Foundation | Team | Board | Partners

Pierre Gabus

Pierre Gabus exerce le métier d’avocat à titre indépendant depuis 1985. Après avoir dirigé la Fondation pour le droit de l’art dès l’année 2002, il assume désormais la présidence du Conseil depuis la fin de l’année 2010. Il est également président du Conseil d’administration d’une banque coopérative. Pierre Gabus est notamment co-éditeur du commentaire LTBC paru chez Schulthess ainsi que du volume 25 des Etudes en droit de l’art “L’art a-t-il un prix ? The Art of Pricing the Priceless”.

Lionel Aeschlimann

Lionel Aeschlimann joined Mirabaud & Cie in 2010 as a member of the Executive Committee. He has been Managing Partner since January 2011 and has been CEO of Mirabaud Asset Management since its creation in 2012. Previously, he was a partner at the Swiss law firm Schellenberg Wittmer, Geneva and Zurich, where he headed the firm’s banking and finance practice. Mr. Aeschlimann is also a member of the Swiss Takeover Board, as well as a member of the Board of the Fondation Avenir Suisse.

Sandrine Giroud

Sandrine Giroud is a partner with Geneva-based law firm LALIVE. She specialises in domestic and international litigation, private clients disputes, and art law. As an attorney, Sandrine advises art collectors, art market professionals and museums on art-related disputes and transactions. An avid art enthusiast, she sits on the foundation board of the Swiss National Museum and is a member of several art-related associations, including the Professional Advisors to the International Art Market (PAIAM) and the International Bar Association (IBA) Art, Cultural Institutions and Heritage Law Committee. Sandrine is also a regular speaker at international art law conferences and the author of many articles in this field. She holds a Master of Law from the University of Fribourg, an LL.M. in International Dispute Settlement from the University of Geneva, and an Advanced Certificate in Trust Disputes from the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP).

Mauro Natale

Mauro Natale is Honorary Professor at the Faculty of Arts, University of Geneva.

Eveline de Proyart

Eveline de Proyart est la Vice-Présidente de Christie’s pour la Suisse et la directrice générale du bureau de Christie’s à Genève, en charge du développement des activités de Christie’s en Suisse Romande. Responsable de la stratégie et des événements, elle est l’interlocutrice privilégiée des collectionneurs d’art de cette région.

Eveline de Proyart est entrée chez Christie’s en 1994 au poste de directrice de la communication et de la presse pour la Suisse. Pendant sept ans, elle a défini les stratégies de communication, géré les relations avec les journalistes ainsi que l’organisation d’évènements dans toute la Suisse. En 2001 son rôle s’étend aux développement des relations avec les collectionneurs et l’ensemble des conseillers professionnels. Depuis 2012 elle dirige le bureau de Genève.

Avant de rejoindre Christie’s, Eveline de Proyart avait travaillé pour deux prestigieuses sociétés de luxe françaises, pendant 12 ans pour Louis Vuitton et pendant 4 ans pour Harel.

Stéphanie Schleining

Historienne de l’art diplômée de la Faculté des Lettres de Genève et spécialiste en peinture européenne auprès de Sotheby’s depuis 2002, Stéphanie Schleining Deschanel dirige le département des Beaux-Arts de Genève et est co-directrice du département d’Art Suisse. Au bénéfice d’une expérience de près de 20 ans sur le marché de l’art, elle contribue activement au rayonnement de la discipline au niveau national et à l’étranger. Son expertise est reconnue par les collectionneurs privés et institutionnels lors des ventes aux enchères internationales.

Luc Thévenoz

Luc Thévenoz is professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva (Switzerland) and the director of its Centre for Banking and Financial Law. His research and teachings include the law of obligations, contracts, trusts, as well as the law of banking and securities transactions, markets and regulation.

He is the president of the Swiss Takeover Board, the regulatory agency supervising the takeover market. He has previously served as a commissioner of the Swiss Federal Banking Commission (2001-2007). He has contributed to a number of legislative and regulatory projects in the areas of trusts, intermediated securities, takeovers, and unclaimed assets. He was the main Swiss negotiator for the Unidroit Convention on Substantive Rules for Intermediated Securities, a member of its drafting committee, and an editor of its official commentary. His 2001 report on trusts was the foundation for the ratification of the Hague Trusts Convention by Switzerland.

Boris Wastiau

Boris Wastiau is the director of the Alimentarium in Vevey since 2022. Previsously, he was the director of Ethnography Museum Geneva (MEG) and responsible for the successful completion of the new museum, which reopened to the public on 31 October 2014, as well as the reorientation and repositioning of the institution, which won the European Museum of the Year Award in 2017. He was a lecturer, then a full professor, in the History and Anthropology of Religions Unit of the University of Geneva, from 2009 to 2019. Before that, he worked for 11 years as a curator at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Belgium). After studying anthropology at the Free University of Brussels and the University of Coimbra, he completed a doctoral thesis in art anthropology on possession cults with the University of East Anglia in 1997. Throughout his studies and his professional career, Boris Wastiau carried out numerous research missions in the field, both in Africa and in Latin America. A specialist in Central African cultures and religions and in critical museology, he also works on the provenance of African collections, illicit trafficking and restitution issues. He is the author of numerous books and exhibitions, including ExitCongoMuseum (2000), Mahamba (2000), Chokwe (2006), Médusa en Afrique (2008), Amazonie. Le chamane et la pensée de la forêt (2016), Afrique. Les religions de l’extase (2018).