Michelle Grey is a Creative, Marketing and Programming Executive and Entrepreneur that specialises in both building brands from the ground up and transforming and revolutionising legacy brands. For over 15 years, she has shaped some of the most innovative cultural companies and institutions - from global hospitality brands such as NeueHouse and Soho House to The New York Times’ largest consumer-facing live platform, and Absolut’s global online art gallery. Most recently she co-founded Arts-Matter, a Sydney-based cultural programming platform and creative agency, and was also the Co-founder and the Chief Creative Officer of Culture Vault, a web3 creative agency and digital art curated platform.
Michelle's creative projects have been covered in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, Hype Beast, Interview Magazine, Cultured Magazine, Flaunt, High Snobiety, Cool Hunting and more. Michelle has recently been profiled by Vogue, The Australian, The Wentworth Courier, Concrete Playground, and Broadsheet. Michelle was listed in The Australian’s 2022 Top 100 people shaping the cultural landscape, and the top 100 innovators in the country.
Arts-Matter
Michelle co-founded Arts-Matter after moving home from NY to Sydney in September 2020. Arts-Matter is a membership platform, creative studio and publishing house. They hosts a series of intimate programs in contemporary Sydney spaces with the creative minds shaping our shifting culture, and curate experiences and installations for brand and corporate partners. Through a series of thoughtfully curated conversations and experiences spanning the cultural gamut - from art, music, fashion, film, theatre, dance and literature - Arts-Matter cultivates community, spark debate, and thrive on bridging cultural, social and gender divides.
Arts-Matter's talent: Genesis Owusu, Ben Quilty, Leo Schofield, John Olsen, Janet Laurence, Louise Olsen, Stephen Ormandy, Bianca Spender, Rafaela Bonachela, Joshua Yeldham, Ngaiire, Tony Albert, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Angela Tiatia, Torah Bright and Saskia Havekas.
Brand and Cultural Partners: Sydney Dance Company, Atelier @ Art Gallery of NSW, Soho House, Bangarra Dance, Vivid, NBC Universal, Perrier Jouet, Russh Magazine, The Australian, Olsen Galleries, Sullivan & Strumph, Dinosaur Designs, Volley, The Sydney Art Quartet, and Grandiflora.
Culture Vault
Michelle is the Co-Founder and former CCO of Culture Vault - a new Web3 creative agency and curated platform that launched in February, 2022.
Culture Vault works with artists (from painters, illustrators, musicians, fashion designers, film makers and more) to create, mint and sell premium digital assets on chain. Culture Vault also works with commercial companies and cultural brands to help formulate their creative and business strategy in the NFT space. Artists and creators featured on the site include Reko Rennie, Stehpen Ormandy, Serwah Attafua, Romance Was Born, Shantell Martin, Mona Chalabi, Sebastien Leon, The Richard Bernstein Estate, Dylan Mooney, and Thea Anamara Perkins.
Absolut Art
As the Chief Creative Director and Global Curator Michelle was tasked with conceptualizing and executing the creative brand and business strategy to officially launch and grow Absolut Art in the US and the UK (a digital platform that sold signed limited edition prints by emerging and established artists from around the world - owned by Absolut Vodka).
Successful activations, curatorial projects and strategic partnerships spearheaded by Michelle include a 20 artist exhibition co-curated with The Wu-Tang Clan; a charitable print by famed artist Kehinde Wiley benefiting his artist residency in Senegal; a collaboration with Takashi Murakami; a partnership with downtown NY cinema Metrograph to reimagine classic movie posters by 10 contemporary artists; a global partnership with artist and cultural facilitator Shantell Martin to celebrate PRIDE in Australia, Sweden and the US; NADA Miami Art Basel; a partnership with The Kitchen and Ai Weiwei to celebrate the art-performance space's 50 year anniversary; a co-curation of reimagined white washed album covers with hip hop sensations Moses Sumney and Rapsody, and a collaboration with famed data journalist Mona Chalabi to illustrate positive data during the global pandemic.
The New York Times
From 2016-2020 Michelle was the Creative and Programming Director of TimesTalks, the New York Times’ largest consumer facing conversation and event platform. Within a year at the helm, she transformed the platform known for it’s intimate events with cultural leaders, into a fully integrated 360° content platform. Not only did she lead the complete visual re-branding, Michelle brought TimesTalks to a global audience by live streaming events on multiple channels, creating editorial video content for NYTimes.com, and reviving the press, marketing and communications strategy.
After just one year into the re-brand, the revenue doubled, and profit margins increased by over 25%. In addition to elevating the financial metrics, Michelle helped to diversify TimesTalks’ talent and audience, paying particular attention to increasing the number of females, minorities and LGBT talent and attendees, all of whom are using the cultural arts as a lens for social change.
In celebration of TimesTalks’ twentieth anniversary, Michelle and The New York Times commissioned French photographer Brigitte Lacombe, known for her influential and revelatory portraiture, to shoot a selection of the most iconic and directional voices from the last two decades of TimesTalks. Subjects include a vast array of creative, business, technology, policy, social justice and political leaders including actor Meryl Streep, activist Angela Davis, artist Ai Weiwei, musician John Legend, former attorney general Eric Holder, Former Vice President Al Gore, and director Martin Scorsese. The result was a beautiful book Forward: Twenty Years of TimesTalks, documenting some of the greatest cultural figures of our time.
NeueHouse
Michelle was a Founding Partner and the Creative and Programming Director of NeueHouse, a private creative work collective with outposts in NY and LA. During her tenure with the brand - beginning at the inception of its first physical site in Manhattan’s Flatiron district - Michelle established NeueHouse as not only a place to work and engage with like-minded members, but as a cultural nexus of live experiences, activations, and programming. She also created and established a suite of branded editorial content that lived at the intersection of media and commercial enterprise. Michelle established the company’s brand strategy, much of which was driven by programming, cultivation of community, and the creation of content platforms. In her four years at NH, Michelle created and curated a calendar of over 300 cultural events over four years— including Salman Rushdie, Christo, Kanye West, Steve McQueen, Joyce Carol Oates, Arianna Huffington, Chris Anderson, Werner Herzog, Deepak Chopra, Paul Smith, Anna Wintour, and many more.
Soho House
At a pivotal point in the club’s trajectory, Michelle was the head of Membership at Soho House New York. Both at Soho House and NeueHouse Michelle built a diverse and engaging community of creative thought leaders, and put together a group of founding members and trustees, as well as forged partnerships with major institutions, galleries, not for profits, commercial brands and media platforms — including MOMA, The Whitney, Creative Time, David Zwirner Gallery, Gagosian Gallery, Sundance, Tribeca Film Festival, Lincoln Film Society, Frieze Art Fair, The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Grey Goose, Land Rover and many more.
Background
Michelle was born and raised in Sydney Australia, but attended high school at Miss Porter’s in Farmington CT, and has an honors degree in Molecular Genetics from the University of New South Wales, and studied Journalism at Columbia University, NY.
Prior to moving to New York in 2004 she was a science and art writer for various publications, and was the founding editor-in-chief of a fashion and art magazine called Yen. While living in London Michelle was a TV writer and presenter for a science show called “Einstein TV” on UK’s cable network BSkyB. In July 2020, she moved home to Sydney with her fashion photographer husband and their two rambunctious boys.
Michelle sits on the steering committee of The Lower Manhattan Cultural Counsel, and the board of The Greenburger Center for Social and Criminal Justice and The Red Hook Education Foundation.