Mario Codognato was since its foundation in 2005 the chief curator of MADRE, the new museum of contemporary art in Naples, where he has curated, among others, the retrospectives of the work of Jannis Kounellis (2006), Rachel Whiteread (2007), Thomas Struth (2008) and  Franz West (2010). He has previously worked at the contemporary art project at the Archeological Museum in Naples, where he has curated the exhibitions of Francesco Clemente (2002), Jeff Koons (2003), Anish Kapoor (2003), Richard Serra (2004), Anselm Kiefer (2004) and the first ever museum retrospective of Damien Hirst (2004). Since 1999 he has curated the site-specific public projects for Piazza Plebiscito including Robert Rauschenberg (1999), Joseph Kosuth (2001), Sol Lewitt (2005) Jenny Holzer (2006), Jan Fabre (2008) and Carsten Nicolai (2009). He has curated exhibition for other institutions and written their catalogue essays on the work of Alighiero Boetti (1992, 1999), Richard Long (1994 and 1997), Gilbert & George (1998), Jan Fabre (1999), Brice Marden (2001) and Wolfgang Laib (2005). He has curated several thematic exhibitions, including Barock at MADRE in 2009 and Fragile? at the Cini Foundation in Venice in 2013. Since 2014 he is the new chief curator at the 21er Haus in Vienna.