Rita McBride: Artist Talk

SME 149, , UC San Diego

The series opens with Rita McBride, an internationally recognized artist whose work explores sculpture, architecture, and public space. McBride participated in INSITE’s Farsites exhibition (2005), curated by Adriano Pedrosa, and later presented Public Tilt (2014–2015) at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Based in Southern California between Los Angeles and Los Alamos, McBride has exhibited internationally and served as Director of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2013 to 2017.

Rita McBride is an artist living and working in Southern California. With a career that has spanned the world, her practice is rooted in avant-garde education and architectural public work. She received her BA from Bard College in 1982 and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1987. In 1989, McBride was awarded the coveted Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, after which she spent several years working and exhibiting across Italy, Germany, Portugal, and the Netherlands. In 2000, she settled in Berlin with a DAAD residency, during which she served as a Professor of Sculpture at the Kunstakademie Munich. In 2003, she became a professor in the Integration of Art and Architecture program at the historic Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where she went on to teach for two decades and served as the school’s Director from 2013 to 2017. McBride has realized ambitious, public installations, including Guide Rails (2017–2021), Brussels; Obelisk ofl Tutankhamen (2017), Cologne; Donkey’s Way (2016), Mönchengladbach; Artifacts (C.W.D.) (2015), New York; Bells and Whistles (2014), New York; and Mae West (2011)—a fifty-two-meter-high carbon fiber structure in the city center of Munich. She has staged solo presentations at institutions across Europe and the United States, most recently at the Bauhaus Museum, Dessau; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Dia Beacon, New York.

https://visarts.ucsd.edu/news-events/20261202_ritamcbride.html