The Chinati Foundation in Marfa has announced that Ingrid Schaffner will assume the newly created position of curator. Schaffner will oversee the museum’s permanent collection, exhibitions, residency program, publications, and scholarship. She begins her new role in this month.
Schaffner is an American curator and writer, whose work coalesces around themes of archiving and collecting, photography, feminism, and alternate modernisms. As curator of the 2018 Carnegie International, at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Schaffner presented major installations by artists and collectives, including El Anatsui, Alex Da Corte, Zoe Leonard, Postcommodity, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, along with “Dig Where You Stand,” a new look at the museum’s permanent collections by Koyo Kouoh, all within an overarching ethos of “Museum Joy.”
From 2000 through 2015, Schaffner directed the exhibition program as chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2000 through 2015, Schaffner directed the exhibition program as chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania.
“We are thrilled to have Ingrid Schaffner join Chinati in this newly established and vitally important role,” says Jenny Moore, Chinati director. “It is an exciting time for Chinati. The Museum of Modern Art retrospective brings new perspectives to Donald Judd’s art. Chinati is a place to explore the fullness of Judd’s vision as an artist interested in architecture and design, as a preservationist and an iconoclast. Ingrid is an outstanding curator, highly esteemed in the field for making an incredible range of exhibitions, from expansive surveys to revelatory solo shows. We look forward to having Ingrid’s talent and expertise shape this next phase of Chinati’s history.”
“Donald Judd’s concept for the Chinati Foundation was curatorial: to permanently site works of art within a dynamic of exhibitions, scholarship, artists residencies, and events,” says Schaffner. “I’m delighted to join Jenny Moore and work with the Chinati team and board of trustees to amplify the capacity of the curatorial to keep us looking and thinking about art, architecture, and the land in Marfa. It is an honor to build on the curatorial legacy established by Judd, work that continued with director emerita Marianne Stockebrand and Rob Weiner, through to the spirit at Chinati today.”
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Judd established the Chinati Foundation in 1986 as a museum made by and for artists. In 2017 the museum completed its first master plan and has launched a comprehensive campaign to fund the priorities it identifies, including buildings and land restoration, meeting the needs of a growing number of visitors, and building Chinati’s endowment.
