september contributors
Behind the Scenes
Bob Colacello
Brooklyn-born Bob Colacello has been fascinated with royalty ever since
childhood, when his Neapolitan grandmother would tell him stories about how
wonderful the world was when kings and queens ruled everywhere. He went on to
study diplomacy at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, graduating in 1969.
Deciding he’d rather be a filmmaker, he then earned an M.F.A. at Columbia, which
led to a job at Andy Warhol’s Factory, where he ran Interview magazine and sold
portraits on the side. One of those he arranged was of the Iranian Empress Farah
Pahlavi, and he introduces our interview with her in these pages. Since 1984,
Colacello has been special correspondent for Vanity Fair, where he has profiled
such royals as Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, King Constantine of Greece and
Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis.
Leila Taghinia-Milani
Heller
New York gallery owner Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller, whose art gallery at 39 East 78th Street and Madison Avenue specializes in contemporary international artists and modern masters, conducted the interview with Her Imperial Majesty Empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran , exclusively for AVENUE magazine this month. Born in Iran, Leila Heller left in 1972 to study art history in the United States. Her plans to return to Tehran were scuttled by the Iranian revolution in 1979. Then, in 1982, Leila Heller opened her first New York gallery, and she has since become the pre-eminent dealer in the West for Iranian art and artists. This summer, Leila Heller was the primary advisor for the first exhibition of contemporary Iranian art in an American museum: “Iran Inside Out” at the Chelsea Art Museum. A longtime family friend, Empress Farah Pahlavi regularly visits Leila Heller’s gallery. In exile for 30 years, the Empress remains an important patron of contemporary Iranian art and continues to be a vital source of encouragement and support to emerging artists. With the recent unrest in Iran grabbing the world’s attention, the two Persian women talk at length about Iran’s past and present in this month’s cover story.
LANA KURTZ PHOTOGRAPHY
Vicky Ward
Vicky Ward is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and CNBC and also appears on
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” She is working on a non-fiction book, The Great Mistake:
The Fall of Lehman Brothers and the Weekend That Changed The World for John
F. Wiley & Sons, due for publication this winter. A native Brit, she graduated from
Cambridge in 1991, the year after her close friend, Frances Osborne, author of the
bestselling biography, The Bolter, and wife of Britain’s youthful “shadow”
chancellor, George Osborne, graduated from Oxford. According to polls, George
Osborne, 38, is likely to become Britain’s chancellor, a post similar to the
American treasury secretary, next year. “It was so good to spend time with
Frances,” Ward said of interviewing her longtime friend for this month’s AVENUE.
“It felt like a little piece of home had flown over to see me. Frances has a very dry,
down-to-earth sense of humor—very typically British—and she’s very quick. I am
so thrilled for her literary success. Interviewing her, I have to say, made me feel
extremely proud of my friend.”
