More than 30 top international galleries to exhibit at artmonte-carlo this weekend

04/07/2023

For a breath-taking selection of international art from contemporary galleries all over the world, be sure to visit artmonte-carlo this weekend.

This Saturday and Sunday, 34 respected and well-known galleries will meet under one roof at the Grimaldi Forum for a unique event that treats art lovers to a truly exceptional collection of contemporary art and design pieces.

*Erwin Wurm, The Flat Sculpture Collection, 2023. © LITO Editions*

There will be plenty going on outside on the Esplanade too, with an amazing selection of outdoor sculptures to enhance and entice even the most casual of art afficionados.

The concept

Now in its seventh year in Monaco, artmonte-carlo and its Swiss event, artgenève, are growing in popularity every year.

It’s all down to its simple yet attractive concept: to unite galleries, collectors and potential buyers in a convenient and elegant setting. Given the Principality’s long-term desire to curate an enriched creative culture within its borders, as well as its enthusiastic population, it’s no surprise that artmonte-carlo has been welcomed so warmly year-after-year.

The idea has expanded and developed to attract a plethora of high-end galleries and sought-after artists, and make today’s artmonte-carlo a can’t miss date in the European art world calendar.

*Omar Victor Diop, Allegoria 8, 2021. © Omar Victor Diop, Galerie MAGNIN-A, Paris*

The exhibitors

It would be impossible to list the extraordinary range of artworks due to go on show, but here’s a snapshot of the galleries to expect: 193 Gallery, Air de Paris, Almine Rech, Bastian, Bienvenu Steinberg & J, Christine König, Cortesi, Esther Schipper, Eva Meyer, Franco Noero, Hauser & Wirth, HdM, Hoffmann Maler Wallenberg, Laurent Godin, LGDR, Lito Editions, Magnin-A, Marlborough, Mennour, Nathalie Obadia, Opera, Perrotin, Pietro Spartà, Poggiali, Retelet, Richard Saltoun, Robilant+Voena, Sébastien Bertrand, Van de Weghe, Vedovi, Ward Moretti, White Cube, Wizard and Xippas.

An award too!

The Prix artmonte-carlo F.P.Journe will be awarded by a prestigious jury to the best presentation showcased by a gallery at the show. To make this award even more special, a selected work from the winning gallery will be purchased and then donated to an institution in the region.

*Santi Moix, DON’T KNOW, 2022. © Marlborough Gallery*

Complementary events

This year’s show coincides with a number of other fantastic art events, such as the major Monet en Pleine Lumiere, a showcase of nearly 100 of the master’s Riviera-inspired art works that is taking place at the Grimaldi Forum too. Also running concurrently: the George Condo solo exhibit at NMNM, Monaco Art Week and F(ê)aites de la Danse, organised by the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, taking place on the Place du Casino.

To say that this weekend is a big one for art and culture barely covers it!

artmonte-carlo runs from 2pm to 7pm on Saturday 8th July and from 2pm to 8pm on Sunday 9th July.

Tickets cost: €20 for adults; €10 for seniors, students and children six to 16; and free for the under sixes. Group rates are also available.

For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.

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Featured photo: George Condo, Scene from a Ballet, 2023 © George Condo, Hauser & Wirth, Jean-Christophe Lett

Health: Cancer cases in France have doubled since 1990

by: Stephanie Horsman

04/07/2023

The number of people diagnosed with cancer in France has exploded since 1990, with more than 430,000 new cases expected in 2023 alone. Here is the breakdown of the latest statistics.

Public Health France has released a bombshell report on cancer, stating that between 1990 and 2023, the number of cases across all types of the disease has doubled.

Published on 4th July, the agency is putting this year’s grim estimate at 433,136 new cases, with the gender split being 57% men and 43% women. Compared to figures released in 2018, this means that roughly 51,000 more cases will be diagnosed this year than there were five years ago.

