Dr. Iskander Alaoui directs the Maison's cultural office. He is Moroccan-French, born in Fez and educated in Rabat and at the Sorbonne, where he completed a doctorate in art history with a thesis on the patronage circles of the late-nineteenth-century Parisian salons. He spent seven years as a curator at a private foundation in Marrakech, and then served as institutional advisor to two of the principal European art fairs, before joining the Maison in 2021.
He divides his time between Marrakech and Paris, and between the two he travels to whichever institutions the Maison's members are presently engaged with. He speaks Arabic, French, English, and a private Spanish.
He writes for the Journal on the longer questions of cultural patronage — the Vanishing Crafts series, in particular, is his — and is a Trustee of a small foundation in the Atlas Mountains that he is not, in print, willing to identify.