Kim Heirston

Kim Heirston is a private art advisor and the founder of Kim Heirston Art Advisory and Art Unlimited Advisors LLC. For thirty years, she has worked with clients worldwide to develop post-war and contemporary art collections for private residences, corporate headquarters, hotels, and foundations.

Heirston received a BA in Art History from Yale University in 1986. Following her undergraduate studies, she held positions in prominent New York City galleries, including Pace and Robert Miller. At the time, Pace represented the estate of Mark Rothko, along with blue-chip contemporary artists John Chamberlain, Chuck Close, and Julian Schnabel. Robert Miller had close ties to the estates of Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The gallery also represented Alex Katz, Ed Ruscha, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith as well as the estate of Dianne Arbus. Heirston engaged particularly closely with the work of such major women artists as Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan Mitchell, whom she came to know.

In 1989, Heirston became the Director of Stux Gallery in New York. There, she coordinated international exhibitions of the gallery’s artists, presenting early shows by Vik Muniz, and Andres Serrano, as well as Doug and Mike Starn, in cities from Tokyo to Madrid. She also co-organized a sprawling open group exhibition that took place every January. The Stux Invitational was highly regarded as a showcase for emerging international talent and went on to become a highly anticipated annual event.

Heirston established herself as an independent art advisor in 1992. During the advisory’s early years, she placed works by then-emerging artists Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst. Kim Heirston Art Advisory has since expanded its scope from blue-chip contemporary art to include modern and post-war masters such as Picasso, Brancusi, Rothko, and Warhol.

In addition to advising, Heirston has been invited to speak, most recently, in 2022, delivering the Commencement Address at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York. She has also lectured on Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler as part of a NINTH STREET WOMEN lecture series. In 2017, she was invited to lecture on WOMEN IN THE ART MARKET at Columbia University. Heirston has undertaken a number of curatorial projects. In 2015, she organized an exhibition in New York of monumental paintings by Francesco Clemente entitled DORMIVEGLIA. The project then traveled to the NSU Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. On the occasion of the 20th G7 Summit in Naples, Italy, she commissioned artists from the forum’s seven countries to create site-specific works for a Neapolitan villa. Heirston’s curatorial work has also been featured in the popular television series, "Sex and the City."

Heirston continues to advise a broad base of international clients, from Jeddah to Warsaw, Melbourne to Mumbai, and Palm Beach to Palm Springs. She travels extensively to international art fairs in such destinations as Abu Dhabi, Basel, Berlin, Hong Kong, Miami, and Shanghai, as well as to major exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel, Germany.

Heirston sits on the Board of Trustees at Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton and at the SculptureCenter in New York; she is on the Advisory Board of the Bridgehampton Child Care and Community Center as well as the Hope for Depression Research Foundation; Heirston takes part in the Photography Program Initiative and International Director’s Council at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; further affiliations include Arts Editor of AS IF MAGAZINE and the Auction Committee for the Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation.

Through the years, Heirston’s advisory has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Magazine. In 2023, the firm was listed in the Financial Times' WHO’S WHO list of Top 10 International Art-Advisors. More recently, Heirston was also selected by Forbes for the 50 > 50 List.