About

Sara Vanderbeek is an award-winning artist, curator, cultural organizer, and advocate for sustainability and affordability in arts infrastructure, based in Austin, Texas. Her work explores themes of place, artist motherhood, and trauma, and has been exhibited at The Contemporary Austin (TX), Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles (CA), McNay Art Museum (TX), Co-Lab Projects (TX), and NYC Crit Club (NY).

She is the Founding Executive Director and Curator of DORF, an artist-led gallery and cultural space nationally recognized for advancing sustainability, experimentation, and collective stewardship in the arts, where she has developed exhibitions and programs that foreground underrepresented voices and situate them within broader cultural conversations. Her curatorial approach balances critical inquiry with accessibility, and as an independent consultant, she has shaped major public art collections for institutions including the Texas Municipal Retirement System (Austin) and University Health (San Antonio), with a focus on investing in Texas-based artists to strengthen local and regional economies. She was a founding member, treasurer and board president of ICOSA Collective (Austin), and is an active facilitator for professional development programs through Mid-America Arts Alliance, where she received a 2021 Interchange grant and was a 2023 Artist Leadership Fellow. She is currently a mentor through Austin Emerging Arts Leaders and serves on the board of Rally Austin.

Her artwork is held in public, private, and institutional collections internationally, and her work has received support from Austin Arts, Culture, Music and Entertainment, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Christie’s Auction House, National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. Vanderbeek holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and she began her career as a Specialist at Christie’s Auction House in New York where she gained professional training in art appraising, cataloguing, and sales.