Amy Whitaker

Amy Whitaker is a generalist economic modeler whose research proposes creative ways of approaching business structures within the arts and also using art as a process to approach systemic challenges like democracy and climate as the great collective art projects of our time. 

Her work on blockchain and AI centers the belief that all creative work has dignity in its smallness, the way that one vote still has dignity in a national election of millions.

Amy is the author of four books and numerous academic and general papers. Her work on fractional equity in art using blockchain received the 2021 Edith Penrose Award for "trailblazing" research that challenges orthodoxies and has impact. She is also a recipient of the Sarah Verdone Writing Award and early advisor to The OpEd Project and Zero Art Fair.

Amy's work has been featured in The New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Guardian, Harpers, The Atlantic, the Financial Times, Artnet News, Hyperallergic, Artforum, The Art Newspaper, and many others. She has led both experimental and foundational courses at institutions including California College of the Arts (in the design strategy MBA), the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of Visual Arts, the Sotheby's Institute, and Williams College. She designed the first "bootcamp" at NEW INC and taught outdoors at the original Occupy Wall Street.

Whitaker holds an MBA from Yale University (in museum management and strategy), an MFA from University College London (in painting), and a BA from Williams College in studio art and political science. She completed a mid-career PhD nontraditionally in 2021, studying political economy with Will Davies at Goldsmiths, University of London. She began her career in museums including the Guggenheim, MoMA, and Tate, and in the studio of the artist Jenny Holzer and the investment firm D.E. Shaw & Co., L.P.