Ingrid Sischy

Ingrid Barbara Sischy (March 2, 1952 – July 24, 2015) was a South African-born American writer and editor who specialized in covering art, photography, and fashion.

In 1961, when Sischy was nine years old, the Sischy family left apartheid-era South Africa after the Sharpeville massacre and moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where Dr. Sischy re-trained as a radiologist.

The family had had to leave South Africa because Sischy's mother was in danger of being arrested for her involvement in an activist group, the Black Sash, that non-violently protested apartheid.

In 1967, the family moved to Rochester, New York, where Sischy's father became the head of radiation oncology at Highland Hospital.

While in Scotland, Sischy attended George Watson's Ladies College.

In Rochester, she graduated from Brighton High School.

Sischy started college at Sarah Lawrence College.

She also took writing classes with Grace Paley.

Sischy graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 1973.

In 1978, Sischy interned at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) under a National Endowment for the Arts curation grant focusing on photography exhibits, one called "In the Twenties: Portraits From the Photography Department", and another on photographer Ansel Adams.

During this time, she was mentored by John Szarkowski, the Director of the Department of Photography at MoMA.

Sischy was a member of an all-female art band called Disband, founded in 1978 by artists and writers.

She rose to prominence as the editor of Artforum from 1979 to 1988, and was editor-in-chief of Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine from 1989 to 2008.

In 1979, at the age of 27, Sischy was appointed editor-in-chief of Artforum magazine by businessman and publisher Anthony Korner and Amy Baker Sandback.

Sischy tapped into the downtown art scene and advised on covers and content, often written by artists.

Sischy edited Artforum for eight years.

Sischy was profiled at length by the critic and journalist Janet Malcolm in The New Yorker.

She received an honorary PhD in the humanities from the Moore College of Art in 1987.

After graduating from college, Sischy took a series of odd jobs and entry-level positions in the art world, including at galleries.

She became the circulation coordinator at Print Collector's Newsletter, an art world industry resource, and was promoted to the role of editor, contributing reviews of art shows New York City.

She was hired, and almost immediately fired, by the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where the dress code and atmosphere made her feel untrue to herself.

She then worked at Printed Matter, Inc, a nonprofit book publisher that introduced her to artists like Sol LeWitt, Jenny Holzer, and many emerging artists.

She left Artforum in 1988, to become a consulting editor at The New Yorker and work on the AIDS virus, which had begun to decimate the downtown artist community.

From 1988–1996, she worked at The New Yorker, reporting on fashion and art.

In 1989, Sischy became the editor of Interview, a downtown magazine founded by Andy Warhol in 1969.

During her tenure at Interview, covers of the magazine became noted by the press.

In 1996, she was named Artistic Director of the inaugural Florence Fashion Biennale, where she organized an exhibition that showed work in 20+ museums in the Florence, Italy area.

Part of this exhibition was later presented at the Guggenheim Museum Soho.

Sischy was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair from 1997 until her death in 2015.

She was the international editor of Condé Nast, writing for the Spanish, French, and Italian versions of Vanity Fair, and the German and Russian versions of Vogue. She shared this position with her long-time partner and later wife, Sandra Brant.

In 2008, Sischy resigned from Interview magazine amidst much press and speculation.

She was featured in the 2011 documentary film !Women Art Revolution, where she discussed her contributions to the feminist movement of female artists in the 1970s.

She was a widely published author on a range of cultural subjects and contributed to several periodicals, including The New York Times and Vanity Fair and was at one time the fashion and photography critic for The New Yorker.

In 2013, Sischy was given the "Fashion Scoop of the Year" Award (for her Vanity Fair piece on John Galliano) at the Fashion Media Awards by the photographer Bruce Weber.

Although she was in at least one long-term relationship with a woman from the time she was in college, it was a New Yorker review of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe photography show, "The Perfect Moment," where Sischy came out publicly as a lesbian.

Sischy described the chronic battles of her brother, Mark Sischy, with alcoholism in her interview with designer John Galliano, who was newly sober.

Until her death in 2015, she and her partner Sandra Brant edited the Italian, Spanish and German editions of Vanity Fair.

Sischy was born in Johannesburg to Ben Sischy, a family doctor who became an expert in radiation oncology, and Claire Sischy, a speech therapist.

She had two older brothers, Mark Sischy, a lawyer who lived in Scotland, and David Sischy, a doctor.

Her family was Jewish; they had Lithuanian ancestry.