Rob Fields brings a rich and varied career to his work as an art advisor and cultural strategist.

His art advisory practice focuses on work from the African diaspora and Global South, and he has facilitated client acquisitions of work by artists such as Mickalene Thomas, Joana Choumali, as well as many emerging talents.

With a career that spans decades–and multiple industries including automotive, software, fast food and entertainment–he’s led cultural institutions, represented artists, produced events and indie film, done PR, and worked on several account teams at New York City marketing agencies and trade associations. Through it all, he has built relationships with institutions, artists and communities nationally and internationally.

He is the former director of the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling. Prior to Sugar Hill, Rob was the president and executive director of Weeksville Heritage Center, and led that organization’s turnaround and secured its designation as the first new member of the NYC Cultural Institutions Group in over 20 years.  

From 2007-2017, Rob published Bold As Love, an online magazine that covered left-of-center music and culture.  In 2011, he produced the NBI Festival, a TED-inspired celebration of the Black people and ideas that are driving culture forward.  Over the course of his career, he’s been a marketer for big brands, marketing industry trade associations, cultural institutions, and indie artists; a cultural programmer; and has written about the connection between marketing, business, and contemporary culture for Forbes.com and the Huffington Post, among the several outlets where his work has been published.

Rob holds a BA in Professional Writing from Carnegie Mellon University and currently serves on the US Advisory Board of Volta Art Fair and is a member of the Board of Trustees for UnionDocs, the Queens, NY-based center for documentary art. He is also a founding board member of the African Burial Ground Memorial Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting and advancing the African Burial Ground National Monument site at 290 Broadway in New York City, a National Historic Landmark and the oldest and largest known burial ground for free and enslaved people of African descent in North America.

He is an avid photographer who lives in Brooklyn with his wife, author and filmmaker Bridgett M. Davis, and their family.