Rick Kinsel

Rick Kinsel began his career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1989. During his tenure at the Museum, he earned an M.A. in the history of the decorative arts, design, and culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York; Since 2000, Kinsel has worked to conceptualize and administer the philanthropic and exhibitions programs of the Vilcek Foundation. As president of the foundation, he leads and oversees all aspects of the foundation’s operations and programs, and the organization’s institutional and creative partnerships. In addition to his leadership role with the foundation, Kinsel is a member of the Board of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and is a member of the Association of Professional Art Advisors. Kinsel’s curatorial leadership and authorship brings insights to art and culture that move beyond the academic. His books and essays convey the emotional, social, and cultural contexts in which works were made, and serve to build bridges between the experiences of artists and viewers. Building on the Vilcek Foundation’s mission to foster and build appreciation for the arts and culture, in 2020 Kinsel initiated the development of several series of creative publications: including digital and print coloring books, and a series of manga biographies of outstanding immigrants in the United States illustrated by Hiroki Otsuka. In his leadership with the Vilcek Foundation, Kinsel has conceived of multiple traveling exhibitions and related publications featuring works from the Vilcek Collection, including “Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts” (2020), “Ralston Crawford: Air + Space + War” (2020), “Masterpieces of American Modernism from the Vilcek Collection” (2013), and “Nari Ward: Home of the Brave” (2022). In 2019, he co-edited “A Place at the Table: New American Recipes from the Nation’s Top Foreign-Born Chefs,” for which he received a 2020 Gourmand World Cookbook Award.