Chris Vanja

After running his own arts venue (Schilleroper) in Hamburg/Germany for three years while completing his BA in History of Art, Chris decided to consolidate his theoretical and practical knowledge of art and art organisations with an MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths in 2007.

During his studies he spent three months on a work placement with Visiting Arts, where he helped organise and manage three prestigious projects at the Edinburgh Festival. Besides adding further experience to his CV this placement also opened doors for wide reaching networking opportunities in the arts world.

After graduating Chris temporarily worked as arts administrator in the visual arts team at the National Office of Arts Council England and then moved into Higher Education as a research administrator at the University of Sussex.

In January 2013 Chris started a role as Senior Research Administrator at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. He gives advice and support to researchers in terms of developing their research proposals and writing external funding applications, as well as managing communication of research outputs throughout the organisation.

Using his experience of the cultural scene in Germany and the UK as well as the knowledge gained during his MA at Goldsmiths, Chris recently set up his own business, an artist agency and art gallery, which he ran alongside his full time job at Central Saint Martins. At Vanja Contemporary he represents emerging European artists showing their work at pop-up exhibitions and selling their work online.

Since September 2015 Chris has worked as a Gallery & Project Manager at Art Basel, working with international art galleries and across our teams and art fairs in Switzerland, Miami Beach and Hong Kong.