We’re Living in a Moment for ‘Great Art’ Creation, Says Collector Valeria Napoleone
The longtime champion of female artists is celebrating a decade of her namesake sculpture center in New York and an ever-growing collection of more than 550 pieces.
3 min
After more than three decades of collecting, Valeria Napoleone isn’t changing her perspective.
The Italian art collector, whose self-estimated 580-piece collection consists primarily of female artists, has moved around and currently calls New York City home, but has a broadstroke view on her art assemblage ahead of her 60th birthday later this year.
“I rotate and change things quite often,” she said. “I want to live with my art, and when you change a piece, it resets the room.”
Sculpture is a particular focus for Napoleone, who’s helped elevate a range of emerging female sculptors over the past decade through her collaboration with SculptureCenter in New York.
Her ongoing collecting includes creators such as Italian artist Margherita Manzelli, Dutch painter Lily van der Stokker and German artist Nicole Wermers.
Napoleone is also the co-chair of New York University’s President’s Global Council and funds an annual professor role at the intersection of art and gender studies. Her homes in New York and London are revolving testaments to support of female-created and female-powered art, and she teased an upcoming project in Milan that will be another significant moment to showcase portions of her collection.
“What I buy in the U.S. mainly stays here, and it’s the same in the U.K. and Europe, but my largest storage area is in the U.K.,” she said.
Napoleone’s prominent role as a voice for female artists, both emerging and established, comes at a moment when new channels of accessibility and growth for these artists are being challenged by rollbacks in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in higher education alongside a general overall slowdown in the art market.
Mansion Global caught up with Napoleone on a video call while she was at her New York City residence.
Mansion Global: How do you stay motivated to find emerging female artists to add to your collection?
Valeria Napoleone: Sometimes, I feel like, “do I need another piece?” I want to contribute, and always be impactful with what I do. I like to collect artists in the middle of their career, and the motivation is just to support and be impactful.
It’s important to give to the artist to make a difference, and as a collector sometimes I think ‘no, I don’t need another one,’ but it’s not an option to not continue collecting.
Is there an artist you haven’t collected yet, but would like to?
(American sculptor) Cady Noland. In the mid-1990s, women were trying new languages across art, and I found that very inspiring. Cady is the godmother of that generation, and her work isn’t only rare, but it’s also very expensive. I also don’t have to own everything in life, and her work might be something I can admire from a distance.
You once mentioned that you ‘generally only buy pieces that contribute massively to contemporary discourse.’ How do you define that portion of the discourse?
Our family’s agenda is to bring together exceptional female artists. Some are political, some are formal, but each of them have their own voice. I don’t look at this in terms of gender politics, but rather with new languages and new ideas.
I want to be surprised by the way the artist takes me into the issues. It’s a very personal reaction, but it has to tick boxes. I buy what I deeply connect to.
As an active member of leadership within higher education, are you concerned about how active attacks on DEI and similar initiatives might affect the accessibility and growth of female artists?
I think female artists have resilience. They’ve been totally ignored forever, and if anything this moment will make them more eager to get their voice out there. Usually, great art comes from moments of crisis and significance because there’s this sense of urgency. Female artists have been suffering forever, and they will continue to work and be recognized.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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