Gordon Knox

Gordon Knox was the Director of Arizona State University Art Museum from January 2010 through December 2016. Those six years were an education and exhilaration for Knox as he joined forces with some of the most remarkable artists, thinkers and educators he has ever met, and collectively helped move the ASU Art Museum into a key position in the world of contemporary art practice by buildng a dynamic platform for artist-led research, commissions and exhibitions.

Today (2016 - ) Gordon Knox is the president of the San Francisco Art Institute. Prior to ASU, Knox lead Global Initiatives at the Stanford Humanities Lab where he identified, developed and implemented international projects that combine the understandings and techniques of the humanities and the sciences and engage them in on-the-ground efforts to effect social change.

Prior to Stanford, Knox was Artistic Director at the Montalvo Arts center in Saratoga, California where he designed, developed and established the organization’s international participation in the world of arts and letters. Implementing his commitment to the open flow of ideas and underscoring his belief that the advancement of civil society requires articulate critical analysis, Knox helped establish Montalvo as an institution recognized for ambitious projects often involving unusual collaborations.

During the 1990’s as the founding Director of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy, Knox envisioned and established a center for the arts designed to advance and widen contemporary cultural practice by engaging the voices and thinking of practitioners from all parts of the world and providing them with excellent conditions to advance their work. Civitella quickly became a new model for international, multidisciplinary residency programs.

Knox has advised numerous international residency programs and cultural institutions in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa in the areas of fund raising, management, program design and international collaboration. He has served as an advisor and on the boards of the Paris Review, Res Artis, Roulette, the Ratti Foundation, the Furla Foundation, the Dakar Biennial, the Sanskriti Foundation, the Musagetes Foundation, The Christensen Fund and Leonardo/ISAST.

Knox’s interest in the relationship between the arts and society and in critical, artistic inquiry emerges from his studies in social anthropology focusing on the relationship between ideas and social action. Knox studied anthropology at the University of California Santa Cruz, Cambridge University and the University of Chicago.