I work as an art consultant, so my job is to help private clients find art for their homes. One luxury of having done what I do for as long as I have is that now I mostly work with friends (and friends of friends), educating them about contemporary art and helping build collections over many years that hold meaning both for them personally and in the larger context of the ever-evolving world of art and artists. Though I studied art history formally, I decided long ago that I didn’t want to be a scholar of art but rather a scholar of people, a student of the present moment, but looking to art (and its creator) as the way to make sense of the world and our relationships with the people in it. 

 

On your website, you mention that you are “eager to work with artists who want to make a difference.” Why are both the arts and philanthropy important to you? How does this influence the work you do?

Art and service both hold an upper rung on my priority ladder, but they also occupy a very similar space on it in their overlapping sets of characteristics: artists are making work that is born of something truthful and good and makes someone else feel something real; service in its highest form should do the same, bringing us closer together in compassion and understanding. 

 

How did you get involved with NYFA?

My longtime mentor Michael Findlay brought me into the NYFA family in 2016, around the time when there was much discussion of exclusion and of walls at borders. That year, I curated a show of work from emerging artists in NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Program. The Immigrant Artist Program (IAP) has always been for me the heart and soul of NYFA, making manifest NYFA’s commitment to inclusion and diversity, and insisting on our common humanity. Last year, I helped to arrange for a Princeton student — through Princeton Internships in Civic Service (PICS), another wonderful organization on whose Board I sit as a Vice-Chair — to spend the summer at NYFA learning from each department. 

 

Anything else you would like to share? 

Life for me and for most of us will ebb and flow in such a way that sometimes it’s funds that are easily given; sometimes it’s time that can best be spent helping. Ideally, as a friend of NYFA, one could do both. More valuable than either of these forms of giving, though, is the gift of truly being seen, understood, cared for; that generosity of spirit is NYFA’s greatest gift to its artists and in turn, it is richly rewarding, as a friend of NYFA, to take responsibility for its care.

 

Thank you to Kate, and all our donors for all that you do to support NYFA! If you would like to get more involved, please reach out to us to discuss our volunteer opportunities at development@nyfa.org. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

 

Photo Courtesy: Kate Bellin