Staff Profiles

Scott Rothkopf
Alice Pratt Brown Director

Scott Rothkopf became the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum on November 1, 2023. Rothkopf first joined the Whitney as a curator in 2009 and was promoted to Curator and Associate Director of Programs in 2012. Following the opening of the new building in 2015, he was appointed Deputy Director for Programs and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. He became Senior Deputy Director in 2018, a role which gave him oversight of multiple teams, including publications, exhibitions, and collection management, as well as broad responsibility for Museum-wide strategic planning, as a member of the senior management and policy-making team. 

Educated at Harvard, where he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in the history of art and architecture, Rothkopf began his curatorial career at the Harvard University Art Museums, where he served as a guest curator of exhibitions devoted to the work of Mel Bochner (2002) and Pierre Huyghe (2004). In 2001, he began publishing reviews and feature articles for Artforum International, where he served as Senior Editor from 2004–2009. 

Since coming to the Whitney, he has curated and co-curated more than a dozen exhibitions, including Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror (2021–22), Nick Mauss: Transmissions (2018), Laura Owens (2017), Open Plan: Andrea Fraser (2016), Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection (2016), Virginia Overton: Sculpture Gardens (2016), Mary Heilmann: Sunset (2015), Jeff Koons: A Retrospective (2014), Sinister Pop (2012–13), Wade Guyton OS (2012–13), Glenn Ligon: AMERICA (2011), and Singular Visions (2010). 

Beyond the Whitney, Rothkopf has published widely on the work of contemporary artists including Paul Chan, Diller and Scofidio, Carroll Dunham, Katharina Fritsch, Eva Hesse, Jasper Johns, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Josiah McElheny, Takashi Murakami, Laura Owens, Elizabeth Peyton, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Paul Thek, Kelley Walker, T. J. Wilcox, Terry Winters, and Karen Kilimnik. He also served as editor of Yourself in the World (2011), a volume of the collected writings and interviews of Glenn Ligon. He has been a guest critic, lecturer, and panelist at numerous institutions, including the Dallas Museum of Art, Harvard University, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery of Canada, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Stanford University, and the Yale School of Art. He is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation.

I.D. Aruede
Deputy Director

I.D. Aruede was named Deputy Director in 2024. Prior to his current role, Aruede who joined the Museum in 2009, served as Co-Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) from 2018 to 2024, and as CFO from 2012 to 2018 during which he oversaw financial planning for the transition to the Whitney’s new building. As a member of the senior management and policy-making team, Aruede works closely with the Director, staff, and trustees, and has broad responsibility for museum-wide planning and operations. As Deputy Director, Aruede serves as an ambassador for the Whitney on behalf of the Director. In addition, he leads the Museum’s finance, treasury, investment, endowment, capital planning, legal, community and government affairs functions as well as the Museum’s Office of People & Culture, devoted to Whitney staff. Aruede also oversees the Whitney’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion goals across all areas of the institution.

Aruede began his career in public accounting at KPMG, where he served clients in the financial services, healthcare, and not-for-profit sectors. Prior to joining the Whitney, Aruede held various roles in equity research covering the consumer food and beverage sectors at leading global investment banks, including J.P. Morgan and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He serves on the boards of the Hudson River Park Trust and the Careers through Culinary Arts Program (C-CAP) which provides culinary, job and life skills to underserved youth . Aruede received a BS in Accounting from Morgan State University and earned his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Karaugh Brown
Chief Advancement Officer

Karaugh Brown joined the Whitney in 2024 as the Chief Advancement Officer leading the planning, management, and success of the Whitney’s comprehensive fundraising efforts, including individual and planned giving, corporate membership and sponsorship, special events, foundation and government grants, donor stewardship, and Board of Trustee relations.

Prior to the Whitney, Brown mostly recently served as the Vice President of Development and Partnerships at World Monuments Fund (WMF) where she oversaw all aspects of fundraising at WMF's global headquarters in New York. She has also held positions at The Frick Collection, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA where she was part of the team that opened the museum’s Renzo Piano-designed wing in 2012. She serves as co-chair of the Career Advancement Network for the Economic Empowerment Program at Sanctuary for Families; vice chair of the American Board of Ambassadors for An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland; and is a volunteer guide for Achilles International. She holds a B.A. in English and Art History and an M.A. in art history, both from Boston University.

