About Dena Kaye, Dr. Margery Arent Safir, and Alexandre de Vogüé  

Born in New York, raised in California, and a graduate of Stanford University, Dena Kaye has had a multimedia career as a journalist. She is the daughter of entertainer Danny Kaye and songwriter/producer Sylvia Fine Kaye. She was the travel correspondent on the CBS Morning News, and produced and hosted TRAVELTALK, a radio show in New York. She has written for Town & Country, Vogue, European Travel & Life, Travel+Leisure, and Architectural Digest. Subjects have included: national parks in Costa Rica, colored diamonds, women in politics, memoirs of growing up in Beverly Hills, unusual houses in India, Michael Douglas, Paris, Aspen, Krakow, Belle Ile, St. Barth’s, Stockholm, and Lebanon. She taught journalism at the University of South Carolina and is a published poet. Her book, The Traveling Woman, was published by The Literary Guild, Doubleday, and Bantam Books. She was a spokesperson for American Express Travelers Cheques and for Polaroid in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. 2013 was the Centennial celebration of Danny Kaye. She spearheaded a team that organized and promoted events in the U.S. and Europe.  She is president of the Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Kaye Foundation. “Ours is a very personal approach to philanthropy,” she says. “We give to people, rather than just identifying a project. It could be a most worthy cause, but if we don’t relate to those in charge, we will not make the grant. Grants, for us, are a long–term relationship.” 

Grants have included: The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, New York; The Danny Kaye Theatre at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, with a stove center stage and scholarships for students studying abroad; The Music Garden, in Aspen, Colorado; The Aspen Institute’s Aspen Global Leadership Network; education programs for Jazz Aspen Snowmass and Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York; restoration of the Opera Comique main foyer in Paris,  the fountain at Santa Isabel Convent and throne room in the Alhambra in Granada with World Monuments Fund; a community park in Cairo with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture; Architect and designer Eileen Gray’s iconic E-1027 house in Roquebrune Cap Martin, France; Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York; Parkinson’s Action Network; The Arts Arena; Chateau de Vaux–le–Vicomte; Les Arts Florissants and William Christie; Pinchgut Opera in Sydney; The Orana Foundation in Australia dedicated to sourcing and making a database of indigenous food ingredients; French Heritage Society; Le Korsa in Senegal; The American Hospital of Paris. The foundation has supported a project in Almora, (northern India) that includes weaving, education, and medical facilities.  

 Ms. Kaye is on the Arts Arena Advisory Counsel and the board of French Heritage Society.  She lives in France. 

In 2007, Dr. Margery Arent Safir founded the Arts Arena, a non-profit interdisciplinary initiative for the creative and performing arts, film, and issues of culture and society that has presented more than 300 cultural events free and open to the public.  She currently serves as the Artistic Director of the Arts Arena in France and as President and Director of The Arts Arena International.  www.artsarena.org  

She is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature at The American University of Paris and formerly a member of the Executive Committee of the research group CRICCAL at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle.  She is the author, co-author, or general editor of works on the leading figures of contemporary Latin American literature, including Earth Tones: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (with Manuel Durán). She has also collaborated with renowned scientists Stephen Jay Gould and Nobel-laureate chemist Roald Hoffmann on the interactions of science and literature in such works as Mélancolies du savoir and the expanded Melancholies of Knowledge: Literature in the Age of Science; Connecting Creations; and Storytelling in Science and Literature.  

She was Series Editor for the book Balanchine Then and Now and General Editor of Robert Wilson from Within (English and French editions), acclaimed as “the Bible for anyone interested in the work of Robert Wilson.” Contributors to the book include Marina Abramovic, Philip Glass, Isabelle Huppert, Laurie Anderson, Jessye Norman, and Pierre Bergé. She has spoken on Wilson’s work internationally and in France at the Musée du Louvre, Cinémathèque Française, and the Centre Georges Pompidou.

She has been a Meymandi Distinguished Visitor at the National Humanities Center in the U.S., a member of the Board of Governors of the Association of Yale University Alumni, of the International Advisory Council of the Aspen Institute Global Initiative on Arts, Culture, and Society, of the Board of Directors of the Brazilian Artists Residency JACA, and of the Baroque music ensemble Les Arts Florissants.  

A native of  Washington, D.C., she did her undergraduate studies at Columbia University and her doctorate at Yale University.  Her academic honors include Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, highest honors on her Ph.D., and a Fulbright Scholarship.  

After a childhood spent at the famous Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte owned by his family, Alexandre de Vogüé  spent a few years in Paris studying business administration, then did his military service with the alpine troops based in the French Alps, an experience that led him to decide to become a professional mountain guide.  After twenty years of life in the  “grand air,” traveling the world to climb mountains, he was ready to face what he calls his “family duty,” and in 2011, he joined the family business at Vaux-le-Vicomte as Director of Communications and Marketing. He also took over fund-raising operations as President of Les Amis de Vaux-le-Vicomte Association.  In recent years, he has assumed responsibility for the Château’s collection of art and archives, establishing a committee of experts as well as partnerships with museums and universities in France and abroad. 

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