Philippe de Montebello, who retired as the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York after 31 years, is considered a living legend. He set the very highest of standards in art, culture and the museum.

De Montebello succeeded in making the Metropolitan the best-visited New York attraction, and introduced a large audience to great art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a collection of over two million works of art. It holds important works from almost every European and American master. The museum houses an encyclopedic collection of Egyptian, classical and non-Western treasures and an extensive selection of applied arts.

In 2009, President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal; President Bush honored him in 2002 with The National Medal of Arts. Director Emeritus Philippe de Montebello is currently Fiske Kimball Professor in the History and Culture of Museums at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

The legendary Library of Alexandria, synonymous with intellectual freedom, tolerance and scholarly curiosity, went up in flames. The largest collection of scholarly, philosophical and literary texts of Antiquity fell victim to neglect, prosecution and destruction. Yet sixteen centuries later, one man has made it his life’s work to once more gather together the knowledge of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and to revive its spirit of civilization in our times: Ismail Serageldin, founder and president of the New Library of Alexandria.

With over a million visitors a year, the Library symbolizes the increasing self-confidence, also intellectual and democratic, of the Arab world, where Ismail Serageldin is considered a leading voice of reason. His plea for Islamic liberalism, freedom of expression, tolerance, nonviolence and rationalism makes Serageldin, who senses the hopeful eyes of the entire world upon him, today’s foremost Arab Enlightenment thinker.

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