Unpacking "Deep Storage". A talk about the origins, organization and propagation of 'Deep Storage' exhibition
Working as an independent curator, Ingrid Schaffner initiated one of the first exhibitions to look at storage, collecting, and archiving as encompassing issues in contemporary art. 'Deep Storage' opened at Haus der Kunst, Munich, in 1997 with work by more 40 artists to form a mass research into what we keep and how. Packed with material and potential meanings, the installation was an immersive look at the imagery of storage as historic process, private preservation, material deluge, digital imminence, and physical decay. This talk will address the origins, organization, and propagation of 'Deep Storage' in Schaffner's work. Ingrid Schaffner, Senior Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania, is currently at work on a survey exhibition of the work of Jason Rhoades. Past exhibitions at ICA include Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry, Dirt On Delight: Impulses That Form Clay (with Jenelle Porter), The Puppet Show (with Carin Kuoni), Karen Kilimnik, and Accumulated Vision, Barry Le Va. Her publications include 'Wall Text' in Questions of Practice: What Makes a Great Exhibition? (Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative/Reaktion Books, 2007); Salvador Dali's Dream of Venus: The Surrealist Funhouse from the 1939 World's Fair (Princeton Architectural Press, 2002); Deep Storage: Collecting, Storing, and Archiving in Art (Prestel, 1998); and Julian Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery (MIT, 1998). Schaffner earned her MA from New York University, Institute of Fine Arts, and was a fellow in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program.