Ingrid Schaffner (born 1961) is a curator, writer, and educator specializing in contemporary art since the mid-1980s. Schaffner work often coalesces around themes of archiving and collecting, photography, feminism, and alternate modernisms—especially Surrealism. She has curated important exhibitions that have helped studio craft to gain acceptance as fine arts, such as Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay with Jenelle Porter at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia in 2009.

Early life and education

Schaffner was born in Los Gatos, California.

Career

Schaffner co-authored the publication Deep Storage which was a major international survey of 50 contemporary artists representing issues and images of collecting, storage, and archiving. Other exhibitions include Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, More ... on collecting, Richard Tuttle, In Parts, 1998-2001, and The Photogenic: Photography Through its Metaphor. She has numerous publications on 20th-century art, art reviews in Artforum, and catalog essays. Schaffner was the Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania from 2000 to 2015. During that time, she curated an exhibition program that included surveys devoted to Barry Le Va, Jason Rhoades and Louise Fishman. She later served as curator of 2018 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From 2020 to 2023, Schaffner served as curator at Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. In 2023, Schaffner joined Hauser & Wirth as curatorial senior director, based in Los Angeles.