Oklahoma native, tech entrepreneur and ex-banking executive, Kipton Cronkite’s love of art started at a young age. In July 2012, he began working with Ryan Serhant, real estate industry veteran and star of Bravo's Million Dollar Listing New York. His full-time focus is as Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer of @60" - The Height of Art; however, he also works with clients who have interest real estate sales or rentals by introducing them to Ryan and the team at Nest Seekers. In addition, he positions art from the 'what's next' in the art community into various Nest Seekers properties to enhance visibility for property listings in order to improve client relations.
Both of his grandmothers were oil painters and their passion for art greatly influenced young Kipton’s interest in the field. Some of his earliest memories involve visits to the Will Rogers Museum in Oklahoma where he admired Indian art, abstract sculpture and vintage black-and-white photography. Then at the age of 10, a trip to New York solidified his love of art and set him on a course to become an online pioneer for emerging artists. In 2005, he successfully launched one of the first online look books for artists through KiptonART.
His journey, however, was met with roadblocks and diversions along the way. When Kipton was only six years old, his father died from a sudden heart attack. Nevertheless, his mother encouraged him to pursue a career in finance leading him to first study municipal bonds at Southwest Securities in Dallas. In the summer of 2001, Kipton moved to New York to continue working in finance. However, after witnessing the shocking events of 9/11, the course of his life altered yet again. Cronkite decided to follow his true passion and took a two year hiatus to travel around the world studying film to fulfill his creative desire.
After attending the Venice International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festivals, he decided the next step was to pursue the visual arts and work in a gallery. While working at Pop International Galleries in New York, Cronkite coordinated art exhibitions and facilitated sales of works by artists like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. In addition to providing his first real hands-on training in the art world, the gallery role gave rise to the idea for launching KiptonART.com. Cronkite began to recognize there was no online vehicle to help emerging artists gain a foothold in the field. Seizing upon his spirit of entrepreneurship, he built a beta website for KiptonART and held a launch party at the W Hotel in Times Square in June 2005. The focus of the online website was to introduce and promote emerging artists to collectors, curators and gallerists both online and through live events. While running KiptonART.com on the weekends and after work, he accepted a full-time position at Smith Barney in 2005 to help fund the growth of KiptonART. While at Smith Barney, he leveraged his interest in both finance and art to work with the bank's high net worth clients. By 2006, Bank of America's Alternative Investment Advisors Group recruited him to become Head of Global Client Services and by 2008, he was promoted to Director & Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. In June 2009, he left Bank of America to focus on KiptonART full-time.
Kipton graduated from Oklahoma State University with a Bachelor's in Marketing and Management while also studying International Business at Imperial College in London.
Since 2005, Cronkite made a point to become involved in arts related organizations and charities. He wanted to meet like-minded people and demonstrate his support for living artists. Initially, he spread himself thin across terrific organizations such as the Apollo Circle at theMetropolitan Museum of Art, Young Collectors of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Contemporaries Executive Committee at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Young Fellows of the Frick Collection Steering Committee and Co-Founded the Young Patrons Circle of the American Friends of the Louvre. Currently, his focus rests with the Whitney Museum and raising funds for the non-profit, KiptonART Foundation (separate from KiptonART.com). “My aim has always been to cultivate and create opportunities for a new generation of artists who don’t have the same means for exposure,” notes Cronkite. “My goal is to strengthen their credibility while enhancing their exposure in order to attract galleries and collectors.”
