Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own

Sunday Showcase

Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own
Directed by Daniel Traub

Sunday, May 14, 1 pm

Free

With a post-screening tour of Rounding the Circle: The Mary and Al Shands Collection led by Speed Docent at 2:15 pm.  The tour is free for Speed members/$20 non-members.

“Eloquent; thoughtful and visually arresting”— The Washington Post

Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own is an artistic biography of one of the few women in the world working in monumental sculpture. Von Rydingsvard’s work has been featured in the Venice Biennale and is held in the collections of some of the world’s great museums, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and a new work just entered the collection of the Speed Art Museum and is on display in the Rounding the Circle: The Mary and Al Shands Collection exhibition. She may be best known for work in public spaces–imposing pieces painstakingly crafted (usually from cedar), with complex surfaces.

This documentary takes us behind the scenes with von Rydingsvard, as she and her collaborators–cutters, metalsmiths, and others–produce new work, including challenging commissions in copper and bronze. The film also delves into the artist’s personal life, and how it has shaped her work. Born in Poland during the Second World War, she was partly raised in a displaced persons camp and came to America as a refugee with her nine-person family. Brought up in a blue-collar environment, she became a teacher and then, as a single mother, moved to New York in the 1970s to take up her artistic practice full-time, while making ends meet by delivering meals. There was a flowering of high-profile female artists working in the city at the time – from Yoko Ono to Cindy Sherman – and von Rydingsvard finally felt at home.

In conversations with curators, patrons, family, and fellow artists, we come to know von Rydingsvard as a driven but compassionate sculptor with a deep commitment to her art and the world around her. Speaking with her husband, the late Nobel Prize-winning brain researcher Paul Greengard, von Rydingsvard talks about how both art and science pay homage to nature. 2019, U.S., DCP, 57 minutes. Recommended for 16+.

Screened in conjunction with the exhibition Rounding the Circle: The Mary and Al Shands Collection.