Manfred Flynn Kuhnert
Co-Founder & Editor in Chief
Academic Work
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For Harvard College, Mr. Flynn Kuhnert taught undergraduate courses in Modern European Drama: Ibsen, Strindberg and Beckett; Shakespeare in Performance; American Drama: Eugene O’Neill to Arthur Miller; Italian & French, 17th& 18th century farce: commedia dell'arte, Molière, and Beaumarchais. Mr. Flynn Kuhnert has also served as a Visiting Professor at Duke University, teaching dramatic literature and theatre history including courses on Shakespeare’s Tragedies; Chekhov and the Naturalistic Stage; Performance Art in the 20th Century; Aristotle’s Poetics; Principles in Directing from Meyerhold to Peter Brook; The New Consciousness in Art - 1890’s Paris World’s Fair and the Birth of the Modern.
He has lectured extensively over the years for private institutions including: The Dallas Museum of Art; The Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach; Save Venice, Boston; Chapman University; The Los Angeles Music Center, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion; The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach; The Virginia Robinson Gardens and Museum; The Nantucket Preservation Trust; The Colony Club, NYC; The Vizcaya Museum, Miami; The Laguna Playhouse; The Decorative Arts Society Newport; The California Club; The Elsie de Wolfe Foundation; The San Francisco Antiques Fair, The Anthony & Elizabeth Duquette Foundation for the Living Arts, and The Los Angeles Public Library’s Author’s Dinner.
Also at Harvard College, Flynn Kuhnert served as Head Teaching Fellow to Professor Robert Brustein (Prof. Brustein is recipient of the National Medal of Arts; Senior Fellow National Endowment for the Arts; American Theater Hall of Fame; Founder Yale School of Drama; chief critic for The New Republic, taking over Harold Clurman’s column in 1959). Professor Brustein entrusted Mr. Flynn Kuhnert with overall responsibility for 300 undergraduates each term, who were studying dramatic literature and classics in the English department. Mr. Flynn Kuhnert was recognized by Harvard’s College of Arts and Sciences as an Outstanding Fellow and nominated for the Levison Teaching Award.
He is a graduate of The University of California, Northwestern University, and Harvard University’s ART Institute. At Harvard, Mr. Flynn Kuhnert graduated from the highly competitive Graduate Program in Directing (admitting only 2 students per year).
Flynn Kuhnert’s professors at Harvard included: playwrights David Mamet and John Guare; directors Andrei Serban and Anne Bogart, opera directors Robert Wilson & Peter Sellars, Dr. Robert Scanlan (classicist and executor of Samuel Beckett’s estate). He has also studied with Jerzy Grotowski, Frank Galati, Leland Roloff and Uta Hagen.
For the Ovation Television Network in 2013, Flynn Kuhnert created, wrote and presented The Kuhnert Chronicles analyzing art, architecture, theatre, & literature globally- “bringing wit to traditionally recondite subjects…as well as exploring art and cultural happenings in real time, in cities across the world”.
Presently, Flynn Kuhnert is writing a 6-hour factual program on the history of theatre, modeled after Kenneth Clark’s 1969 Civilisation and Robert Hughes 1981 Shock of the New.
Philanthropy
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For over a decade, Flynn Kuhnert served on the International Board of Directors of Save Venice, Inc., leading its efforts on behalf of the western region of the United States. Save Venice is an American charity that brings together a global constituency to preserve the cultural patrimony of Venice, Italy, focusing primarily on restoring its art and architecture. Recently it has completed the entire church of San Sebastiano featuring ceilings by Veronese (his “Cappella Sistina”), as well as restoring some of the greatest masterpieces by Jacopo, Gentile & Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, the Doge’s Palace and the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Its board - made up of art historians, scholars, museum directors, leaders in business & philanthropists - raises more funding for the restoration of art in Venice than all other Venetian charities and world governments combined.
Mr. Flynn Kuhnert has participated in the Sir John Soane Museum’s Patron Circle and has just been invited by Philip Hewat-Jaboor, Chairman of the Masterpiece Art Fair, to join its Collector’s Council.
Directing
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As a Stage Director, Flynn Kuhnert has directed 37 large scale theatre & opera productions including Chekhov’s The Seagull in Amsterdam for the International Festival in de Nes, Holland; Mozart’s The Magic Flute for the Lowell Opera Boston starring Maria Tegzes, and his own adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby at the American Repertory Theatre, starring Faran Tahir; as well as Measure for Measure, Three Sisters, Yerma, The Inspector General, A Dream Play, Caucasian Chalk Circle, Ondine, Trojan Women. He has also received the Lee Mitchell Memorial Directing Award. In addition, he has assistant directed on prime-time series including NBC’s Frasier, NBC’s Seinfeld, Mad About You, and John Lithgow’s Third Rock from the Sun.
“The Walk to Elsie’s”
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Manfred Flynn Kuhnert is the author of The Walk to Elsie’s & The Walk from Elsie’s (along with co-author Hutton Wilkinson), a pair of novels illuminating the interwoven lives of 20th century design icons Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl (the first woman to charge for taste) & her last protégé Tony Duquette, the first American to to be honored with a one-man-exhibition at the Lourve’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs, in 1951.
Launched in the United Kingdom at Mayfair’s Heywood Hill, Ltd., The Walk to Elsie’s has been featured twice in Harper’s Bazaar, as well as publications as diverse as Italian Vogue, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Veranda Magazine.
Ten weeks after publication, ICM negotiated for Lionsgate Entertainment (the studio behind Mad Men, Orange is the New Black, The Hunger Games) to acquire both novels and produce an eight-episode limited series. In 2021 Intuition Productions took the helm.
Personal
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As a bibliophile (under the guidance of John Saumarez Smith for over two decades), Mr. Flynn Kuhnert has lovingly created a personal library of over 12,000 volumes on history, biography, art, architecture and the decorative arts.
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As a collector, Flynn Kuhnert’s great passion is for English, 20th c. painters and travelers, including John Stanton Ward RA; John Craxton RA; Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Lord Berners; Derek Hill CBE; Rex Whistler; and cartoonists like H.M. Bateman, J.A.K., and Charles Saxon. Equally important to him is the field of black and white portrait photography: his collection is built around the works of Cecil Beaton, André Ostier and Yousuf Karsh.
Mr. Flynn Kuhnert is a member of Brooks's Club in London (est. 1764), as well as 5 Hertford Street, Annabel’s and Mark's Club in London. He is also a member of the Harvard Club in New York City. Born in Los Angeles, reared in Laguna Beach, California, and maintaining his permanent residence in Bel Air, Mr. Flynn Kuhnert nevertheless spends three quarters of his year outside of America studying the arts. His time abroad is devoted to theatre, opera and the museum world.