RENÉE VARA

Renée is a cultural entrepreneur, advisor, curator, and artist advocate. Her area of research focuses on the intersection of contemporary art, economics, and creative rights to establish pragmatic solutions to artistic preservation.

The founder of VARA ART, Renée has over 25 years of experience within the fields of postwar, contemporary, and emerging art. Prior to her independent practice, she served as the National Fine Art Specialist for Chubb Insurance and managed mega-collections on behalf of Artnews Top 200 collectors for over a decade. 

Renée has been cited in more than 40 major media outlets including the Art Newspaper, Forbes, Artnews, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. To promote public access to the arts, she is an active public lecturer and educator, sharing her experience with more than 50 organizations and institutions. In her efforts in the production of contemporary culture, she has curated more than 40 public art shows at international venues, including Art Basel|Miami, Venice Biennale, and Istanbul Biennale.

She is an award-winning, Certified Appraiser tested in 4 areas of fine art specialization. The youngest professional board member, Renée served two terms on the Executive Committee of the Appraiser’s Association of America (AAA), where she collaborated to set art market industry standards, credentials & codified professional practices. 

She actively educates the next generation of art professionals at various higher institutions. An award-winning faculty, she taught at NYU for over a decade in Art Market Studies, Art Business, and Art History. Also, an appointed lecturer at the Guggenheim|NY, and guest lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute and Carnegie Mellon University, she holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in art history, with distinction. 

Renée is a legal art expert and practicing artist rights advocate, participating in significant cases such as the landmark VARA litigation, 5Pointz v. G&M Realty. She has also testified in successful cases including State Street Global Capital v. Visbal [Fearless Girl]; Heritage Corp. v. Christie's; and Hilti Family Trust v. Knoedler Gallery. 

email: renee@varaart.com

DANIEL KIM

Daniel Kim is the Associate Appraiser & Advisor at VARA ART, where he has been working for four years. He is Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) compliant through March 10, 2025.

Daniel graduated from NYU with a double degree: a BFA in Photography from the Tisch School of the Arts and a BA in Art History from the College of Arts and Sciences. Before joining VARA ART, he applied his studies to the art market, working for The Winter Show, and photographing for brands including Intel, Nike, Orange Theory Fitness, and Chico’s. Additionally, he gained extensive experience working as a Studio Assistant for Alan Sonfist, the historical Time Landscape artist, and has extensive registrar experience as an Archivist with iconic photographer Mark Seliger, where he digitalized his artistic output dating back to the 1980s. Daniel is also a Phase One Certified Professional and enjoys working on photography sets as a digital technician.

His aesthetic interests extend to photography, where he interrogates cultural formulas of “beauty” in relation to the traditions of still life and portraiture. He continues to enjoy working as an art educator for youths in his free time, and he savors the outdoors, including surf culture, reminiscent of his native Southern Californian upbringing.

email: daniel@varaart.com

Valentina Scarzella

Valentina Scarzella is VARA ART's Research Assistant & Intern in New York City. A native of Turin, Italy, she earned her Law degree from Università degli Studi di Torino, where she developed an interest in art law. To deepen her understanding of the art market, she is completing her MBA at Sotheby's Institute of Art, with a research focus on museology and the ethics of provenance transparency.

Prior to her current role at VARA ART, she worked in Turin at Alessia Nepote Andrè Agency in event management and Ermanno Tedeschi Gallery. She has since worked at various positions in the art world, including internships at The Winter Show, Doyle Auction House, and as a Graduate Assistant.

Valentina is multilingual—fluent in Italian and English, with proficiency in Spanish and German. In her free time, she enjoys cooking a great ragu with friends and family, power yoga and passionately exploring other cultures.

email: valentina@varaart.com

Emily Stevenson

Emily Stevenson serves as VARA ART's Associate Registrar in New York. Originally trained and educated as an architect, she graduated from Barnard College and attended London's Architectural Association. Previously, Emily worked as an adjunct for the Guggenheim Museum | NY in the Exhibitions Department, where for nearly a decade she prepared contemporary art exhibitions and acted as a materials consultant.

