Lauren Stakias: the Art of the Deal

Lauren Stakias, 35
Director, Exhibition and Program Funding
Museum of Modern Art
New York

The corporate partnerships Lauren Stakias shepherds for the Museum of Modern Art have a lot of moving parts.

Take the relationship with Uniqlo. The Japanese retailer sponsors free admission to the museum every Friday night and produces a line of clothing inspired by artwork in the museum’s collection. The company even designed new uniforms for the museum’s security officers. Many parts of the institution have a stake in the deal: fundraising, marketing, public relations, retail.

“Lauren is able to navigate that with grace, but with strength, too,” says her boss, Todd Bishop.

Ms. Stakias travels to places like Hong Kong, Mexico City, and Seoul as she leads the museum’s international fundraising efforts.

“After 2008, every institution was thinking differently about their fundraising,” she says. “We were looking at where our biggest donors were, and we realized, particularly in exhibition fundraising, that so many of our donors were coming from places all over the globe.”