Christian Keesee

Christian Kirkpatrick Keesee (born December 27, 1961) is an American philanthropist, art collector, and publisher. He is the chairman of Kirkpatrick Bank and manager of his family office, which invests in banking, philanthropy, real estate, and energy-oriented opportunities. He is also founder of the Brett Weston Archive;https://www.brettwestonarchive.com/ publisher of the quarterly culture magazine ArtDesk; co-author (with National Book Award Winner Andrew Solomon) of the illustrated book New Russian Art: Paintings from the Christian Keesee Collection; and co-author of the illustrated book Bright Golden Haze (with verse by United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo), about Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, of which he is founder and chairman.
== Philanthropy ==
Keesee’s philanthropic initiatives focus on arts, art education, culture, and community concerns in Oklahoma, Colorado, and New York. He serves as chairman of Kirkpatrick Foundation, and president of Kirkpatrick Family Fund and the Christian Keesee Charitable Trust. The three philanthropies grant support to organizations with projects and programs dedicated to arts, culture, social services, humanitarian endeavors, education, beautification, animal wellbeing, environmental conservation, and historic preservation. The Joan Kirkpatrick Animal Hospital at the Oklahoma City Zoo, named for Keesee’s late mother, received a 2016 American Institute of Architects Central Oklahoma Merit Design Award. The two-story, 20,000 square foot facility offers the public opportunities to observe veterinarians and staff working to maintain the health of animals in its care.
Keesee also serves as ex-officio trustee of the Oklahoma City Community Foundation; founder and president of Green Box Arts Festival; and co-founder and president of the Historic Green Mountain Falls Foundation, which has purchased several hundred acres of land to hold in perpetuity and protect from development. June 2022 saw the opening of a project combining art, architecture, and preservation: a Skyspace by artist James Turrell in Green Mountain Falls, commissioned by the Historic Green Mountain Falls Foundation. It is the first Turrell Skyspace in the state of Colorado.
In 2015, Keesee and son Blake donated the Kirkpatrick Family Farm, a 33-acre property in Yukon, Oklahoma, to the Kirkpatrick Family Fund to ensure the protection of the property for public use and wildlife protection. The real estate was originally purchased by Keesee’s great-grandparents, the founders of Yukon. Two years later, in 2017, the historic Yukon site was renamed the Mollie Spencer Farm, in honor of Keesee’s great-grandmother. 
== Arts Patronage ==
Between 2000 and 2020, Keesee donated a total of 6,375 objects, including photographs, sculpture, and paintings, to 60 institutions around the world, from London’s Tate Gallery to the Getty Museum in California. In 2012, Keesee purchased the installation work Cloud City by Argentinian artist Tómas Saraceno and loaned it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where it was exhibited outdoors, in the Met’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. In 2020, Keesee made a donation to the Met: a sculpture titled Triangular Solid with Circular Cut-Outs, Variation K, by the American artist Dan Graham. 
Keesee sits on the Board of Trustees of The Frick Collection (which awarded him The Frick Collection Award for Extraordinary Generosity in 2019) and is a Trustee of the Tate Americas Foundation and a Trustee Emeritus of American Ballet Theatre. In 2012, he founded Marfa Contemporary, the regional satellite of Oklahoma Contemporary. Housed in a former Gulf filling station repurposed by architect Rand Elliott, Marfa Contemporary hosted exhibitions and provided free art classes to children, and an artist conversation series for adults. Marfa Contemporary closed permanently in 2018.
== Animal Wellbeing ==
Keesee is an outspoken advocate for animals. In an op-ed piece published in The Oklahoman, he made the case for building a new animal shelter in Oklahoma City, “a destination that Oklahoma residents will want to visit, increasing adoption,” he wrote. “[I]n our ambition to become a great city through transformative infrastructure, we left important neighbors behind—the four-legged and winged ones. …The Oklahoma City Animal Shelter doesn’t meet the needs of our city and it doesn’t speak to who we are as people. It’s time to build a new modern shelter.” </blockquote>Keesee used his influence to oppose proposed legislation called Right to Farm that would have enshrined farm animal abuse in the state constitution. In 2012, Kirkpatrick Foundation launched “Safe & Humane,” a 20-year initiative to make Oklahoma a safe place for all animals.
