AARRTT
Director Kristen Shepherd
Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
| TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE 129
By Aaron R. Fodiman
A fter growing up in Pinellas
County, Kristen Shepherd
went to Washington,
D.C. to attend George
Washington University, where she
received bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in art history with a focus
on Pre-Raphaelite art. Two decades
later, she has returned to take over
as the director of the Museum of
Fine Arts in St. Petersburg by the
unanimous approval of the board of
trustees to succeed former Director
Dr. Kent Lydecker, who retired in
March. She is only the sixth director in
the museum’s history and its first female
director.
Kristen was chosen for her perspective
as an art historian and her strong
business acumen. She began her career
in 1999 at Sotheby’s auction house in
New York, where she took on leadership
roles in strategic initiatives and special
projects that involved a wide variety of
disciplines from financial and real estate
to marketing and publications. In 2010,
she was selected as a Marshall Memorial
Fellow by the German Marshall Fund and
was later chosen for the Arts Leadership
Institute in New York in 2012.
As the director of Membership and
Annual Fund at the Whitney Museum of
American Art from 2008 to 2013, Kristen
developed and launched a “Curate Your
Own Membership” program to attract
and retain members by customizing
benefits to fit a members’ individual
interests. Most recently, she was the
associate vice president of Audience
Strategy and Services for the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, where she led
a program that created engagement
opportunities for diverse local audiences
that led to increased visitor attendance
and memberships by nearly 20 percent
during her time there.
Kristen’s passion for the arts runs
deep. Her mother Judith Mitchell was the
vice president and general manager of
Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater until she
moved to West Palm Beach, where she
has served as the CEO of the Raymond
F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts
for the past 25 years. Kristen says the
St. Petersburg Museum was the
first museum she ever visited, and
therefore it is a special touchstone
for her with its diverse collection
that touches on so many periods
of art. For Kristen, it is that breadth
of the museum’s collection that
gives it a distinct advantage
when it attempts to engage a
broad spectrum of visitors and
supporters.
Mark Mahaffey, the chair of
the museum’s board of trustees,
says he is “thrilled” that the
national search for this position
resulted in finding a leader who has
roots in our region. Kristen will have the
assistance of the museum’s Chief Curator
Dr. Jerry Smith, who has been serving
as the museum’s interim director since
Dr. Lydecker’s retirement, as she
continues to build on the organization’s
51-year history. 9
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Museum of Fine Arts
at 255 Beach Drive N.E. in St. Petersburg
has a world-class collection of art that
includes ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian,
Asian, African, pre-Columbian and Native
American Art, along with work by great
artists such as Monet, Rodin, O’Keeffe and
de Kooning. For more information, call
(727) 896-2667 or visit mfastpete.org.
Kristen Shepherd is the new director of the
Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg.
/mfastpete.org