Ursula von Rydingsvard (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

Karoliszyn; born 1942) is a sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for creating large-scale works influenced by nature, primarily using cedar and other forms of timber.

Early life and education

Von Rydingsvard was born in Deensen, Germany in 1942 to a Polish mother and

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

father. As a young child, the artist and her six siblings experienced the German occupation of Poland and the trauma of World War II, followed by five years in eight different German refugee camps for displaced Poles. In 1959, through the U.S. Marshall Plan and with the assistance of Catholic agencies, her family of peasant farmers boarded a ship to the United States where they eventually settled in Plainville, Connecticut. She received a BA and MA from

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...

in Coral Gables, Florida in 1965 and an MFA from Columbia University in New York City in 1975. In the late 1970s, she was part of NYC's Cultural Council Foundation Artists' Project, which was funded under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA).

Achievements

Ursula von Rydingsvard at the National Museum of Women in the Arts - 2

Major permanent commissions of her work are on view at the Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA;

Storm King Art Center Storm King Art Center, commonly referred to as Storm King and named after its proximity to Storm King Mountain, is an open-air museum located in New Windsor, New York. It contains what is perhaps the largest collection of contemporary outdo ...

, New York; the Bloomberg Building, New York; the Queens Family Courthouse, New York; the Nelson-Atkins, Kansas City, and the Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York. ''Mad. Sq. Art: Ursula von Rydingsvard'' was the outdoor solo exhibition presented at Madison Square Park in 2006. In 2008, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters along with being featured in ''Art:21 Art in the Twenty-First Century'' on PBS. A monograph on her work titled ''The Sculpture of Ursula von Rydingsvard'' was published by Hudson Hills Press in 1996 and in 2011 Prestel published ''Ursula von Rydingsvard: Working''. In 2014-2015 Ursula von Rydingsvard had her first British show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (West Yorkshire, UK), her most extensive exhibition to date. The exhibition was accompanied by the Ursula von Rydingsvard 2014 Catalogue, a major publication featuring text by Molly Donovan, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Museum collections

*Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York *Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT *

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown ...

, Brooklyn, NY *Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland *

Cincinnati Art Museum The Cincinnati Art Museum is an art museum in the Eden Park neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1881, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of the Alleghenies, and is one of the oldest in the United States. Its collection of ov ...

, Cincinnati, OH *The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX * Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR *De Cordova Sculpture Park + Museum, Lincoln, MA * Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI * High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA *

Hood Museum of Art The Hood Museum of Art is owned and operated by Dartmouth College, located in Hanover, New Hampshire, in the United States. The first reference to the development of an art collection at Dartmouth dates to 1772, making the collection among the ...

, Dartmouth, NH * Madison Art Center, Madison, WI *

Madison Museum of Contemporary Art The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA), formerly known as the Madison Art Center, is an independent, non-profit art museum located in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. MMoCA is dedicated to exhibiting, collecting, and preserving modern and co ...

, Madison, WI * Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY *Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL *

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, Massachusetts *

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of th ...

New York, NY * National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. * Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO *North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC *Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL * San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA *Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky *

, Mountainville, NY * Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA * University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI * University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX * Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN *

Weatherspoon Art Museum The Weatherspoon Art Museum is located at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in the southeast with a focus on American art. Its programming includes fifteen or more e ...

, Greensboro, North Carolina * Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY *Williams College, Williamstown, MA *

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

, New Haven, CT

Notable exhibitions

*2021 ''Ursula von Rydingsvard: Nothing But Art'',

National Museum, Kraków The National Museum in Kraków ( pl, Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie), popularly abbreviated as MNK, is the largest museum in Poland, and the main branch of Poland's National Museum, which has several independent branches with permanent collections arou ...

and simultaneously at the Center of Polish Sculpture, Orońsko and Łazienki Park, Warsaw, Poland *2018 ''Now, She'', Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania *2018 ''The Contour of Feeling'', The Fabric Workshop & Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania *2015 ''Ursula von Rydingsvard'', la Biennale di Venezia, Giardino della Marinaressa, Venice, Italy *2014 ''Ursula von Rydingsvard'', Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, England *2011-12 ''Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculpture 1991-2009'', SculptureCenter, Queens, New York; traveled to deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio; and to Frost Art Museum, Miami, Florida *2006 ''Mad. Sq. Art: Ursula von Rydingsvard'', Mad Sq Art at Madison Square Park, New York, NY *1992-4 Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY (Ten-year retrospective)

Awards and grants

*Gold

Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis A medal or medallion is a small portable artistic object, a thin disc, normally of metal, carrying a design, usually on both sides. They typically have a commemorative purpose of some kind, and many are presented as awards. They may be int ...

, Poland, 2021 *Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work, CAA New York City, NY, 2019 *Visionary Woman Honors Award, Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, PA, 2017 *Lifetime Achievement Award, International Sculpture Center, Hamilton, NJ, 2014 *Honoree, Storm King Art Center Annual Gala, New York, NY, 2012 *Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, 2011 *Best Show in a Non-Profit Gallery or Space, American Section of the International Association of Art Critics, 2011 *Rappaport Prize, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA, 2008 *Order of the Cross, Polish Consulate, New York, 2008 *Mary Miss Resident in Visual Arts, American Academy in Rome, Italy, 2007 *2nd prize, Best Show in a Commercial Gallery, American Section of the International Association of Art Critics, 2000 *Academy Award in Art, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY, 1994 *Best Small Museum Exhibition, American Section of the International Association of Art Critics, 1992 *Honorary Doctorate, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, 1991 *Individual Artists Grant,

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

, Washington, D.C., 1986 *Athena Foundation Grant, Long Island City, NY, 1983 *Guggenheim Fellowship,

John Simon Guggenheim Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

, New York, NY, 1983 *Individual Artists Grant,

, Washington, D.C., 1979 *Individual Artists Grant,

, Washington, D.C., 1978 *Fulbright-Hayes Travel Grant, Washington, D.C., 1975

Cultural references

* Daniel Traub feature-length documentary of the artist ''Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own,'' 2019

References

External links

Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips
from

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educati ...

series '' Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century'' - Season 4 (2007).
Ursula von Rydingsvard at Madison Square Park, New YorkUrsula von Rydingsvard in Sculpture Magazine: A Conversation with Steven OliverUrsula von Rydingsvard in Works & Conversations
* ttps://frieze.com/article/ursula-von-rydingsvard-height-her-powers Ursula von Rydingsvard in Frieze Magazine: At The Height of Her Careerbr>Ursula von Rydingsvard in The Philadelphia Inquirer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rydingsvard, Ursula Von 1942 births People from Holzminden (district) Polish refugees Refugees in the United States Polish emigrants to the United States American women sculptors Postmodern artists Living people 20th-century American sculptors 21st-century American sculptors 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women artists Columbia University alumni Recipients of the Gold Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters