Christine Ferry, former Villa Medici press officer, dies at 75

Christine Ferry, a French-born press officer who worked for nearly twenty years at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, died suddenly on the night of June 27–28, 2023, in a nursing home in Tricase, Salento. She was 75. Ferry had been living in Giuliano di Lecce for about a decade after retiring from Villa Medici. Born in France in 1948, she moved to Paris in her twenties, where she met her partner Giorgio Veccia, a set designer for Italian cinema and decorator of the Lido de Paris. After Veccia's death, she became a key figure in Rome's postmodern art scene of the 1980s, socializing with artists such as Enzo Cucchi, Sandro Chia, and Alighiero Boetti, as well as earlier figures like Mario Ceroli, Jannis Kounellis, and Gino De Dominicis. In Salento, she quickly built a network of friendships and promoted artistic and cultural initiatives. Her death was unexpected, even to close friends who knew she was ill but did not expect the end to come so soon.