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 the fibers department at Arizona State University.
Working across a variety of media that include performance, socially-engaged practices, painting, sculpture, and textiles, Leininger explores the concept of interconnection through acts of making, highlighting repeat patterns both seen and performed, and our symbolic connection to materials. 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 yarn from mill-end yarn from shuttered local textile mills to produce fabric that was combined with selvaged bricks of the shuttered mill. The installation was created to recognize and acknowledge the labor of her neighbors who worked in the mills until they closed in the early 2000's.
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.