Adrian Ellis
Director

Adrian founded AEA in 1990. He recently returned to consulting full-time after serving as Executive Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center from 2007 - 2011. Prior to that, he was Executive Director of The Conran Foundation, where he was responsible for planning and managing the establishment of the Design Museum in London, which opened on Butlers Wharf in 1989. Between 1981 and 1986, he was a civil servant in the UK Treasury and the Cabinet Office, where he worked on service-wide efficiency reviews and privatization, and for two years ran the office of the Economic Secretary to the Treasury (the Minister responsible for monetary policy and regulation of the banking sector). From 1980 to 1982, he was a College Lecturer in Politics at University College, Oxford, where he received his B.A. (first class) and M.A. degrees, before undertaking graduate studies at London School of Economics.

Adrian writes and lectures extensively internationally on management and planning issues in the cultural sector, and has published, lectured and organized conferences for The J. Paul Getty Trust, Demos, The Wallace Foundation, Grantmakers in the Arts, The Jerwood Foundation, Clore Duffield Foundation, Sterling and Francis Clark Art Institute at Williams College, Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the University of Wisconsin, and the Australia Arts Council, among others. He is also a regular contributor to The Art Newspaper.

Adrian was a member of the Getty Leadership Institute’s advisory board from 2001 – 2007, and has served on the board of the Kaufman Center in New York, and Pathé Pictures, a film production company in London. He is a past member of the Governing Council of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales (1996 – 2000) and a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects' Architecture Centre Committee (1997 – 2001). In May 2010, Adrian was a Scholar in Residence at Teachers College of Columbia University where he taught a graduate seminar series on 'Special Topics in International Cultural Policy'.

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