Barbara Escobar
With experience across nonprofit and commercial arts organizations, Barbara Escobar develops and implements communications strategies for a range of cultural institutions and initiatives.
Since joining Resnicow and Associates in 2015, Barbara has mounted communications campaigns and provided counsel on programming, marketing, and partnership strategies for leading arts organizations, foundations, art fairs, and museums. Recent projects include international campaigns for the opening of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami's new permanent home in the Miami Design District in 2017; the U.S. Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, commissioned by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Rose Art Museum; and the national campaigns for the launch of Frieze Los Angeles and the launch of Frieze Sculpture in New York at Rockefeller Center in 2019. In 2017, she worked with the Wallace Foundation and its grantees across the country to launch and produce the "BAS Stories Project," a series of editorial and video content to support the foundation's six-year $52-million "Building Audiences for Sustainability (BAS)" initiative.
Barbara has also developed comprehensive communications programs and led wide-reaching campaigns for organizations including the Art Dealers Association of America and its annual fair The Art Show, the Dallas Museum of Art, The Gordon Parks Foundation, and Sharjah Art Foundation; and has conducted international media relations for the opening of the new Australian Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, the Denver Art Museum, Collective Design, and James Carpenter Design Associates. She has also been integrally involved in developing strategies and public statements in response to legislative developments affecting clients and various sectors of the art world.
Prior to joining R+A, Barbara was the publicity and events manager at Aperture Foundation where she spearheaded institutional communications, publicity campaigns, digital marketing, and social media for more than 120 publications, internationally-traveling exhibitions, and initiatives, including the launch of programmatic partnerships with the Hermès Foundation and Paris Photo and a viral, digital campaign for the Touching Strangers book and exhibition project. Barbara also managed events, sponsorships, and cross promotional exchanges, and produced programming at partner institutions internationally.
Previously, she worked in a marketing role at Phillips (New York), and as gallery manager at the visual arts non-profit Transformer (Washington, DC), and has held internships at The Barnes Foundation and Mann Center for the Performing Arts (Philadelphia).
Since 2014, Barbara has been adjunct faculty in arts marketing at SUNY Purchase College. She has also served on the advisory boards of the Honolulu Biennial and Musée magazine. She received a master’s degree in museum studies from Johns Hopkins University and graduated cum laude from Catholic University with a double major in art history and philosophy.
