James Martin

James Martin founded artin(k)c in 2008 to provide art consulting services to corporations, hospitals, municipalities and other venues, drawing on his extensive experience as a curator. Martin has been based in the Kansas City area since 1995, where he has become known for his skill at working with a wide-ranging and inclusive variety of artists and audiences. This expertise was noted in the Kansas City Star when art writer Alice Thorson named him “the go-to guy for information about lesser-known talent in diverse quarters of the Kansas City art community.”

Martin began his career in 1989 as Interim Executive Director of the Kansas City Artists Coalition, after receiving a BA in Art History from the University of Kansas. He then pursued an MA in Art History at Case Western Reserve University, where he trained at the Cleveland Museum of Art, graduating in 1993. In 1996 he joined the curatorial staff at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Among other duties at the Nelson-Atkins, he coordinated exhibitions featuring the work of Isamu Noguchi and Ursula von Rydingsvard (held in the museum’s sculpture park), and led all aspects of the exhibition James Turrell: Cross Cut. In 2001 he became curator of the Sprint Art Collection, building and overseeing all aspects of a contemporary art collection for the 4 million square-foot Sprint World Headquarters Campus in Overland Park, KS. While at Sprint he curated the exhibition Celebrations and Investigations: African American Artists in Kansas City Collections for the Epsten Gallery at Village Shalom in Leawood, KS, and co-curated Cardinal Points/Puntos Cardinales: A Survey of Contemporary Latino and Latin American Art from the Sprint Nextel Art Collection, which traveled nationally. From 2011-2015 he served as Curatorial Consultant to the Center for the Healing Arts at Truman Medical Centers in Kansas City, MO. His recent clients have included the municipalities of Gladstone, MO, Lawrence, KS, Leawood, KS, Merriam, KS and Olathe, KS; the Kansas City Art Institute; The Kansas City Collection; and KC Studio Magazine.