About Charlie Scheips

Charlie Scheips is a freelance curator, art advisor, writer and cultural historian based in New York City. He is president of Umbrella Art Management, Ltd. in New York. Scheips cultural activities have been marked by friendships and associations with many of the most important cultural figures of our time including such luminaries as David Hockney, Virgil Thomson, Billy Wilder, Cary Grant, Willem de Kooning, Yves Saint Laurent and Andy Warhol to name a few.

He was the founding Director of the Condé Nast Archive in New York. Previous professional activities have included Scheips directing public relations for Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art; chief assistant to internationally renowned artist David Hockney; associate publisher of a contemporary art magazine; benefit fundraiser; organizer of The Los Angeles and London International Contemporary Art fairs; and organizing major museum, publishing and special events such as Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years for the Metropolitan Museum (2001-2004); the Fortieth Anniversary Award Ceremony and Journal for the Council of Fashion Designers of America(2002); Vogue magazine’s Millennium issue (1999); House & Garden’s 100^th anniversary issue, book and photography exhibition; The Well-Lived Life(2001-02); and Vanity Fair’s 85^th anniversary issue (1999)and exhibition which led to the publication of Vanity Fair’s Hollywood in 2000. Scheips curated a permanent exhibition of over 1000 illustrations and photographs for the new Condé Nast offices in Times Square when it opened in 2000.

During his decade-long tenure as founding director of the Condé Nast Archive, Scheips collaborated on major international museum exhibitions and publications on key historical Condé Nast photographers such as; Edward Steichen (Whitney Museum), Horst P. Horst (National Portrait Gallery, London), Georges Hoyningen Huene (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); Erwin Blumenfeld, Louis Faurer (Center for Creative Photography, Houston); John Rawlings (Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology), Irving Penn, and Henry Clarke (Musee Galleria, Paris), and many others. His 2000 book John Rawlings: 30 Years in Vogue re-established the reputation of this important photographer.

Scheips produced the exhibition Robert Mapplethorpe curated by David Hockney for the Alison Jacques Gallery in London in 2005. He was the creative consultant on the We All Have AIDS awareness campaign also in 2005. His book Andy Warhol: The Day the Factory Died was released in the October 2006 in advance of the 20^th anniversary of the artists’ death.  His occasional columns and interviews called The Art Set were originally featured on the website New York Social Diary.com. Three recent oil portraits of Scheips were featured in the major David Hockney: Portraits retrospective which opened in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts in February 2006 and traveled to the LA County Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London–which subsequently purchased Hockney’s Self-portrait with Charlie for its permanent collection. Scheips’s bestselling book American Fashion, a major 340 page richly illustrated book of eight decades of fashion in America, was commissioned by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and was released by Assouline in September 2007 during New York Fashion Week. He was also the guest curator for a masterpieces of American jewelry exhibition at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 2007. Scheips was Worldwide Director of Photographs for Phillips de Pury auction house from 2007 to 2009.

More recently, Scheips organized David Hockney: Fleur Fraiches  Drawings on the iPhone and iPad that premiered at the Fondation Pierre Berge/Yves Saint Laurent in Paris and traveled to the Louisisana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Scheips was born in New York City in 1959. He received his B.A. in Art from Ripon College and a M.A. in American Studies from Columbia University. He lives in Manhattan.