LEADING CAUSE OF PREMATURE DEATH

Cancer remains the number one cause of premature death in men in France and is the second biggest cause for women. The aging population is a large part of the reason for the explosion in cases, but lifestyle and environment are close primary factors.

The average age of diagnosis is 70 in men and 68 in women. The number of kidney, melanoma and pancreatic cancers has risen in both sexes since 1990, but lung cancer is gaining momentum, with a 5% increase over the reviewed time period.

“In one or two years, lung cancer will have overtaken breast cancer in terms of mortality among women,” says Sébastien Couraud, pulmonologist and oncologist at the Hospices Civils de Lyon.

It is the second largest type of cancer in men and third in women, though those figures are fast evening out.

“There is no reason to imagine that the number of female cases will not join that of men,” continues the doctor. “For a long time, this cancer was a very male disease, today it is a disease of both sexes.”

The health authorities are calling these statistics “worrying”, and say that action is necessary to bring these numbers down.

BEST AND WORST RATES OF CURE

The report also looked at the rate of recovery amongst 19 of the most frequent invasive cancers, excluding skin cancers other than melanoma.

The tumours seeing the best survival rates are those of the prostate, cutaneous melanoma, breast, with 90% success, followed by colorectal and cervical cancers at 63% each.

On the flip side, patients will certain cancers have considerably poorer chances of recovery, with a five-year survival rate of less than 30%. These are cancers of the central nervous system, lungs, liver and pancreas.

NOT CONCLUSIVE

These figures, it should be noted, are based on data from 2016 to 2018, with Public Health France admitting that the information “fits into a particular context, due to the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020″ and that “a period of two to three years is necessary to ensure an exhaustive collection and to consolidate the data”. The estimates for 2019 to 2023 are therefore projections calculated from data collected up to 2018.

These incidence assessments were carried out by the National Cancer Institute (INCa), Public Health France, the French Network of Cancer Registries (Francim) and the Hospices Civils de Lyon.

Photo source: National Cancer Institute, Unsplash

Astounding 97.6% success rate for Baccalauréat students in Monaco

by: Stephanie Horsman

04/07/2023

The results of the first round of the Baccalauréat marks are in for Monaco’s hard-working students, and the results are very impressive.

The Baccalauréat, commonly known as the Bac, is the diploma awarded to Monegasque and French high school students after a two-year course of study and subsequent exams. The general equivalent to A Levels in the UK, it is essential to pass this course for those considering the university path.

EXCEPTIONAL RESULTS

In all, 98.7% of the students in the Principality who sat the general series Bac at the Lycée Albert Ier and Lycée François d’Assise-Nicolas Barré passed, with 83.2% receiving a special mention from the board.

In numbers, this means that 62 pupils were given “very good” mentions, including four who received a special congratulations from the jury. Another 114 came away with “good” and 87 more were designated as having done “fairly good”.

For the technological series at the Lycée Albert Ier and the Lycée Rainier III, 98.1% of the students passed, with 73.1% of the Baccalauréat holders in this series obtaining mentions. In this group, there was one “very good”, 11 “good” and 26 “fairly good” honours.

In the professional series at the Lycée Rainier III, there was a success rate of 92.9%.

HARD WORK PAYS OFF

The students have clearly worked hard to achieve such fantastic results. Credit is also due to their teachers who led them along the way.

Via a press release, the Monaco Government gave credit where due, saying, “These remarkable results are the result of the unfailing commitment of all the staff and the exemplary involvement of the students. They honour the Principality and bear witness, once again, to the excellence of its teaching.”

Kudos were also handed out to management, non-teaching staff and the Department of National Education, Youth and Sports for their part in making Monaco such an academic success story.

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Photo supplied by Monaco Communications Department

What to expect from the 10th edition of the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge

by: Cassandra Tanti

04/07/2023

From Wednesday, Monaco will host the 10th edition of the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge: a top-level meeting between professionals and students to advance sustainable yachting.

