Brazilian Ms. Lody Brais, President of the Brazil-Lebanon Cultural Association, and Arte A Produções Director, Rodolfo de Athayde Crosas, worked closely in collaboration with the Gibran National Committee over the course of two years. This was the first time Gibran's artworks were shown in Latin America. The objective of the exhibition was to promote the Lebanese culture in Brazil and awareness of the visual and other works of Gibran there.
The Gibran National Museum staged another exhibition (www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/exhibitions/2010/kahlil_gibran/) in New South Wales, which was entitled Kahlil Gibran: The Prophet, The Artist, The Man. It featured artworks from Gibran's teens through the year before his death in 1931. These included L'Automne (1909), which was selected for the famous Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts for its Spring salon in the Grand Palais in 1910, and the original watercolors used as illustrations in the first edition of The Prophet. Other writings on display were selected from Gibran's personal collection from the Gibran Museum. The Exhibition was presented at the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, from December 4, 2010 to February 20, 2011.
Pati Jacobs Barquet, who passed in June 2014, was a steadfast advocate and advisor to the international tour of the best works of Kahlil Gibran's visual art, drawn from the three major museums (Bsharri, Telfair and Soumaya) with the principal collections of his works, currently being designed and executed by the Producers. She served as a trusted advisor to the Carlos Slim Foundation and liaison to Director, Roberto Slim and Hector Palhares Meza, the Curator and Alfonso Miranda, Director of the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City, overseeing the acquisition and transfer of the works of Gibran from a private collection in Boston to the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City. For information on the Soumaya's collection of Gibran's works, please see: www.gibrankgibran.org/eng/catalogo/ and www.soumaya.com.mx/navegar/anteriores/anteriores09.html. Over the course of her professional career, Pati also oversaw the extensive research and archives covering the history and legacy of Latin American Hispanics with Middle East origins, including those relating to the family history of Carlos Slim http://www.carlosslim.com/biografia_ing.html
