Cathleen Chaffee


Cathleen Chaffee is an American curator, writer, and art historian specializing in contemporary art. She currently serves as the chief curator of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo, New York, where she joined in January 2014.

Early life and education

Chaffee attended Ithaca College; followed by study at Courtauld Institute of Art where she received a M.A. degree; and the New York University Institute of Fine Arts where she received a Ph.D. in 2013. Her dissertation was Décors: Marcel Broodthaers's Late Exhibition Practice, 1974-1975, and her advisor was Robert Storr.

Biography

Chaffee was Assistant Curator at the Yale University Art Gallery from 2010 to 2013 in New Haven; and held curatorial positions at the Museum of Modern Art from 2007 to 2008 in New York City and the Cleveland Museum of Art from 2001 to 2004.
In 2023, Chaffee curated Marisol: A Retrospective, the largest posthumous survey of the artist's work. The exhibition was largely drawn from Marisol's bequest of more than 700 artworks, her papers, and her copyright to the Buffalo AKG in 2016. In Buffalo, Chaffee oversees the museum's stewardship of Marisol's estate. In this role, she completed the Aspen Institute's Seminar on Strategy for Artist-Endowed Foundation Leaders in 2025.
In 2024-25, Chaffee curated Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon, Whitney's first retrospective. This project was preceded by Stanley Whitney: the Italian Paintings, an installation of works made by Stanley Whitney in Italy since the 1990s and an official collateral event of the 59th Venice Biennale.
Other notable exhibitions include Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective, the first large-scale museum survey devoted to artworks Conrad presented in museum and gallery settings, and part of an ongoing reappraisal of his creative achievement; Joe Bradley ; Clyfford Still / Mark Bradford ; Erin Shirreff ; Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Ecologies of Drama ; Screen Play: Life in an Animated World ; Overtime: The Art of Work ; and Looking at Tomorrow: Light and Language from The Panza Collection, 1967–1990.
She was awarded a Curatorial Fellowship from the VIA Art Fund in 2018; and a Fulbright Fellowship in 2008 to Belgium. Chaffee is a 2026 Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership.

Publications

  • Chaffee, Cathleen; de Bellis, Vincenzo. . Buffalo, NY: Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
  • Chaffee, Cathleen, ed.. Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Ecologies of Drama: Essays, Interviews, and Scripts. Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Buffalo: Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
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