The New York Creative Society is a fellowship of patrons of the arts who champion the work of living artists, and who believe that artistic expression belongs at the center of civic life.
The mission of the New York Creative Society is to champion living artists and to bring their work before the public in its most direct form: in person, in the company of others, and free from the pressures of the market.
The Society presents exhibitions, performances, and salons across New York City, sustained by a fellowship of patrons who hold that a great city is measured by the art it makes possible. Its programs are deliberately intimate, built for attention rather than scale.
Executive Director
Preston MacAlister leads the operations, patron relationships, and long-range planning of the New York Creative Society. He came to the Society after more than fifteen years in arts administration and philanthropy in New York, with a particular focus on building lasting support for living artists. He holds degrees in art history and nonprofit management.
Artistic Director
Diana Trattoria shapes the artistic vision of the Society and oversees its exhibitions and performances. A curator and producer, she has organized exhibitions and staged new work in the United States and Europe, often championing artists early in their careers. Her presentations are known for favoring intimacy and close attention over spectacle.
Director of Programs
Wynn Blastois oversees the Society's calendar of exhibitions, performances, and salons, from the choice of each room to the evening itself. Before joining the Society, Wynn produced live programs for cultural organizations throughout New York City, with an emphasis on gatherings that feel personal whether they welcome twenty guests or two hundred.
Eleanor Whitcomb Ashford has served as Chair since the founding of the Society. A third-generation New Yorker, she directs her family's foundation, which has supported the performing arts in the city for more than four decades. She is known for her early and quiet support of artists long before they are widely recognized.
Theodore J. Vanderhoef spent nearly forty years in investment banking, retiring as vice chairman of a global advisory firm. A lifelong collector of American works on paper, he has lent pieces from his collection to museums across the country. He and his wife divide their time between Manhattan and Litchfield County.
Margaret Lyle Ostrander is a partner at a Midtown accounting firm, where she advises family offices and cultural institutions on governance and financial stewardship. She oversees the finances of the Society and chairs its Finance Committee.
Julian Pell Harrow is the cofounder of a technology company that builds digital archives for museums and libraries. A former session musician, he brings to the board a practitioner's understanding of the working artist and an engineer's eye for how institutions endure.
Desmond Achterberg is a managing director at a Midtown private equity firm, where he leads investments in media and consumer companies. Born in Rotterdam, he came to New York in his twenties and has been a devoted patron of contemporary dance ever since.
Philippa Crane leads an interior design practice in Brooklyn known for its restoration of nineteenth-century townhouses. She serves on the Programs Committee of the Society and has hosted several of its salons in homes she has restored.
Henry Dufresne practiced corporate law in New York for more than three decades before retiring as senior counsel. An amateur cellist, he has supported chamber music in the city throughout his career and rarely misses a recital.
Anika Halvorsen is a principal at an architecture firm with studios in New York and Oslo, specializing in cultural and civic buildings. Her work on galleries and performance spaces informs how the Society chooses the rooms for its programs.
Catherine Lisle is a senior communications executive whose career has spanned publishing, broadcasting, and finance. She advises the Society on its public voice and chairs its Development Committee.
Lucian Mercer is a hospitality entrepreneur whose restaurants and private rooms have become fixtures of downtown Manhattan. He has opened his venues to emerging performers for more than a decade and helps the Society secure spaces for its evenings.
Clara Okafor-Reyes is a managing director in global banking, focused on infrastructure and public finance. The daughter of a painter and a jazz pianist, she has championed arts education throughout her career and mentors young professionals entering the cultural sector.
Augustin Thiel is a collector and retired industrialist who settled in New York after a career in Munich and Zurich. His collection of postwar European painting is among the most respected in private hands, and he lends generously to exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic.
Vivienne Ward is a philanthropist and longtime chair of some of the most storied benefit evenings in the city. Decades of service to the arts in New York have made her one of its most trusted conveners of patrons and artists alike.
Preston MacAlister, Executive Director
Kenji Arakawa-Stone is a painter whose large-scale abstractions have been exhibited in New York, Tokyo, and Berlin. He works from a studio in Brooklyn and advises the Society on its exhibitions and studio visits.
Beatrix Calloway has been a patron of the arts in New York for more than half a century. An early supporter of countless small companies and galleries, she holds that patronage matters most before an artist is famous.
Imogen Fairleigh is a novelist and essayist whose work explores art, memory, and the city. Her most recent novel, set among the painters of the Lower East Side, has been widely translated.
Odile Marchetti is a gallerist with spaces in Chelsea and Milan, representing painters and sculptors from Europe and the Americas. She advises the Society on the presentation of its exhibitions and the care of the work it shows.
Rafael Montenegro is a composer whose orchestral, chamber, and theater works have been performed throughout the Americas and Europe. Born in Mexico City and based in New York, he advises the Society on its performance programs.
Samuel Wexford is an art historian and professor emeritus whose scholarship focuses on the history of artistic patronage. He has written widely on the relationship between artists and those who support them, a subject he brings to the salons of the Society.