About Amy Whitaker
Amy Whitaker is a full-time member of the Art Business faculty at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York. She is also the president of the Professional Organization for Women in the Arts (POWarts) and a mentor for fellows of the TED Conferences.
Amy holds an MBA from Yale and an MFA in oil painting from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Her undergraduate degree is in political science and studio art from Williams College.
Amy teaches and writes about the intersection of art, business, and everyday life. She has taught courses in economics and entrepreneurship at The School of Visual Arts, The Rhode Island School of Design, California College of the Arts, Williams College, and Trade School, a social-practice school founded by artists. Her teaching has been cited in the Financial Times, Forbes, Corporate Counsel, The Awl, the New York Times Cityroom Blog, and elsewhere. She has lectured widely on art museums, creativity, and business principles. She has worked in museums including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, and Tate, as well as for the artist Jenny Holzer, for the investment firm D.E. Shaw & Co., L.P., and as an Olin Fellow in Economics at the Yale School of Management.
Amy is the author of the book Museum Legs: Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art (Hol Art Books, 2009), an essay collection about the creative life of museums and the public life of art. Museum Legs was included in the Authors@Google program, recommended by the Association of Art Museum Directors, and chosen as freshman read at RISD in 2010. Amy’s work has also appeared in FastCompany.com, The New York Times, The New York Post, Art21, Artwrit, and The Millions, among other publications. She is the 2013 recipient of the Sarah Verdone Writing Award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and is at work on a new book about creative process in the market economy, to be published by Harper Collins.