Pia Gottschaller is a technical art historian with a specialisation in Latin American, US-American and European postwar painting practice. She studied at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, The Courtauld and Technische Universität Munich, and she combines her art historical and materiality-based education in both research and teaching. Pia joined The Courtauld in 2017-18, where she teaches across art history, conservation and curatorial programmes. Her MA Special Option in the History of Art, “Painters at Work: Material Innovations of a Medium, 1945 to Now,” ran for the first time in 2022-23. She is on research leave in 2024-35 to finish a book on the use of unusual tools in global contemporary painting practice (under contract with Getty Publications).

Pia came to The Courtauld with twenty years of transdisciplinary work experience in museums and research institutions. Her first appointments were as paintings conservator at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (1997-98), the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2003-05) and Tate, London (2013-14). Pia carried out her most expansive conservation project, on the Rothko Chapel paintings, as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at The Menil Collection in Houston between 1998 and 2000.

Her focus then shifted to research and curating: In addition to positions as Assistant Fine Arts Director at the German Academy Villa Massimo, Rome (2009-10), and Associate Curator at Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2011-12), she was a Senior Research Specialist at The Getty (2015-17). In collaboration with colleagues at the Getty Research Institute, she led a multi-year, transnational technical study of Latin American Concrete and Neoconcrete art that also resulted in a co-curated exhibition at the Getty Center.

Pia’s research has been supported by a Getty Conservation Guest Scholarship (2021), a Caroline Villers Research Fellowship at The Courtauld (2012-13), and a Postdoc Research Fellowship at Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Rome (2005-7). Her publications often appear in more than one language and aim to promote a greater understanding of the complexity of artistic processes and material culture worldwide.

Pia is Editorial Board Member of Woman's Art Journal and belongs to The Courtauld's Centre for American Art, the Sculptural Processes Group, as well as the working group AG Materialität(en). With Professor Jo Applin she co-hosts the yearly Artist's Talk.