Benjamin Simons is the founder and owner of West Jones Advisors, an art advisory based in Savannah, Georgia. A two-decade veteran of art museums and a specialist in maritime and Nantucket art, Simons founded West Jones Advisors in 2024. 

Simons served previously as Executive Director & CEO of Telfair Museums in Savannah, Director of the Academy Art Museum on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and as the Robyn & John Davis Chief Curator at the Nantucket Whaling Museum Center (Nantucket Historical Association) on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. He currently serves on the Board of the American Foundation for the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Simons co-authored the books Maritime Maverick: The Maritime Collection of William I. Koch (David Godine, 2006) and A Yachtsman’s Eye: The Glen S. Foster Collection of Marine Paintings (W. W. Norton, 2005). He has also written several museum catalogues including Island Treasures: Gifts of the Friends of the Nantucket Historical Association, 1986–2011 (NHA, 2011) and The Nantucket Art Colony, 1920–45 (NHA, 2007). He was the Editor of exhibition and collections publications and the award-winning quarterly Historic Nantucket.

Simons holds an MA in the History of Art in seventeenth century Netherlandish Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University College, London, England. He received an AB in Philosophy from Harvard College as well as an MA and MPhil in English Literature from Yale University. He is a graduate of the Getty Museum Leadership Institute and earned an MBA Essentials certification from the London School of Economics.


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