Maggie Leininger is currently a faculty member at the Art School at DePaul University in Chicago, IL, and the founding director of the Chicago Center for Craft. Formerly, Leininger served as the director and curator of galleries at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN, where she co-led 10 Fold Projects, a community-centered art space. Organizing exhibitions, hosting workshops, and artist residencies were the main accomplishments of 10 Fold Projects, which concluded programming in September of 2025. Previous experiences include serving as the director of the International Honor Quilt, a companion piece to The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, and as a visiting professor in fibers at the Herberger School of Art at Arizona State University.
Working across a variety of media, including performance, socially-engaged practices, painting, sculpture, and textiles, Leininger explores the concept of pattern, incorporating both the literal use of patterns derived from textiles and the sociological and economic patterns repeated throughout history, such as the extraction of resources, population shifts, and other impacts of post-industrialisation. Mass+Effort, exhibited at the Spartanburg Art Museum, demonstrates Maggie Leininger's interdisciplinary and community approach to creating art. The project relied upon communal weaving sessions using mill-end yarn from shuttered local textile mills to produce fabric that was combined with selvaged bricks of the shuttered mill. The project recognizes and acknowledges the labor of her neighbors who worked in the local mills of Leininger's childhood hometown.
Leininger received her Bachelor's of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute and her Master's of Fine Art from Arizona State University. Notable residencies and fellowships include support from Kala Institute in Berkeley, CA, The Present Group in San Francisco, CA, Scottsdale Public Art Commission, the Kentucky Historical Society, Mansfield Institute of Social Justice, Illinois Arts Council, and the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Leininger exhibits her work nationally at venues such as the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, NM, the South Bend Museum of Art, and the Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago, IL.