MEET THE LEGACY LAB PARTICIPANTS

Ruby Lerner is the founding Executive Director of Creative Capital, an innovative arts foundation that adapts venture capital concepts to support individual artists. Under her leadership, Creative Capital designed a comprehensive support system for artists that combined money with advisory support. It committed more than $40 million in financial and advisory support to 511 projects representing 642 artists. This commitment helped grantees leverage nearly $100 million in additional support. She stepped down from the organization in June 2016 to pursue consulting work and independent research. 

In 2017, Lerner became the inaugural Senior Policy Advisor to the Herberger Institute at Arizona State University and Senior Advisor to the Patty Disney Center for Life and Work at CalArts. In 2018 she began serving as an Advisor to the Cultural and Art program at the Open Society Foundations, assisting in the design of the new Soros International Arts Fellowship. She continues to work with the program fellows.   

Prior to Creative Capital, from 1992-1998, Ruby Lerner served as the Executive Director of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF) and as Publisher of the highly regarded Independent Film and Video Monthly. Having worked regionally in both the performing arts and independent media fields through the 1980’s, she served as the Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS, a coalition of Southeastern performing artists, and IMAGE Film/Video Center, both based in Atlanta. In the late 1970s, she was the Audience Development Director at the Manhattan Theatre Club, one of New York's foremost nonprofit theaters.

A native of North Carolina, Lerner worked in the state's Visiting Artist Program following graduate work in theater at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her undergraduate degree is in comparative religion from Goucher College. In 2016, Lerner was awarded honorary doctorate degrees from the Maryland Institute College of Art and Maine College of Art, and in 2020, she received a third honorary degree from Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia.

In her nearly 50 years in the arts, Ms. Lerner has written and lectured extensively, including at Harvard Business School (in conjunction with a Harvard Business School case study on Creative Capital) and for the University of North Carolina’s Entrepreneurship Program. She gave the 2016 Purchase College Jandon Business of the Arts Keynote, and has spoken at numerous schools across the nation, including CalArts, RISD, Columbia, Oberlin, Harvard, Brown, the University of Texas at Austin, Syracuse University and Arizona State University. She has frequently presented on arts issues at conferences and summits, including the Grantmakers for the Arts conference, the National Innovation Summit for Arts & Culture, IdeaFestival in Louisville and the Three Million Stories Conference at Arizona State University.

Lerner is a an inaugural MASS MoCA Art Futures awardee (2025) and a 30th Anniversary ArtTable Honoree (2011). She is recipient of the Art in General Visionary Award (2016), the John L. Haber Award from the University of North Carolina (2009), the Catalyst Award from the National Association of Artists Organizations (2007), the BAXten Award from the Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2007), a Creative Leadership Award from the Alliance of Artists Communities (2005), the Artist Advocate Award from the Alliance of New York State Arts Organizations (2003) and a Special Citation from Artists Space for her support of individual artists (2003).

Shortly after leaving Creative Capital, she was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. She currently serves on the boards of Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Light Industry, Pollinator, and Starfish.  Her Advisory Board work includes New INC at the New Museum, Creative Capital, The Center for Artistic Activism, Missing Movies, The Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, and Arts Everywhere, also at UNC-CH.