Emily's architectural background and interests evolved into a specialty of new material technologies resulting in a position as the first Materials Curator of the Donghia Materials Library and Study Center at Parsons | New School.

For the past several decades, Emily has also worked closely as a materials consultant to artists, exploring both the creative possibilities of materials beyond their industrial standards and sustainability.

Independently, she is the Co-founder of the experimental initiative Pillow-Culture, which is a research and design studio dedicated to the development of innovative pillows- posing societal questions relating to human comfort and beauty through the application of material technologies.

email: emily@varaart.com

Alexis McGlynn

Alexis McGlynn is an Assistant Advisor for VARA ART's Hamptons office. After completing undergraduate studies in Art History, she began her career as a Registrar and Collection Manager at The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) in Philadelphia. Her work included preserving, documenting, and tracking the museum's contemporary art holdings in artists working with experimental materials. Her role expanded to the position of Curatorial Assistant, where she orchestrated gallery exhibition programs and the storytelling of artistic narratives by a diverse group of artists in nontraditional media. In her time at FWM, she worked with contemporary collections of iconic artists including Marina Abramovic, Louise Bourgeois, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mona Hatoum, Jim Hodges, Anish Kapoor, Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, and Rachel Whiteread, amongst others.

To complement her exhibition design and display skills, Alexis holds professional certificates in design and preservation from the Philadelphia College of Textile and Design, which furthered her passion for textiles and non-traditional materials. As an independent preservation specialist after FWM, she devised and designed storage solutions for private collectors and produced educational programming at institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Woodmere Art Museum.

In her free time, Alexis enjoys interior design, beach walks with her dogs, wellness practices, and positive psychology.

email: alexis@varaart.com

Chris Townsend

Dr. Chris Townsend is VARA ART's Specialist in London for both modern and contemporary art. Chris is a professor at Royal Holloway College, University of London, where he has specialized in modernist art, literature, and film for over 20 years and served as the Chair of the Department of Media Arts. He is a Senior Research Fellow of the Henry Moore Institute and a recipient of the H.D. Fellowship in American Literature from Yale University.

Dr. Townsend earned his Ph.D. in History of Art from University of Sussex with a dissertation on photography and self-portraiture supervised by the notable British art historian David Mellor. He has extensively published in both modern and contemporary art, including groundbreaking monographs on Francesca Woodman, Rachel Whiteread, and Tracey Emin, as well as scholarly articles on Fernand Léger and Francis Picabia. He also has extensive curatorial experience both at London galleries and with international exhibitions, including several of critical importance at the Barbican Art Gallery. His experience extends to international galleries as diverse as Tate, White Cube, Galerie Gmurzynska (Zürich), and Matt's Gallery.

His present scholarly research interests include developing a retrospective exhibition on Francesca Woodman and Surrealism with the artist's Estate. He is also finalizing a monograph on modernism and the death of Picasso and Picabia, as well as books about the British artists David Jones and Paul Nash. He is currently one of the directors of the podcast Modernist Conversations.

email: chris@varaart.com

Nerissa Khan

Nerissa Khan holds 15 years of art world experience working in contemporary art. Prior to her current independent role, she worked as Associate Director at Hauser & Wirth, where she was responsible for sales and artists' liaisons, including exhibition production and programming for iconic artists such as Mike Kelly (Estate), Rita Ackermann, Mary Heilmann, Roni Horn, Rashid Johnson, Isa Genzken, and Paul McCarthy. Before such, her experience included curatorial, appraisal, and gallery work for Marian Goodman, Jack Shainman, White Box, and VARA ART.

Nerissa's academic background is in the History of Art and Architecture for which she received a B.A. from Middlebury College with High Honors. Recognized for her contributions to the Middlebury Museum, she received the Middlebury College "Friends of the Art Museum Award."

Nerissa currently resides in Oslo, Norway where she enjoys the Nordic art scene and is learning Norwegian, while actively working with both European and American clients.

email: nerissa@varaart.com