Kicking off on Wednesday 5th and running until Saturday 8th July, the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge has established itself as a renowned meeting for alternative energy sources to power the maritime industry, bringing engineering students and professionals together to present their latest innovations.

In this landmark 10th edition, organised by Yacht Club de Monaco, 46 teams from 25 nations will participate, including 31 universities for around 50 boats.

“The goal remains to stimulate creativity to design eco-friendly propulsion systems and share the experiences and knowledge acquired,” says Bernard d’Alessandri, General Secretary of the Yacht Club de Monaco.

The event has gone from strength to strength since its launch in 2014. With the support of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, as well as Credit Suisse, BMW and Sbm Offshore, the event involves leading players in the yachting industry, such as shipyards Oceanco, Ferretti, Sanlorenzo, Lürssen, Monaco Marine and Palumbo SY Refit.

More than a race

Actually, the Monaco Energy Boat Challenge started on Thursday 15th June with the first Live Career Day, an online networking session that kickstarted initial contacts between yachting professionals and the upcoming generation of engineers as part of the Job Forum. Its two-pronged objective is to meet a growing demand by students looking for internships and engineering jobs, and meet the expanding needs of the industry.

Recruiters are therefore looking for budding young talent with proven technical abilities. For example, renowned Italian shipyard Sanlorenzo has developed through its subsidiary, Bluegame, a 10m-long hydrogen-powered foiling boat with a maximum speed of 50 knots and a range of 180 nautical miles that will be used for the next America’s Cup.

Also present is Malizia-Seaexplorer, the new IMOCA of Team Malizia founded by the Yacht Club de Monaco’s Vice-President Pierre Casiraghi, which will be in the Principality for the first time on 4th July, with Pierre Casiraghi on board as well as Boris Herrmann and the whole team, having completed The Ocean Race round the world in stages with crew, a distance of 32,000 nautical miles.

For the full schedule of events, click here.

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By Monaco Life with press release. Photo credit: Studio Borlenghi/ YCM

Love the Ocean blessed by Archbishop, Yvan Griboval set to embark on new species-saving adventure

by: Cassandra Tanti

04/07/2023

Monaco’s expedition catamaran Love the Ocean has been blessed by Archbishop Dominique-Marie David ahead of its departure in September. Skippered by explorer Yvan Griboval, the boat will embark on an eight-year mission to collect data on the little-known health benefits of sea sponges to help save them from extinction.

The catamaran Love the Ocean is part of the OceanoScientific family, a philanthropic association that organises sailing expeditions that have no CO2 emissions in regions of the seas that have seldom been explored, if at all, to increase knowledge of the oceans and of the causes and consequences of climate change and pollution.

One such location is the coral reefs of Juan de Nova, located in the Mozambique Channel between Madagascar and Africa, in the Indian Ocean.

As part of the OceanoScientific Expeditions 2023-2030, Yvan Griboval will depart on 21^st September from the Yacht Club de Monaco for an adventure to the Eparses Islands onboard the Love The Ocean catamaran. The aim: to collect the genetic data of different species of sponges and help prove the economic value of keeping this ancient organism, which is facing accelerated extinction, alive.

*Sponges are believed to be the oldest animals on the planet. Photo credit: Karl Callwood, Unsplash*

The oldest animal of the sea

Relatives of the humble sea sponge have filtered Earth’s waters for 650 million years or more, long before the first plants took to land. Their simplicity has led scientists to suggest sponges were the earliest animals to arise on our planet.

Today, the descendants of these amazing organisms are under the severe threat of the Sixth Extinction due to human activity.

OceanoScientific is therefore on a mission to help safeguard their biological heritage and preserve it for future generations.

One way of achieving this is by identifying the value that their molecules can have on human health and future new therapies.

“Let’s stop piling up alarmist scientific findings, let’s consider the Ocean as the most gigantic resource of humanity and let’s demonstrate that ecology and economy can be effectively married,” says Griboval.

