Laura Phipps is the new director of the Gochman Family Collection, a New York-based private collection dedicated mostly, though not exclusively, to contemporary Indigenous art. She fills a role most recently held by Zach Feuer, who founded Forge Project with Becky Gochman in 2021, and currently serves as one of the collection’s five curatorial consultants.
Phipps joins the GFC after nearly two decades at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She started there as an intern in 2009, and by the time she left she was an associate curator, having organized shows like “Flatlands” in 2016, which featured work by five then up-and-coming painters, and, more recently, “Sixties Surreal” and “Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith: Memory Maps,” which included several loans from the Gochman collection.
“Laura understands that contemporary Native art is central to American art history,” said GFC creative director and curator Rachel Martin in a statement about Phipps’s appointment. “Her collaborative, artist-first practice reflects our belief that collections can function as living, responsive ecosystems.”
Her role with the GFC will involve much more than overseeing the 750-work—and constantly growing—collection. She will also shepherd the collection’s new 10,000-square-foot exhibition space in Katonah, New York, a Westchester town a short train ride from New York City. The space, set to be housed in two connected buildings off Main Street in downtown Katonah, is scheduled to open this fall.
While the Gochman Family Collection has been open to visitors for years, in residences both on the Upper East Side and in West Palm Beach, the Katonah space will be more of a public-facing art space.
“We’re essentially creating a blank space in Katonah, which will open up different curatorial opportunities in terms of how the collection is shown and positioned,” Phipps said in a phone conversation a few days after she started her new job.
Phipps also expressed excitement about the new ways the GFC would be able to support the artists it collects. The Katonah space will have room for readings and performances, as well as two apartments and studio space that could be available to artists on an as-needed basis. “It will be nice to be able to give artists a place to stay near the city, that will also have some separation from the city, if that’s what their practice needs at the time. How we use the space will evolve as we learn what artists need and want.”
Specific exhibition plans are still up in the air, but Phipps is looking forward to working with some of the lesser-known (to the general public, at least) contemporary artists in the collection. Among them are Ishi Glinsky, who “pushes boundaries around the ideas of customary Native materials in really funny, quirky ways,” Saif Azzuz, who “does incredible things across sculpture and painting” and will have a show at Storm King this summer, and blanket weavers like Lily Hope and her sister, Ursala Hudson, who are “pushing the narratives around weaving and storytelling.”
“At the Whitney,” Phipps observed, “I had all these incredibly brilliant colleagues to draw on, which is amazing, but it can also become a crutch to your own decision-making. I’m looking forward to pushing myself and the smaller team here, and learning to really trust my instincts.”
