Bridgitt Evans, VIA Art Fund Co-Founder and Nicholas Baume, Director and Chief curator of Public Art Fund will discuss how art patrons can join forces as partners in a new model of philanthropy to support innovative and ambitious projects. They will talk will be about the importance of partnering with and directly supporting artists, curators and cultural institutions, and how VIA Art Fund has reached beyond traditional support models.
Bridgitt Evans is the Co-Founder and President of VIA Art Fund and an avid collector of contemporary art. She co-founded VIA in 2013 with the goal of creating a philanthropic collective of individuals and family foundations working directly with artists and producers to realize ambitious projects in the public realm.
Nicholas Baume joined Public Art Fund as Director and Chief Curator in 2009. A native of Australia, his curatorial career began there with Kaldor Public Art Projects and later the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. He was Contemporary Curator at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, before moving to Boston to join the Institute of Contemporary Art as Chief Curator. Baume has curated more than fifty exhibitions with a wide range of significant international artists at different stages of their careers, among them Anselm Kiefer, whose first site-specific public commission in the United States titled Uraeus is on view at Rockefeller Center, May 2 - July 22. Author of several major exhibition catalogs, he is a frequent public speaker on contemporary art, and has contributed essays and interviews to numerous publications.