Pia Gottschaller is a technical art historian with a specialisation in Latin American, US-American and European postwar painting practice. She joined The Courtauld in 2017-18, where she teaches across art history, conservation and curatorial programmes. 

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 later at Tate, London (2013-14). She carried out her most extensive 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, Los Angeles (2015-17). In collaboration with the Getty Research Institute, she led a multi-year, transnational and interdisciplinary 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). 

She sits on the Editorial Board of Woman's Art Journal and Studies in Art & Materiality (Brill) and belongs to The Courtauld Centre for the Art of the Americas, the Sculptural Processes Group, as well as the Ulmer Verein's AG Materialität(en) and the working group Art | Material | Ecology.  With Professor Jo Applin she co-hosts the Artist's Talk.