Christian Gaines was born in Brussels, Belgium to American parents and raised in the United Kingdom until he came to the United States to attend college, and stayed. In 1988, Christian Gaines joined the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival, serving as its Administrative Director for six years. In 1994, Christian was appointed Film Programmer at the Sundance Film Festival, programming the 1995 and 1996 festivals. From 1996 to 2000, he served as Festival Director for the Hawaii International Film Festival, responsible for its management and programming. From 2000 to 2008, Christian served as Director of Festivals at the American Film Institute, where he led several film festival projects, including AFI FEST presented by Audi. In 2008, Christian joined the Withoutabox division of IMDb.com, an Amazon.com company, where he focused on festival strategy and business development. In April 2013 Christian joined ArtPrize (artprize.org) to serve as its Executive Director.

Keir's great passion is telling engaging stories and solving tough problems using technology, and he has a wide and diverse background in digital media and technology. His experience includes the collaborative planning, design and development of web, connected TV, social, mobile, radio, virtual and augmented reality experiences, and the production of audio, video, text and interactive content for these platforms. Currently, Keir is the Head of Web and Digital Platforms at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SFMOMA. He has previously worked for a public broadcaster in Australia (SBS), a media research institute in Germany (ZKM) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA).