In 1981, The Stuart Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to funding experimental public sculpture, and the University of California, San Diego formed an extraordinary partnership to create a major public, site-specific sculpture collection with works throughout the campus. This collection has played an important role in the arena of public art. Instead of asking artists to create an object, without reference to the site, they ask that each artist explore the campus carefully, and create a site-specific piece that could be integrated into the beautifully landscaped, 1,200-acre UCSD campus in La Jolla. The collection now includes 20 works by some of the most important contemporary artists, including William Wegman, Bruce Nauman, Kiki Smith, Robert Irwin, Do Ho Suh and Mark Bradford, among others.
Landmarks is an updated edition of the only book focused on this premier collection of site specific public art. The catalogue features an essay from an interview with the collection’s founding director, Mary Beebe; an essay on the importance of the collection by Rob Storr; and in-depth interviews with the 20 artists featured in the collection and two artists whose work is underway.
Published in association with the Stuart Collection.
"This marvelously readable and prolifically illustrated publication is a first-hand explication of the world-renowned Stuart Collection by its founding Director, the venerable Mary Beebe. Beebe’s lively account of initiating and husbanding each site-specific piece into being is accompanied by revelatory interviews with the artists and the distinguished scholar Robert Storr’s fine introduction."—Hugh M. Davies, Director Emeritus, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
"The Stuart Collection is one of the wonders of the world. Mary Beebe and her team have created something truly unique and visionary, and this catalog will help it be endlessly celebrated and imitated. Kudos to UC San Diego for supporting this gift of magic and imagination from some of the greatest artists of our time."—Ann Philbin, Director, Hammer Museum UCLA
"The Stuart Collection is one of a kind. Major artists are commissioned for specific places, and again and again the result has been their best work. Landmarks is a vivid portrait of the collection and the lively story of how it came to be."—John Walsh, Director Emeritus, J. Paul Getty Museum
"The continuous miracle. . . . With its poetic and conceptual jewels, the San Diego campus makes it possible in this day and age to think and to dream. And that is the essential quality of the adventure undertaken in 1980 by James Stuart DeSilva."—Pierre Restany, critic and educator
"The Stuart Collection of environmental sculpture at the University of California, San Diego, is as impressive for what it avoids as for what it so imaginatively accomplishes."—David Joselit, Distinguished Professor of Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY
