Six degrees of separation from Royal Academy’s Tim Marlow

Tim Marlow, director of artistic programmes at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, on Thursday moderated a Hong Kong Intelligence Squared debate titled “Art today has sold out to the market”. The art historian used to present a television series called Marlow on Style, but the show was dropped in 2008. With cashstrapped newspapers also cutting back on arts coverage, Marlow has warned that there is “a danger that we reduce all culture to the level of infotainment”. Marlow oversees exhibitions at the Royal Academy, which houses many priceless possessions, including a marble relief by Michelangelo …

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was a sculptor, painter, architect and poet who shaped the development of Western art. In 1488, at the age of 13, he became an apprentice to a painter in Florence. As a teenager, he displayed great mastery of his craft, so much so that a young rival punched him in the face out of jealousy and broke his nose. One of his most famous works decorates the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, and may hide a secret code, according to the book The Sistine Secrets: Unlocking the Codes in Michelangelo’s Defiant Masterpiece, by Roy Doliner and Benjamin Blech …

An internationally recognised educator, Blech is a 10th-generation rabbi who has written more than 10 books, including one that has been deemed “the single best book on Judaism in our generation”, by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. He has lectured to Jewish communities all over the world, including in Hong Kong, has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and has been ranked as the “16th most influential Jew in America”. He’s also an associate professor of Talmud at Yeshiva University, in New York, an alumnus of which is restaurateur and writer Eddie Huang …