“By bioprospecting little-known sponges on little-explored reefs using an oceanographic sailboat, using only three to five centimetre samples analysed biologically and genetically according to innovative techniques, we are inventing a virtuous development of an as yet unknown underwater resources, for the benefit of the sites of origin of these organisms.”

*Juan de Nova is a French-controlled tropical island in the narrowest part of the Mozambique Channel*

Scientific objectives

The OceanoScientific Expeditions 2023-2030 are the first sailing oceanographic campaigns in the Eparses Islands to explore all facets of sponge biodiversity. The aim is to make an inventory of species in situ by molecular extraction onboard the Love The Ocean.

The result will be a genetic database of marine organisms in the service of science, health, wellbeing and the environment. It will be a reference collection of tissues and extracts that will then be the subject of an integrative and interdisciplinary study.

The aim is to provide chemists with methods that could reproduce these molecules by biomimicry.

More than DNA collection and analysis

Every 10 seconds, the OceanoScientific System (OCS System) will be used to collect and automatically transmit every hour new data of the Air-Sea interface, feeding the international weather forecasting and operational oceanography centres and providing new information on climate in remote locations.

In addition to the oceanographic campaigns in the Eparses Islands, from May to July the explorer will also be studying the universe of sponges on the Mediterranean coasts, looking for new species, together with students.

As the future protectors of the ocean, children are a major focus of OceanoScientific. On Thursday, school children from local CM1 and CM2 classes were at the Yacht Club de Monaco to witness the blessing of Love The Ocean by Archbishop Dominique-Marie David and hear more about the expedition. Through education, the association is hoping to inspire this generation towards the New Maritime Professions in the Blue Economy, seeing the value that lies within the sea.

The blessing ceremony on Thursday ended with the singing of the ‘Anthem of the Ocean: Love the Ocean’, produced by the Oceanoscientific Monaco association and written and performed by Monegasque singe Olivia Dorato.

*Prince Albert has been a supporter of Yvan Griboval and his environmental causes for many years. Photo source: YCM*

Backed by Monaco and Prince Albert

On Saturday 24th June, Yvan Griboval presented the 2023-2030 major initiatives of the OceanoScientific association to Prince Albert II of Monaco, as the Sovereign made a special visit to the Love The Ocean catamaran, currently moored in the Yacht Club de Monaco’s berth spaces.

Among the topics discussed was the Mediterranean Of The Future operation, to which the Principality of Monaco is committed and whose colours the Love The Ocean bears.

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SEE ALSO:

OceanoScientific welcomed home

Featured image by Monaco Life

Everything you need to know about the Monaco leg of the Ultra Trail Côte d’Azur Mercantour

by: Elsa Carpenter

04/07/2023

Monaco is to be the start line of the Ultra Trail Côte d’Azur Mercantour, one of the world’s most gruelling cross-country running events in the world, this coming Friday.

At 125 kilometres of hard and unforgiving terrain with elevation gains of up to 3,000 metres, it is no exaggeration to call the Ultra Trail Côte d’Azur Mercantour one of the toughest races of its kind in the world.

The hardcore athletes taking part will assemble themselves on the Quai Albert Ier of Monaco’s Port Hercule on Friday 7th July in preparation for a 7pm start that evening.

Upon leaving the harbour, the runners will traverse the steep, urban sprawl of Monaco on a route along the Rue Grimaldi, Rue de la Turbie, Boulevard Rainier III, Boulevard de Belgique, Boulevard du Jardin Exotique and Avenue Hector Otto. From there, it will be up on to the Moyenne Corniche in the direction of the Col de Turini.

Drivers and pedestrians in Monaco alike are being asked to give the competitors 15 minutes of grace between 7pm and 7.15pm as they wind up to the French border. The affected roads and pavements will be reopened as soon as the last runner has passed through.

This event will mark the ninth edition of the epic race. The finish line has been set for Saint Martin Vésubie on 9th July.

Photo credit: Monaco Communications Department

Day: 4 July 2023