image courtesy of Rolex Art Initiative

The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative is a philanthropic programme that was set up in 2002 to make a contribution to global culture. The programme seeks out gifted young artists from all over the world and brings them together with artistic masters for a year of creative collaboration in a one-to-one mentoring relationship. In keeping with its tradition of supporting individual excellence, Rolex gives emerging artists time to learn, create and grow.

For 2016-2017, among seven artists David Chipperfield named as the new mentor for architecture. From a double Oscar-winning film director to one of Africa’s most respected writers, an iconoclastic  composer, multi-talented director, renowned architect, visionary choreographer and a pioneering visual artist who has influenced her discipline for more than half a century, the seven Rolex mentors for the 2016¦2017 edition are once again artistic giants.
 
David Chipperfield (architecture), Mia Couto (literature), Alfonso Cuarón (film), Philip Glass (music), Joan Jonas (visual arts), Robert Lepage (theatre) and Ohad Naharin (dance) will spend a year in creative conversation with promising young talents in their respective disciplines, with support from Rolex. Hundreds of artists and arts leaders from all over the world who had gathered at the Centro Cultural del Bosque in Mexico City on 6 December 2015 to celebrate the culmination of the 2014–2015 edition of the Rolex Arts Initiative, were the first to learn the names of the new mentors. 

British architect David Chipperfield says that “architecture involves complex and overlapping concerns and skills from the theoretical to the practical. Intentions are often obscured by jargon and inappropriate concerns. I would hope to remind my protégé that the issues that confront us are those that confront us all, we have different tools and methods with which we can contemplate and with which we can hopefully act.” 

The mentoring year will begin in mid-2016.

> via rolexmentorprotege.com