Amy Whitaker is an award-winning writer and researcher who studies the frictions between art and markets and between politics and economics. Her work on fractional equity in art using blockchain models new structures of economic sustainability for artists and extends to policy proposals for redistribution. She received the 2021 Edith Penrose Award from the European Academy of Management for "trailblazing" research that challenges orthodoxies and has impact.
With explicitly broad engagement across disciplines, political environments, and both academic and generalist conversations, she has published in top peer-reviewed journals in finance, sociology, law, education, archival studies, cultural economics, and arts administration, and has spoken widely including at the Aspen Ideas Festival, TEDx, TNW, Goop, Unfinished Live, and numerous colleges and universities nationally and internationally. Her work has been covered in The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Guardian, Harpers, The Atlantic, the Financial Times, Artnet News, Hyperallergic, Artforum, The Art Newspaper, and many others.
Dr. Whitaker worked for twenty years before joining academia including for the investment firm D.E. Shaw & Co., L.P., the company Locus (where she named on patents for economic classification systems), the artist Jenny Holzer, and numerous museums including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, and Tate. She holds a BA from Williams College with honors in political science and art, an MFA in painting, an MBA, and a PhD in political economy. Her newest work extends her research on fractional equity in art to creative policy design and the reimagination of politics in an age of fragile democracy and increasingly fewer shared truths.
A devoted teacher and mentor, Dr. Whitaker has been nominated for NYU's teaching award and served previously as a mentor to the TED Fellows program and NEW INC, where she also designed the professional development curriculum for artists, designers, and technologists.