Diane Roby

Diane Roby has worked in arts-related businesses for more than 25 years as an artist, assistant to artists, art instructor, publicist, writer, and editor. She has curated exhibitions, written articles and reviews for publications, and coordinated and edited catalogues, brochures, and printed materials for artists, galleries and museums. She is bilingual in English and Spanish.

Diane has been affiliated with David Perry & Associates for more than 20 years, writing press materials for the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco Opera, The Magic Theatre, Museum of Craft & Folk Art, Chabot Space & Science Center, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, and other clients. In 1996 she founded RED Communications & Art Services in San Francisco, offering services in public relations, media campaigns, and event planning. Clients have included UC Berkeley Art Museum; Other Minds; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Stanford University: William Saroyan Archives at Stanford University Library, the inauguration of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford, and the reopening of Stanford’s Green Library; International Schools Campus, San Francisco; and other clients who include musicians, dancers, architects, designers, and fine press publishers. In 1995 she organized dedication ceremonies at United Nations Plaza to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the U.N. in San Francisco and the International Declaration of Human Rights, in coordination with the Office of the U.N. Secretary-General and the mayor’s office.

She works as curator and studio manager for artists Oliver Lee Jackson (oliverleejackson.com) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (ferlinghettiart.com). For 30 years she has done visual arts research, artist management, curatorial services, publication coordination and editing with Anne Kohs & Associates, for artists who have included Manuel Neri, Oliver Lee Jackson, Charles Ginnever, Frank Lobdell, Nathan Oliveira, Joan Brown, Mark Adams, Beth Van Hoesen, Gustavo Ramos Rivera, and others. She began her arts career at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art as an assistant to director Paul Mills for Spanish cultural projects, including exhibition and symposium planning with officials from the Museo del Prado, Museum de las Americas in Madrid, Spanish embassy and consulates, and the Spanish Royal Household, including meetings with the Duke of Alba and the King and Queen of Spain. During two years living in Madrid, she studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and worked as a studio assistant at fine press publisher Grupo 15.

Diane Roby has taught drawing at San Jose State University, West Valley College (Cupertino), Foothill College (Los Altos Hills), and Dominican University (San Rafael), where she also curated exhibitions in the university’s Gallery. She has an MFA in Spatial Arts from San Jose State University, and a BA in Studio Art from UC Santa Barbara, where she studied with Howard Warshaw. She is a member of the Society of Independent Artists in San Francisco, which in 2011 awarded her an Honorary Doctorate. She is a certified instructor of Hatha Yoga, and for the past eighteen years has been yoga instructor at Skyline College in San Bruno.