In 1981, the Stuart Foundation, an organization dedicated to funding experimental and challenging public sculpture projects, and the University of California, San Diego formed an extraordinary partnership, one which, twenty years later, has yielded fifteen commissioned site-specific sculpture projects throughout the UCSD campus in La Jolla. The internationally recognized Stuart Collection includes work created by some of the most important contemporary artists such as: Jenny Holzer, Robert Irwin, Bruce Nauman, Niki de Saint Phalle, Kiki Smith, and William Wegman, among others. Landmarks: Sculpture Commissions for the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego is the first book on this exceptional collection.
Mary Livingstone Beebe has been the director of the Stuart Collection since it began in 1981. From 1972 until 1981, she was Director of the Portland Center for the Visual Arts (PCVA) in Portland, Oregon. Prior to that she worked at the Fogg Museum, Harvard University; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Museum of Art in Portland, Oregon. She lectures extensively throughout this country and in Europe, and serves as a spokesperson on panels, juries, and advisory committees.
Joan Simon is a writer, editor, curator, and arts administrator specializing in contemporary art, working independently for museums, foundations, and publishers in the United States and Europe. Her publications include books and catalogs devoted to artists such as Ann Hamilton, Susan Rothenberg, Joan Jonas, Jenny Holzer, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Bruce Nauman, including serving as General Editor of the Bruce Nauman catalogue raisonné. Since 1990, Simon has divided her time between Paris and New York.
Robert Storr is an artist and critic, and a senior curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. He most recently curated an exhibition of Gerhard Richter's October 18, 1977 paintings at The Modern, and authored a catalog in conjunction with the show (Gerhard Richter: October 18, 1977). Storr also co-organized Making Choices (1920-1960), the second cycle of MoMA 2000, for which his curatorial projects include The Dream of Utopia/Utopia of the Dream, How Simple Can You Get?, Modern Art despite Modernism, New York Salon, Paris Salon, The Raw and the Cooked, and War.