Lady Foster of Thames Bank. (Prof. Dr Elena Ochoa), a graduate of Complutense University of Madrid, was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles (USA) and a visiting research scholar at the universities of Cambridge (UK), Chicago (USA) Kraków (Poland), Hamburg (Germany), and Pennsylvania (USA), among others. She was Titular Professor of Psychopathology at Complutense University of Madrid for over twenty years. She has also worked at TVE, Radio Nacional, and newspapers such as El Pais for many years.
Until 2001, Elena Foster was Honorary Professor at King's College London. She founded Ivory Press in 1996, based on a lifelong interest in the visual arts and creativity, subjects that she has from time to time linked to her academic work. Ivory Press (www.ivorypress.com) is devoted to collaborations with sculptors, painters and photographers. Works for collectors and museums range from combinations of facsimiles, photographs and writings to sculptures in bronze, brass, stainless steel, wood and card. The first collaboration 'Reflections' was produced with the late Eduardo Chillida. More recent works include: 'Walking and Sleeping' (Richard Long); 'Wound' (Anish Kapoor); 'Open Secret' (Anthony Caro); 'Detritus', unpublished work by Francis Bacon which was prepared with the help of the Estate of the late artist; 'Isamu Noguchi: 18 Drawings, 18 Photographs' also prepared with the help of the Noguchi Foundation in New York; 'Danger Book: Suicide Fireworks' (Cai Guo-Qiang); and 'NotThePoint' (Richard Tuttle).
In 2004, Elena Foster founded Elena Foster Publications Ltd. and Art Commissioners Ltd. Lady Foster is Chairman and CEO of IvoryPress Ltd (with offices in London and Madrid) and Art Commissionners Ltd. She is Executive Director of C International Photo Magazine and IvoryPress Art+Books Space (Madrid, Spain).
Lady Foster has been Chairman of the Tate International Council from April 2004 to September 2008. Currently, she is a Trustee of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and advisor of the Mutual Art Trust and of Phillips de Pury Auction House. In 2005 Ivory Press launched C International Photo Magazine, which is published in English, Spanish, Mandarin and Japanese. C Photo Magazine is distributed worldwide.
Lady Foster has been co-curator of the Italian Pavilion 'C on Cities' Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2006: 'Photographs from C on Cities do not simply reproduce reality; they frequently employ abstract or lateral images to depict urban lives, or they show private spaces to describe the city without obvious representations'.[1] She also has been co-curator of the 'Blood on Paper' Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, 2008; 'I wanted to do an exhibition that contained works from the 21st century because the concept of the artist book is changing' [2]
She is married to the architect, Lord Foster of Thames Bank, with whom she has a daughter of ten years and a son of eight years.