Katie Nartonis

Katie Nartonis is the founder of The Nartonis Project and a writer, curator, filmmaker, and 20th century art + design specialist. She serves as President of the Executive Board of The Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation of Arts + Crafts in Rancho Cucamonga.

With over 20 years experience in the high-end art + design field, Nartonis is currently an independent art and design specialist assisting clients by helping to bring their fine objects to sale at auction or for private sale. She is also serves as arts writer for the Joshua Tree Voice and is a contributing writer for both Desert + SoCal Magazines.

Before she moved to the high desert, Nartonis was Director of CONVERSO gallery in Hollywood and previous to that Consignment Director, 20th Century Design at Heritage Auctions in Beverly Hills and Dallas. Nartonis worked in the Bonhams' 20th Century Decorative Art Department for over a decade, where she helped to execute auctions in both Los Angeles and New York. While at Bonhams, she created the hugely popular Bonham’s Design Lecture series which featured luminaries such as Sam Maloof, Larry Bell and the creative team behind the Sci-Fi classic, “BladeRunner: Designing the Future.” She started her career in auction working as the assistant to the late Peter Loughrey at Los Angeles Modern Auctions.

Her first career was in film and television where she produced award winning content including collaborating on the Oscar winning film, “The Accountant” in 2000. She won a Humanitas Award for Co-Producing “The Sissy Duckling” (featuring Harvey Fierstein + Sharon Stone) for HBO in 1999. She served as President of Women in Animation, and as the youngest woman to serve on the Animation Peer Group for the Television Academy of Arts + Sciences where she helped determine who won the Emmy Awards in her field.

In 2015, Nartonis co-curated a show (with design specialist Gerard O’Brien) on the counter-culture feather artist, Nicki Marx - “Marx Rising” at Reform Gallery in Los Angeles. In the Spring of 2018, Nartonis curated “Nature: Human Nature” at the Loft at Liz’s Gallery in Hollywood which features the work over a dozen artists and makers including Charles Hollis Jones, Garry Knox Bennett, Pamela Weir-Quiton and The Sam Maloof Studio.

In 2022 Nartonis curated “The Minds’ Eye” for JTAG Gallery which featured the historic 1930’s transcendental religious paintings of Edith Valentine Tenbrink. In February 2023 she curated the exhibit “Edwin + Lloyd” for the Joshua Tree Retreat Center, which told the story of the founder of Mentalphysics Edwin Dingle and the architect Lloyd Wright (Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr.) and co-authored a book of the same name. In 2020, Nartonis co-authored “Jack Rogers Hopkins: California Design Maverick”- on mid-century San Diego maker Jack Rogers Hopkins, (and is currently curating an exhibit of his work slated to open in early 2024.) She is currently writing “Glimpses of the Joshua Tree Dream (with Lisa Schyck) and “Marx Rising: The Life and Work of Nicki Marx” - both slated to be published in 2024.

The Nartonis Project is dedicated to telling well-crafted stories about the West Coast art scene. Through multiple platforms such as film, curated gallery shows, lecture, and pop-up events we intend to be a rich resource on the history of California Design, and its central artistic figures, both past and present. We are committed to telling the story of the work and life of those artists, thinkers, and makers who have created the post-war scene or are part of it now. In a world yearning for a connection to ideas and objects of substance, our goal is to provide that bridge.