Photo Bryan Conley/©Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
The mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth may be best known for scooping up touted artists from across the globe, but it has also begun to build out its curatorial team. The latest addition is Ingrid Schaffner, who had formerly served as curator of the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, and will now be the gallery’s curatorial senior director.
Schaffner, who will be based in Los Angeles, is set to organize shows for the gallery, focusing predominantly on West Coast artists represented by the gallery. Hauser & Wirth also said she will work as a writer and an editor for the gallery’s in-house magazine, Ursula.
She is the second big addition to the curatorial team this year at Hauser & Wirth, after Kate Fowle, who currently serves a curatorial senior director based in New York. Fowle had directed MoMA PS1 in New York prior to joining the gallery.
That curatorial team also includes Tanya Barson, who is now a senior director at the gallery. She took the position after being controversially dismissed from MACBA in Barcelona.
Curators leaving the museum world for the market used to be a rare occurrence, but it is these days happening with greater frequency.
“We’re thrilled that Ingrid is joining Hauser & Wirth as Curatorial Senior Director, bringing her experience and expertise as a curator and writer, her noted talent for collaborating closely with artists, and her very special sensibility to the gallery,” Stacen Berg, partner and executive director of Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles, said in a statement to ARTnews. “She’ll be a tremendous asset—particularly here in Los Angeles, where she’ll be based—and a great complement to our existing curatorial team of Tanya Barson in London and Kate Fowle in New York. We’ve followed Ingrid’s achievements and admired her vision for quite some time, so it’s a great honor to welcome her to the gallery.”
Prior to working at the Donald Judd–founded Chinati Foundation, Schaffner had organized the 2018 edition of the Carnegie International. Before that, she was a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia for 15 years.
She is a California native herself, having been born in the Bay Area town of Los Gatos.