Bios

Dr. Victoria Ramirez

A strategic leader in the museum field with more than 20 years of executive-level experience, Dr. Victoria Ramirez is helping to guide the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts through an historic transformation – expanding its historic MacArthur Park campus and reimagining its programming. Working closely with AMFA leadership, she is helping to build an inclusive, accessible institution ready to reach new audiences while honoring its rich legacy.

In her extensive career, Dr. Ramirez has developed exhibitions and education programs, led renovation projects, and launched digital initiatives to increase museum attendance and engagement. She has also played an integral role in fundraising, securing support from significant national foundations and major corporations.

Dr. Ramirez came directly to AMFA from her position as director of the El Paso Museum of Art, a municipal museum that serves community members of all ages. Previously, she served as director of the Bullock Texas State History Museum. She was also the W.T. and Louise J. Moran Education Director at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she oversaw long-range planning and taught art history and appreciation to children and adults.

In 2022, Arkansas Money & Politics featured Dr. Ramirez among its “Top C-Suite Executives.” A champion for diversity and inclusion in the arts, she is a member of the Association of Art Museum Directors and the American Alliance of Museums and a frequent speaker at museum conferences and events. She also serves on the board of directors for the Downtown Little Rock Partnership.

Dr. Ramirez holds a doctorate from the University of Houston, a master’s degree from George Washington University, and a bachelor’s from the University of Maryland.

Harriet and Warren Stephens

Harriet and Warren Stephens have been deeply involved with the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts for more than 40 years. As co-chairs of the current capital campaign (“Reimagining the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts”), they have spearheaded the historic transformation of AMFA’s main building and grounds in Little Rock’s MacArthur Park. Under their leadership, the capital campaign has far exceeded its initial goal, raising a total of more than $150 million to date in support of the museum. Harriet and Warren both formerly served on AMFA’s Board of Trustees as president and chair, and are members of the AMFA Foundation Board of Directors, which Warren currently serves as president. Harriet chairs the AMFA Building Committee, which for six years has been integrally involved with every aspect of the building design, construction, and relaunch.

Warren is chairman, president, and CEO of Stephens Inc., a privately owned diversified financial services firm headquartered in Little Rock. He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, and the Wake Forest School of Business in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. While serving on the Washington and Lee Board of Trustees, he led the school’s capital campaign, which raised more than $542 million, the second largest fundraising effort ever by a liberal arts school. In addition, Warren led the Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s capital campaign to renovate the organization’s theater, and served on the board of the Central Arkansas Boys and Girls Club. He has been active in many economic development initiatives in Little Rock, including the renovation of the historic Capital Hotel, and served on several industry and corporate boards, currently including Dillard’s.

Harriet is a graduate of Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In addition to her work at AMFA, she has served on numerous boards, including the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Institute on Aging, Easter Seals, and the Cathedral School. A long-time supporter of the arts, Harriet is also active in preservation, having served on the national board of Stratford Hall, one of the most historically and architecturally significant homes in early America.

In addition to their support for AMFA and the broader arts community, the Stephenses’ philanthropy includes a wide range of education initiatives. Significantly, their support and leadership helped to establish the Episcopal Collegiate School in Little Rock. Harriet is past president and current co-vice-president of the school’s Board of Trustees, and serves on the school’s foundation, of which Warren is president.

Harriet and Warren are avid arts patrons and collectors, and their connection to AMFA is personal and deeply rooted: Warren’s father, Jackson T. Stephens, one of the museum’s major supporters, loaned many works from his personal collection to the museum, where they have been accessible to the public for almost 20 years. In recognition of their longstanding dedication to AMFA and the communities it serves, Warren and Harriet were awarded the organization’s Winthrop Rockefeller Memorial Award in 2005. Named for the former governor of Arkansas, an instrumental figure in AMFA’s establishment, the award is the highest honor for service bestowed by the Museum.

Jeanne Gang

Jeanne Gang, FAIA, is the founding principal and partner of Studio Gang, an architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Paris. Her inquisitive, forward-looking approach to design—unique in its pursuit of new technical and material possibilities as well as in its expansion of the active role of designers in society—has distinguished her as a leading architect of her generation. Drawing insight from ecological systems, she creates striking places that connect people with each other, their communities, and the environment. As the Lead Designer for the Arkansas Museum of Art, she defined the design concept and set the direction for its development.

Gang’s design process emphasizes research, experimentation, and collaboration inside and outside of traditional design fields and has resulted in a diverse, award-winning body of work. Projects range from cultural centers that convene diverse audiences and public projects that connect citizens with ecology to installations that challenge material properties and high-rise towers that foster community. Notable completed projects include Writers Theatre, a professional theater in Glencoe, Illinois; the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan; and the 82-story, undulating Aqua Tower in Chicago.

Jeanne is a Professor in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, her alma mater, where her teaching and research focus on the cultural and environmental aspects of buildings’ reuse. She is the author of three books on architecture. The Studio’s most recent monograph, Studio Gang: Architecture, was published by Phaidon in both English in French last year. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at MAXXI, the Museum of Modern Art, the International Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

A MacArthur Fellow and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Jeanne has been honored with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture and was named one of 2019’s most influential people in the world by TIME magazine. Further accolades include Architectural Review’s Architect of the Year, the Louis I. Kahn Memorial Award, and the Marcus Prize for Architecture.

Kate Orff

Kate Orff, FASLA, RLA, is Founding Principal of SCAPE. The first landscape architect to receive the MacArthur 'Genius' Fellowship in 2017, she is a national leader in climate-adaptive design, pushing broad-front initiatives related to climate justice through projects, publications, research, and advocacy. She is the author of several books, including Toward an Urban Ecology (Monacelli, 2016) and Petrochemical America (Aperture, 2012) and a contributor to the best-selling climate feminist anthology All We Can Save (One World Books, 2020).

At Columbia University, Orff directs the Urban Design program and co-directs the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes (CRCL). In 2019, she accepted a National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, on behalf of SCAPE, and was named a Hero of the Harbor by the Waterfront Alliance. She was a 2012 United States Artist Fellow, dubbed an Elle “Planet Fixer,” and has been profiled and interviewed extensively for publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, National Geographic and more.