Kenny Schachter (American, b. 1961) is a New York-based artist, curator and writer whose work engages the systems and technologies that shape the art world.Schachter has curated contemporary art for more than thirty years, and turned to NFTs after discovering them in September 2020, working since then as an artist, writer, collector and curator in the space.
Schachter grew up on Long Island and began curating itinerant group shows in New York in 1991, also producing personal artwork over the following decade.Schachter's I am not a role model, a limited-edition vintage poster made in the mid-1990s, replaced text on a 1959 photograph of Marcel Duchamp with that phrase.Schachter relocated from New York to London in 2004 and returned to New York in 2019, the same year as a one-person show at Kantor Gallery in Los Angeles that followed a 2018 retrospective at Rental Gallery in New York and a curated exhibition at Simon Lee Gallery in London.,
Schachter discovered NFTs in September 2020 after curating contemporary art for more than thirty years, and coined the term “NFTism”, later tattooed on the bicep.,In 2021 Schachter curated “Breadcrumbs: Art in the Age of NFTism” at Galerie Nagel Draxler in Cologne, featuring NFT artists including Osinachi, Kevin Abosch, Anna Ridler and Rhea Myers alongside established artists Darren Bader and Eva Beresin.,That year Schachter also curated “NFTism: No Fear in Trying”, a nearly 100-artist exhibition in London's Covent Garden that launched the Ethereum-based platform Institut across a physical gallery and a virtual Metaverse space.In 2022 Schachter curated “METADADA” at Nagel Draxler's Crypto Kiosk in Berlin, and by then had revised the NFTism tattoo to read “Post NFTism”, reflecting a shift in the crypto art scene toward speculation and scams.,
By 2020 Schachter had spent nearly thirty years attending and covering art fairs and auctions as an Artnet journalist.Schachter released the Super Freak series through Kate Vass Galerie in 2023, open-edition NFTs paired with personal essays on eccentricity and the art world's early resistance to crypto art.,,In 2024 Schachter joined the curatorial board of the NFT platform Verse, alongside Whitechapel curator Katrina Schwarz, helping select which galleries feature on the platform.In 2026 Schachter's Artnet reporting on the New York gallery The Hole's unpaid rent and nonpayment disputes with artists was cited by other publications covering the gallery's closure.,
