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Meet the team
From Florence to London, and back again, is where our conversation begins.
Meet the people behind the mission.
Margie MacKinnon
Co-founder & President
Calliope Arts
MARGIE MACKINNON, Co-Founder and President of Calliope Arts Foundation, grew up in Montreal, Quebec. She completed a law degree at Queen’s University in Kingston and moved to London, England in 1990. A two-month study trip to Florence in 2011 marked the start of Margie’s ongoing interest in that city’s history, art and language. She served on the Board of Advancing Women Artists for four years, contributing to several art-by-women restoration projects. Since its founding in 2021, Calliope Arts has partnered with MK Gallery, the Royal Drawing School, the Alinari Photography Foundation, the British Institute in Florence, Il Palmerino Cultural Association and Casa Buonarroti Museum on projects focussing on women’s achievements. As a contributing editor of Restoration Conversations magazine, Margie has interviewed the National Portrait Gallery’s Chanel Curator, Flavia Frigeri, art historian and biographer of Rosalba Carriera, Angela Oberer, and author and editor, Jennifer Higgie, among others.
Wayne McArdle
Co-founder
Calliope Arts
WAYNE MCARDLE, Co-Founder, Director and Secretary of Calliope Arts, is a graduate of the Law Faculty of the University of Western Ontario. Mr McArdle’s career has included private and public law, impact investment and public service. He was Chief Counsel at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (London) and was a partner in the London Office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher for 18 years.
Wayne is Chair of the Board of Asset Risk Consultants Limited, an FCA regulated firm that provides wealth management advice to family offices, endowments and high net worth individuals. He was the Chair of Conduit Capital Partners, an impact investment firm, and is the Chair of the University of Western Ontario Foundation (UK), and a Trustee of The Akshaya Patra Foundation UK. Wayne resides in London with his family, and enjoys spending time in Florence.
Linda Falcone
Managing editor & presenter
Restoration Conversations
Consultant for Calliope Arts
LINDA FALCONE is creator, presenter and managing editor of Restoration Conversations magazine and livestream series, and a consultant for Calliope Arts. Previously, she was founding director of the organisation Advancing Women Artists, since two years prior its official founding in 2009, until its closure in 2021. Linda is the co-author of several books with Jane Fortune that spotlight the quest to uncover lost art by women from the Renaissance and beyond, two of which became PBS documentaries.
Raised in California, she has lived in Italy for over 28 years, writing several Italy-inspired books on language including Italians Dance and I’m a Wallflower and If They Are Roses: The Italian way with Words. Her first and final novel, Moving Days, was published in 2014. Formerly a newspaper columnist, she has taught university courses as employment, and curated small-scale exhibitions for fun, always in Italy.
Linda has appeared in several TV art documentaries including the BBC’s The Story of Women and Art, Feltrinelli TV’s Monuments Women and When the World Answered: Women Artists and the 1966 Flood (2015), a PBS production based on a book she co-authored, by the same name. More recently, in 2021, she was artistic consultant for the television special Renaissance Women Restored, on the conservation of Plautilla Nelli’s Last Supper, for broadcast on American Public Television. Her most recent book, Florence in the Making, was published in 2022.
Fiona Richards
Designer
Restoration Conversations Magazine
FIONA RICHARDS studied archaeology and law at Sydney University and specialised in Egyptian scarab seals for her PhD from Edinburgh University. She has spent over 20 years working and travelling in the Middle East and in 2014 started her own magazine, Timeless Travels, for lovers of travel, archaeology and art.
Fiona is an award-winning journalist and has published two books on Egyptian scarab seals. She is the editor of World History Insider, the members' magazine for World History Encyclopedia and provides bespoke designs for a small number of magazines and websites.