Christine Kuan

Christine Kuan is President & Executive Director of Creative Capital Foundation. Since her appointment in 2021, Kuan has fundraised and awarded millions in unrestricted project grants to 300 artists in the visual arts, film, performing arts, and literature across all 50 states and territories. In response to the widespread, national need for artist support, Kuan expanded its open call grant program and launched the Creative Capital State of the Art Prize—an unrestricted grant to one artist in every single U.S. state and territory. Kuan also eliminated fees for artists to access educational programs, and launched the Creative Capital Artist Lab, online professional development courses.

Before joining Creative Capital, she was CEO and Director of Sotheby’s Institute of Art, where she oversaw the Master’s Degree programs in Art Business, Contemporary Art, and Fine & Decorative Art & Design, as well as the Online, Summer, and Pre-College programs. In this role, she established new programs and partnerships with Tsinghua University in Beijing, Ewha University in Seoul, Centro University in Mexico City, and ESCP Business School in Paris. Kuan also launched a full MA scholarship program in partnership with Spelman College at the Atlanta University Center Consortium (AUCC).

Kuan has worked in the startup technology sector as the inaugural Chief Curator and Director of Strategic Partnerships at Artsy. In this role, she oversaw museum and institutional partnerships, digital collection strategy, open access policy, educational initiatives, and launched their auctions business, including benefit auctions for museums and nonprofit organizations. Notably, Kuan established more than 500 museum and institutional partnerships worldwide, including the national museums in France.

As one of the early innovators in online arts access, Kuan was the Chief Curatorial Officer and Vice President of External Affairs at Artstor, a nonprofit image library founded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She has also served as Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Art Online/Grove Art Online at Oxford University Press, where she significantly expanded scholarly information on women artists, Asian contemporary artists, decorative arts, materials and techniques in art, and Classical art and architecture.

Kuan has also worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Department of Asian Art and the General Counsel’s Office, and she has taught English Literature and Writing at the University of Iowa, Peking University, Rutgers University, and guest lectured at Stanford University, Texas A&M University, The Association of Art Museum Curators, and others.

She has been interviewed by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Vogue, New York, Artnet, Cultured, Philanthropy News Digest, China Global Television Network (CGTN), and other outlets. Kuan’s publications include: Creative Legacies: Artists’ Estates and Foundations (eds. Kathy Battista and Bryan Faller); Rights and Reproductions: The Handbook for Cultural Institutions (ed. Anne Young), Digital Heritage and Culture: Strategy and Implementation (eds. Herminia Din and Steven Wu), Guest Critic for The Brooklyn Rail, and Best Practices Guide for Artist Demographic Data Coordination (Association of Art Museum Curators Foundation). She has lectured and published extensively on digital strategy, museum policy, and new technologies for the art world. Kuan holds an MFA in Creative Writing Poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a BA in Art History and English Literature from Rutgers University.