Areas of Expertise: Art Appraisal
Rachael Blackburn Cozad has over twenty-five years of comprehensive experience in top leadership positions in the visual arts. She is a private art dealer and owner of Rachael Cozad Fine Art. She is also the owner and senior appraiser of fine art and rare wine at Madison Group Fine Art Appraisals; both businesses are based in Kansas City, Missouri.
Rachael holds a M.A. in art history from California State University, Los Angeles, and a B.A. from Texas Christian University. Her professional expertise and experience makes her uniquely qualified to advise individual collectors and institutions alike on a broad range of art-related topics and in buying and selling art in a complex and changing market.
She is a certified member of the Appraisers Association of America and provides Fine Art Appraisals for Insurance, Charitable Donation IRS purposes, for estate planning and equitable distribution. Her areas of expertise include Post-War, Contemporary and Emerging Art; 19th Century European Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture; American Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture; Impressionist & Modern Painting, Drawings & Sculpture; Prints; 20th Century Photography, and Fine & Rare Wine.
From 2001-2012 she was the Director of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, which is recognized for its collection of modern and contemporary art, for its exciting exhibitions of work by established and emerging artists, for its large-scale public art projects, and for its Collectors Forum program for art collectors. Prior to this, from 1994-2001, Rachael was Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation in Los Angeles, which holds and manages the world's largest collection of sculpture by the 19th Century French master Auguste Rodin.
Rachael has curated exhibitions for many major museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. She has led major projects at The White House and New York's Rockefeller Center and internationally, in Australia, France, Russia and Singapore. She has overseen and contributed to many publications produced in conjunction with these exhibitions such as: Wyeth: Three Generations of Artistry and The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art: The First Ten Years. She also oversaw publication of two authoritative books on Rodin, Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession (the Catalogue Raisonné of the Cantor holdings) and Rodin's Monument to Victor Hugo.
Over the past two years Rachael has taken a leadership role to oversee the revision of the George Caleb Bingham (American, 1811-1879) Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings. She is the Founder and President of the Board of Trustees of the Riverbank Foundation, a 501C3 established in Missouri in 2015, which is currently managing this major scholarly project. She also serves on the Advisory Board of Union Cemetery Historical Society, which maintains the final resting place of George Caleb Bingham.
Other activities include Rachael's service as member of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's Society of Fellows (Board of Directors), a peer reviewer for the U.S. General Services Administration's Art in Architecture program and also for the Museum Assessment Program managed by the American Association of Museums. Rachael is a former member of the Advisory Panel for Art 21, the award-winning PBS television series on the visual arts. She is a former Chair of the Southern California chapter of ArtTable, a national organization for professional women in leadership positions in the arts.
Rachael has organized a large number of exhibitions over the years, many with accompanying publications. A complete list of these is available upon request.
April, 2017