Kristen Becker, Founder
With over two decades of expertise forging successful dialogues between artists, galleries, arts institutions, and arts sponsors, Kristen Becker is dedicated to long-term relationship cultivation and strategy. Her passion for bringing these stakeholders together drives her work, providing access and sharing tangible information on creating growth opportunities, initiating effective partnerships, and fostering lasting professional connections. By shedding light on the processes happening behind the scenes, she helps lower barriers to entry and dispels myths about the gallery system, the arts nonprofit sector, and corporate arts and culture programs.
Since 2020, Becker has worked with over 100 individual artists on strategy and messaging and counseled numerous commercial galleries on museum outreach and development. She has partnered with organizations as diverse as Bank of America, Vote.Org, the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, and the Association of Art Museum Curators. Professional development curricula clients include the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Mass MoCA's Assets for Artists, the Center for Curatorial Leadership, the Frye Art Museum, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Her curatorial projects include Annotations & Improvisations (2021-2022, Miles McEnery Gallery, New York), Cells (2017, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York), and No Vacancies (2015, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York).
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Prior to KB Art Strategies, Kristen created the role of Director of Museum Engagement for Marianne Boesky Gallery, bringing institutional partnerships to gallery artists such as Sanford Biggers and Frank Stella. Before Boesky, she spent seven years as Director at Luhring Augustine where she worked with artists such as Ragnar Kjartansson and Glenn Ligon, and she has held positions at L+M Arts and Gorney Bravin + Lee.
In addition to her gallery roles, Becker was a member of the Steering Committee of the Professional Organization for Women in the Arts from 2016 to 2019. In 2018, she spearheaded the POWarts Salary Survey, the first comprehensive salary survey focused exclusively on the visual arts spanning both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors.
Becker received her MA in Museum Studies from George Washington University and holds a BA in Anthropology from Wake Forest University.