Brent Foster Jones is a writer, strategist, teacher, and founder of his eponymous office that provides a depth of strategy and thinking to studios, estates, and foundations.

Drawn to postwar painting and sculpture produced in California, he developed an early interest in artists who studied or taught at his alma mater, the former California College of Arts and Crafts, such as Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993), John McCracken (1934–2011), Manuel Neri (1930–2021), and Nathan Oliveira (1928–2010).

At Portrait, Brent leads Strategy, providing advice, guidance, management, and writing to create grounding and guiding narratives, systems, platforms, and initiatives in both art history and contemporary culture. He values clarity and vividness in the presentation of an artist, along with the importance and pleasure of research, reporting, close looking, and discovery.

Over more than a decade, he has provided integrated strategy and communications leadership to the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. He has also assisted with efforts to freshly position and present 20th century artists such as Viola Frey (1933–2004), John McLaughlin (1898–1976), Harvey Quaytman (1937–2002), Hedda Sterne (1910–2011), Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021), Jack Tworkov (1900–1982), and Mary Ann Unger (1945–1998).

Born in Texas and raised in Louisiana, he holds an MFA from California College of the Arts. He subsequently taught in the school’s BFA and MFA programs and served as a graduate faculty editor.

Scott Thorpe is a designer, educator, and founding partner of MacFadden & Thorpe. He met Brett MacFadden while serving as Design Director of Brand and Marketing at Chronicle Books, and together they founded MacFadden & Thorpe in 2008. They established a boutique studio focused on arts, culture, and publishing, building a reputation for thoughtful, highly crafted design.

At Portrait, Scott leads Creative Strategy, helping shape the ideas, identities, and systems that connect scholarship, design, and public engagement into a coherent whole. He believes the strongest creative work grows from careful attention and from bringing different ideas, people, and disciplines into conversation.

Scott has worked closely with the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, the Hung Liu Estate, The Thing Quarterly, the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, and Minnesota Street Project Foundation. He taught in the BFA Graphic Design and MFA Design programs at California College of the Arts for nearly two decades and holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Brett MacFadden is a designer, educator, and founding partner of MacFadden & Thorpe. He met Scott Thorpe while serving as Senior Designer for the Art and Design category at Chronicle Books, and together they founded MacFadden & Thorpe in 2008. They established a boutique studio focused on arts, culture, and publishing, building a reputation for thoughtful, highly crafted design.

At Portrait, Brett leads Creative Direction, bringing scholarship, strategy, and design together into visual experiences that are clear, engaging, and distinctive. He places equal importance on visible form and underlying structure, believing that the strongest design begins with good bones and is built to endure.

Brett has led projects for cultural organizations including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Nevada Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Jewish Film Institute, and Art + Water. He taught in both the BFA Graphic Design and MFA Design programs at California College of the Arts for nearly two decades and holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Katharine James researches, writes, and elevates artistic heritage for families, studios, estates, and foundations. In her twenties, she worked for Kathan Brown (1935–2025), founder of the fine art etching publisher Crown Point Press, where she learned about the traditional practice of printmaking. In her thirties, while working for the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, she spent years alongside the artist's granddaughter, immersed in family photographs, letters, and recordings while researching a biography of the postwar painter. Process, storytelling, and identity remain at the core of her work.

At Portrait, Katharine leads Digital & Public Engagement. With a focus on accessibility, art history, and visual standards, she draws on her experience developing digital platforms into encyclopedic public resources, creating artist-endowed social media channels, producing content grounded in studio practice and archival research, and leading public initiatives surrounding catalogues raisonnés and artist centennials. She uses digital platforms to expand scholarship and deepen public engagement.

Approaching artists' legacies with equal parts scholarship and precision, Katharine develops editorial content from artist writings, archival materials, family histories, and new perspectives contributed by museum directors, curators, scholars, and students. She is particularly interested in using an artist's own voice to guide legacy initiatives and encourage new scholarship. Her work extends across exhibitions, institutional partnerships, publications, public programs, digital storytelling, and organizational systems, always with a commitment to thoughtful presentation and faithful representation of both artworks and archival materials.

Katharine previously was the Head of Digital and Public Engagement at the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, where she worked for nearly a decade, and served on the San Francisco Council Steering Committee for Artadia (2017–2025). She holds an MA in Art Business from the Sotheby's Institute of Art, London, and a BA in Art History from Syracuse University, with a minor in Public Communications from the S.I. Newhouse School.

Maggie Wallace draws on more than a decade of experience supporting interdisciplinary teams and complex projects. She believes thoughtful organization and operational systems create the conditions for creative work to flourish and supports long-term relationships through clarity, consistency, and trust.

At Portrait, Maggie leads Office & Creative Operations, overseeing the management of projects, communications, schedules, and organizational systems that support the practice. She works closely with artists, families, institutions, and collaborators to ensure that every engagement is managed with the same level of care and attention that defines the work itself. The office's editorial eye, she contributes across projects as a meticulous editor and proofreader, bringing museum-level standards to the materials Portrait develops.

Maggie also oversees creative operations at MacFadden & Thorpe, where she helps guide the studio's projects, client relationships, and day-to-day operations. Previously, she worked at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as Project Coordinator for the in-house Design Studio and in Content Strategy and Digital Engagement. Her experience also includes graduate curatorial work with the American Art collection at The Huntington. She holds an MA in the History of Art from the University of California, Riverside and a BA in the History of Art & Architecture and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.