Kim Conaty
Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator

Kim Conaty was named the Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator in 2024. As a member of the Museum’s senior leadership team, Conaty oversees the Museum’s curatorial, publications, and conservation departments. She is also responsible for the Museum’s scholarly and artistic program while managing the development of the Museum’s permanent collection and exhibitions. 

Conaty has worked at the Whitney since 2017 and was formerly the Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints. She recently curated the landmark exhibition Edward Hopper’s New York (2022), one of the most popular and critically acclaimed exhibitions in the Museum’s history. Other Whitney exhibitions include Mary Corse: A Survey in Light (2018), Nothing Is So Humble: Prints from Everyday Objects (2020), and Ruth Asawa Through Line (2023), the first survey of Asawa’s drawing practice. In addition to developing leading exhibitions and best-selling catalogues, Conaty also co-directed the development of the Whitney’s Collection Strategic Plan (CSP), a multi-year research initiative to comprehensively assess the Museum’s collection of more than 26,000 works and set priorities for its future. 

Prior to the Whitney, Conaty was Curator at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, where she oversaw the museum’s renowned permanent collection of modern and contemporary art and led the curatorial program of special exhibitions, collection installations, and related programming. There, she organized several exhibitions, including Tony Lewis: Plunder (2017); Fred Eversley: Black, White, Gray (2016–17), which opened at Art + Practice, Los Angeles; David Shrigley: Life Model II (2016); Sharon Lockhart I Noa Eshkol (2016), and served as coordinating curator for Joe Bradley: A Survey (2017). Before joining the Rose, Conaty served as the Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr., Assistant Curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. There, she curated Abstract Generation: Now in Print (2013) and served as a curatorial assistant on the exhibition Print/Out (2012), each of which proposed new approaches to contemporary print practice. At MoMA, she also collaborated on several exhibitions of postwar and contemporary art, such as Marcel Broodthaers: Retrospective (2016), Contemporary Art from the Collection (2010), Fluxus Preview (2009), and In & Out of Amsterdam: Travels in Conceptual Art, 1960–1976 (2009), among others. 

Conaty has also held positions at the Clark Art Institute, the Grey Art Gallery, NYU, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Harvard Art Museums. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Germany in 2003 and a Clark Art Institute Summer Fellowship in 2014, Conaty earned her B.A. from Middlebury College, M.A. from Williams College, and Ph.D. from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. She serves on the Board of Directors at the Print Council of America (PCA) and is a member of its DEAI Committee.  

Andrew Cone
Chief Strategy Officer

Andrew Cone was named Chief Strategy Officer in 2018 after serving as the Whitney’s Director of Strategy & Planning. In his current role, he leads institutional planning and priority‐setting, organizational transformation, and business development. He also oversees the Research & Analysis department, the museum's centralized resource for data analysis and audience insights. Since 2017, he has worked closely with Board and Staff to develop, finance, execute, and evaluate the core ideas of the Whitney’s 2017 Strategic Plan. He has led and partnered on projects as varied as the Museum’s digital strategy, collection strategic plan, equity and inclusion plan, values statement, Spanish-English bilingual initiative, artist compensation philosophy, and people strategy. Collaborating with colleagues across the entire Museum, he is responsible for continually assessing and calibrating these and other strategic priorities. Cone is a leader in the arts and culture sector, regularly speaking to a broad range of topics, partnering with external organizations on research and thought leadership, serving on grants and awards juries, and participating in projects such as FutureMuseum, an international research project reimagining the future of cultural institutions. 

Prior to the Whitney, Cone worked in the private sector, advising companies on growth, marketing, and brand strategy as a consultant at McKinsey in London, WPP in Hong Kong, and Ogilvy & Mather in New York. He holds an A.B. in the History of Art & Architecture from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he was selected by his peers as the student commencement speaker. Cone is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, where his first museum job was as a Youth Docent at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

Amy Roth
Chief Operating Officer