Rick Kinsel has worked to conceptualize and administer the philanthropic and exhibitions programs of the Vilcek Foundation since the foundation’s establishment in 2000. Since then, Kinsel has served as a member of the foundation’s board of directors; he was appointed executive director in 2003 and then president of the foundation in 2016. As president, he leads and oversees all aspects of the foundation’s operations, prizes, exhibitions and creative programs, and strategic and institutional partnerships.

Kinsel has conceived of multiple traveling exhibitions and related publications featuring works from the Vilcek Collection, including Marsden Hartley: Adventurer in the Arts; Ralston Crawford: Torn Signs; Ralston Crawford: Air + Space + War; Masterpieces of American Modernism from the Vilcek Collection; and Nari Ward: Home of the Brave. 

He spearheaded the initial concept and framework for Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery, leading the Vilcek Foundation’s collaboration with the School for Advanced Research (SAR) on the development of the exhibition. Curated by the Pueblo Pottery Collective, the exhibition establishes a new model for exhibitions of Native American pottery that centers indigenous voices and living traditions of pottery-making. In 2023, SAR awarded The Centennial Medal to Kinsel and the Vilcek Foundation for their role in conceptualizing, developing, and bringing Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery to fruition.

In addition to his written contributions to all of the Vilcek Foundation’s exhibition catalogues, Kinsel has also written curatorial essays and introductions to catalogues for exhibitions with Pen + Brush, including Domesticity Revisited. In 2019, he co-edited A Place at the Table: New American Recipes from the Nation’s Top Foreign-Born Chefs, for which he received a 2020 Gourmand World Cookbook Award. 

Prior to joining the Vilcek Foundation, Kinsel was director of cultural affairs for Coty Inc. in New York from 1997 to 2003, where he oversaw multiple important cultural initiatives including establishing and building institutional art collections for the organization’s corporate offices in New York, Paris, London, and Moscow; creating an annual design award; developing a scholarship fund to support students at Parsons School of Design in New York; and developing a partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) whereby Coty created specialized personal care products to support the health of scientists aboard the International Space Station.

Kinsel began his career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1989, working with the museum through 1996. As cataloguer in charge of acquisitions there, he was responsible for the accessioning of all objects acquired by the museum (more than 4,000 objects per year). During his tenure at the Met, Kinsel earned an MA in the History of the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York.

In 2013, Kinsel was selected by the Museum of Arts and Design as the recipient of the MAD Visionaries! Award for outstanding leadership and creativity in the arts. He was a juror for the Hawai’i International Film Festival’s Golden Orchid Awards in 2008, and has served as a visual arts curator for Pen + Brush since 2015. In 2016, he was honored by the Theatre Communications Group at their annual gala for his work in promoting diversity, inclusiveness, and equity in American theatre, and in 2021 he was honored by Soho Rep at their annual gala for his stewardship and commitment to supporting the work of immigrant artists and theater-makers. 

He is a founding member of the Friends of Arms and Armor group—The Negroli Society—at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 2023 he was appointed to the Museum’s Visiting Committee to the Department of Arms and Armor.

Kinsel is passionate about film and filmmaking. He has produced projects which have received acclaim at the 25th Annual Webby Awards for Diversity & Inclusion, and NYX and has had films appear at the Queens World Film Festival.

In 2019, Kinsel was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. He also joined the National Trust for Historic Preservation Council in 2024. In 2025, Kinsel was elected to the Board of Directors for the College Art Association and Isamu Noguchi Foundation Garden and Museum Council.