Amel Nafti is Director of Studies and Research Programmes at the National School of Fine-Arts at The Villa Arson since 2013. She has studied both Literature at the Sorbonne University and History of Art at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. She was a Vallet Foundation Scholar in 2003-2004.

She succeeded in the competition to enter the Ministry of Culture in 2004. Her first appointment was in Paris with the National Conservatory for Music and Dance where she was in charge of the historical Archive in the Research and Publications Center.

Amel then moved to Nice in 2006 to work for the Villa Arson, where she headed the library, which is specialized in contemporary art, art history and a number of neighbouring fields. She has led many important changes within the school, both in the building itself as well as in the way the school’s departments presently work.

In 2010, Amel Nafti was the curator for Traits Noirs (Black Lines), an exhibition which took place at the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice. The exhibition presented a selection of engraved works realised by several artists and former students over the past 30 years, along with Moo Chew Wong, the artist who was responsible for the studio over that period. She also was the editor of the exhibition’s catalog.

Since the beginning in 2008 of a major project around the history of the school, Amel was increasingly associated in research projects which soon led her to head that area of the teachers’ curriculum. Between 2009 and 2012, working with the teachers’ different structures, she built up and developed research programmes at Villa Arson. In 2012, the research unit “Bricologie” and the post-graduate programme “5/7” were each awarded grants from the Ministry of Culture.

In 2013, her field was extended from pedagogical proposals to becoming Director of Studies and Research.

She is working since 2014 to develop relationships between the Art School and the University on research and teaching programme. The latest project is Figure, representation and creativity which has just been awarded grants for the next three years from the Idex Excellence Programme of the University Côte d’Azur. It will give the artists and researchers involved in Drawing Open the opportunity to develop their activity in nice with the Villa Arson.