Founder, artVentures
| Topics: Arts & Entertainment |
| Interview Date: January-26-2012 |
| Extraordinary Insights: "Use your support network, they’re here to help. Embrace that." |
Audio-only version:
Christine Platt is the founder of artVentures, a first-of-its-kind contemporary art club based in Toronto - for art lovers to learn to start and grow art collections and become patrons. Bio: Through her distinction-level research on contemporary Chinese women artists and mapping the contemporary Chinese art market while living in Beijing, Christine Platt became fascinated by the possibilities to upgrade cultural capital, thereby enriching lives, through engagement with the arts. Following this she worked for the private, non-profit art fund, Deiska, in Amsterdam. She produced marketing, curated exhibitions and coordinated events and programs to engage new audiences. At Deiska, she began to see how an active collecting market enriched the local cultural and heritage landscape, and along with her husband she became a collector herself. Simultaneously, she published her work on the aura of Chinese copies of art and furthered her research on upgrading cultural capital in China through online discussions with Chinese museum practitioners and visitors. She also consulted on several museum outreach policies and created a model to deepen social inclusion for the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Christine was invited to speak for the museumnacht program on China and she presented museological research for the International Council of Museums Training of Personnel Committee. Now Christine is developing her own capacity building initiative within the Toronto arts community, called artVentures. She has enlisted several of Toronto's commercial and non-profit galleries to work with her on the initiative to engage new and emerging collectors, guiding them to become active patrons to artists, galleries and museums. artVentures is an initiative intended to build financial, social and cultural capital for its members and, in time, the wider society. Christine is a graduate from the Reinwardt Academy Masters in Museology program. She also has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from the University of Cambridge and a B.A. in history from Queen's University. She has lived around the world in Asia, Europe and North America.