Jim Coddington

Jim Coddington recently retired from the Museum of Modern Art where he was chief conservator from 1996 to 2016. Prior to his appointment to the Foundation’s Board, from 2019 to 2020, Coddington served as an advisor to the Foundation’s Legacy Committee, a group of board members who work closely with staff to support planning around the preservation, documentation, and research of the Foundation’s artwork and archival collections as well as other aspects of stewardship of artist Joan Mitchell’s legacy.

Jim Coddington first joined the conservation department at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1987 and most recently served as the Agnes Gund Chief Conservator. He also recently served as the Judith Praska Distinguished Visiting Professor of Conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU (2019) and as a visiting conservator at the Courtauld Institute (2010). He has published widely on a spectrum of subjects, from important technical topics such as structural restoration of paintings, development of color accurate documentation of art, and multi-spectral analysis of paintings, to more broad-based texts on the theory and practice of conservation and the common methodologies of art history and conservation. He has also published studies of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Joan Miro, among others. Coddington holds a degree in conservation from the University of Delaware and a bachelor’s degree from Reed College. He is a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation, a Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation, and an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Fine Arts.