Visionary Voices

Our Vice President and Creative Director, Kate Brown, was recently featured in Harrods Magazine Winter 2024, where she discussed her inspirations, hopes, and professional roles within the art world. From organizing major events like Frieze London to curating a groundbreaking year-long programme focused on artificial intelligence, Kate shared her unique perspective on the dynamic intersection of art, technology, and innovation.

A popular exercise among workplace psychologists is to get people to draw an image of a leader. The results of such a task made headlines in 2018 when it emerged that the picture most often drawn – by both men and women – was of a man. And if the drawing was gender-neutral, when asked to describe this leader, most went on to use the word ‘he’. The exercise hinted at what many women had long suspected: rising to leadership positions at work is harder for women than for men. The picture, quite literally, is poor. “There are more male gallerists at leadership level than there are women,” says Kate Brown of Halcyon Gallery, which is a world leading specialist in modern and contemporary art. Based on New Bond Street, it also has a space on the Third Floor of Harrods. “But there are also great female leaders who are highly recognisable and serve as role models within our industry,” she adds. “Look at Alison Jacques, Rebecca Hossack, Sadie Coles, Victoria Miro. They have been hugely inspirational in my career. So while there is an imbalance there on paper, my own experience has been a hugely positive one.”

Brown has worked at the gallery for more than 20 years, and her role is extraordinarily diverse. She curates Halcyon’s exhibitions worldwide, works closely with artists, and helps to build some of the largest art collections with top-level collectors. At the Harrods space, art lovers will find works by such celebrated artists as Andy Warhol and Marc Chagall alongside the best of today’s practitioners, such as digital artist Dominic Harris. And guidance continues beyond the store. Brown’s expert team will be on hand to advise on technical aspects, such as hanging artwork, lighting and sculpture placement. “Great artists also create great collections themselves,” Brown explains. “Look at Picasso. It’s the person behind the collection that matters: their loves, their joys, their journeys.

One of the greatest collections I’ve seen recently is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to go to. This is a woman who was collecting at the turn of the [20th] century and it was so phenomenal what she was doing. It was her sheer force of personality that put this body of work together. When you go there, you understand what a great collector she was. Someone who has been more overlooked than the [Henry Clay] Fricks of the world.” So, what can we currently see at the Halcyon Gallery? “We’ve been working on a large-scale print exhibition of David Hockney’s works,” says Brown. “This is an artist who has continued to evolve; and now – in the seventh decade of his career – he’s pushing the boundaries with iPads. It’s such a visually fast-paced world. Everything’s so swipe-able. But I think art exhibitions can really offer the time and space to read a piece of art. That’s what we’re all looking for. Great art will always lead to great storytelling.”