== Awards and Honors ==
For his contributions to culture in his home state, Keesee received the Oklahoma Governor’s Arts Award in 2012, presented at the state capitol, and the Pike’s Peak Art Council Award for Community Enrichment in 2014. In 2015, Keesee was named King of the Beaux Arts Ball, an annual fundraising event benefiting the Oklahoma City Museum of Art that was inaugurated by his grandmother, Eleanor B. Kirkpatrick, 70 years earlier. He contributed the foreword to a commemorative book about the ball, The Beaux Arts Ball: The First 75 Years.
== Early Life and Education ==
Christened at All Soul’s Episcopal Church, Keesee grew up in Oklahoma City, the only child of philanthropist Joan Kirkpatrick and real estate broker Konrad Keesee, co-author (with Ann Taylor) of the book Nichols Hills: A Residential Community. After graduating from Heritage Hall School|Heritage Hall High School in 1981, Keesee received an Associate of Arts degree in English Studies from Menlo College in Atherton, CA. He worked as an intern in the Washington, DC, office of Oklahoma Senator David Boren, working with legislative assistants and other members of the senator’s team on bank deregulation during Oklahoma’s bank crisis. Establishing a minor in film criticism at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA, he received a Bachelor of Science in 1991 from the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond.
== Family History ==
Keesee’s maternal grandparents, John E. and Eleanor B. Kirkpatrick, were art collectors and Oklahoma City civic leaders. His grandfather John was a 1931 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who earned two decorations during World War II and obtained the rank of rear admiral in the U.S. Naval Reserve. Keesee’s great-uncle Lieut. Col. Spencer Kirkpatrick, who graduated from West Point in 1924, served as Commander of Fort Drum in the Philippines during World War II and died as a Prisoner of war|Prisoner of War of the Japanese. Another great-uncle, Col. Elmer Kirkpatrick, was a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Officer who joined The Manhattan Project in 1944.
Keesee’s interest in genealogy and his family’s history of military service led him to start the Kirkpatrick Family Archive, which, since its establishment in 2002, has employed archivists to maintain documents, photographs, audiovisual materials, diverse objects and ephemera preserving the legacy and achievements of the family for educational purposes. To date, the archive has drawn on its holdings to publish three biographies of notable family members, including The Matriarch: The Story of Mollie Spencer; Scion: The Story of Lewis Spencer Kirkpatrick and His Ancestors’ Journey to America; and The Blakes: Commerce and Banking) at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.
== Politics ==
Formerly a lifelong Republican, Keesee supported the efforts of organizations dedicated to preventing the re-election of Donald Trump in 2019. According to Kirkpatrick family legend, Keesee’s paternal great-grandmother once danced with Abraham Lincoln at a ball at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Keesee was inspired by the historic campaign of Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to switch his party affiliation, registering as a Democrat in 2020 and voting for the Biden-Harris ticket.
== Personal Life ==
Keesee is married to Lawrence (Larry) Keigwin, a choreographer, dancer, founder of Keigwin + Company, and co-founder of Green Box Arts Festival. In 2017, Keesee and Keigwin became the first same-sex couple to be wed at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. Keesee was confirmed as an Episcopalian there in May 2013. Keesee has a son, Blake Christian Kirkpatrick Keesee.
Keesee divides his time between a house in Oklahoma City, which previously belonged to his Kirkpatrick grandparents; a house in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado; and a Manhattan townhouse that is the oldest surviving building in the Upper East Side historic district (built in 1862). Shortly after purchasing the New York townhouse in 2004, Keesee supervised a two-year renovation that restored the façade to its original appearance—it had been de-stooped in the 1940s.
An avid follower of the performing arts, especially dance and opera, Keesee enjoys sailing, spending time with his dogs, and hosting, together with the Chisholm Trail Historical Preservation Society, “Easter On The Prairie,” an annual event for families at the Mollie Spencer Farm in Yukon, Oklahoma, the town in Canadian County that was pioneered by his paternal great-grandparents, L.M. and Mollie Spencer.
Category:American people
Category:American philanthropists
Category:1961 births