Gala Leadership

Host Committee

With generous support from Museum Studio. In formation as of 9.19.25

ABOUT THE HONOREES

The British collector Christian Levett retired in 2016 at age 46 from his role as an investment manager to focus entirely on his passion for art and cultural heritage. During his 25-year finance career, he built Clive Capital into the world’s largest commodity hedge fund, managing $5.2 billion at its peak. Several times throughout his career, he was ranked among the top performing hedge fund managers globally by percentage return. Achievements included generating approximately $1 billion per year in profits for clients of Clive Capital, for three consecutive years in a row 2008-2010. 

Collecting for over three decades, Levett has more recently built what is now considered the world’s most comprehensive collection of art by female artists. There are nearly 2,000 artworks in The Levett Collection, including approximately 600 by women, with the largest and most comprehensive private collection of female Abstract Expressionist art globally. He founded FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum) in June 2024, Europe’s first major museum dedicated exclusively to female artists from Impressionism to the present day. He has also been giving private tours of his palazzo in Florence (also hung entirely with artworks by women) to museum patrons groups, university groups and collectors’ groups, since March 2021. 

Levett has sponsored over 40 exhibitions at major institutions including Tate, The British Museum, The RA, The Met, and Palazzo Strozzi for example. A Fellow of the Ashmolean Museum and Wolfson College, Oxford, he serves on committees at The Met and Palazzo Strozzi, and has published three books on female artists with Merrell Publishers. In January 2025, Christie’s valued the top 100 works by female artists in his collection at €130 million, with an average annual return of 21%.

Howardena Pindell was born in 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and lives and works in New York. She has exhibited extensively, including selected solo exhibitions at Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, UK, touring to Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, UK, Spike Island, Bristol, UK, and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2022-23); Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland (2022); The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas (2022); The Shed, New York, touring to Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City (2021-22); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois (2018); Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia (2015); Cleveland Institute of Arts, Ohio (1994); Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut (1989); The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1986); Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama (1985); A.I.R Gallery, New York (1983); and Rockefeller Memorial Galleries, Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia (1971). Selected group exhibitions include Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris (2025); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebak, Denmark (2024); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2024); Olivia Foundation, Mexico City (2024); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2023); National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2022); Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain, touring to Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021): Tate Modern, London, touring to Brooklyn Museum, New York and Broad Museum, Los Angeles, California (2017-19); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2017); Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Austria, touring to Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany (2016); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas (2013); Seattle Art Museum, Washington (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California (2007); and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2006).

Ann Temkin became The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture in 2008, after joining The Museum of Modern Art in 2003 as Curator. During her tenure, Ms. Temkin has focused with colleagues on reimagining the Museum’s collection galleries: transforming them from a fixed display into a kaleidoscopic presentation. Under her leadership, the holdings in Painting and Sculpture have grown by more than 800 objects, in the process reshaping a single canonical narrative to one reflecting multiple histories, many long unrepresented in the Museum’s collection. Upcoming and recent exhibitions that she has curated or co-curated include: Marcel Duchamp (Spring 2026), Projects: Marlon Mullen (2024), Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern (2024), Matisse: The Red Studio (2022), and Judd (2020). Ms. Temkin is  co-editor with Romy Silver-Kohn of Inventing the Modern: Untold Stories of the Women Who Shaped The Museum of Modern Art (2024). From 1990 to 2003, Ms. Temkin was the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Among her many exhibitions there were Barnett Newman (2002), Alice Neel (2001), and Constantin Brancusi (1995), as well as a series of contemporary projects titled Museum Studies. She was born in Connecticut, and received her BA from Harvard University and her PhD in the history of art from Yale University. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  

ABOUT THE AWARDS

The AFA Cultural Leadership Awards are given annually to artists, museum leaders, cultural institutions, or philanthropists in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the art community. The event brings together leading museum directors, collectors, artists, philanthropists, and art professionals at an elegant gala to celebrate the American Federation of Arts and honor significant individuals in the arts.

Past recipients have included: Eli and Edythe Broad, Alice Walton, Wangechi Mutu, Charles and Valerie Diker, Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, Marina Abramović, Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, Frank Gehry, Roy Neuberger, Sarah Sze, and Eugene V. Thaw.

Top Image: Portrait Christian Levett at FAMM by Jérôme Kelagopian

Middle Image: Portrait of Howardena Pindell by Nathan Keay

Bottom Image: Ann Temkin. © 2025 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Austin Donohue