Mary Beebe (UC San Diego)

The Stuart Collection: Stories and Histories

The Stuart Collection is a collection of public art on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. Founded in 1981, the Stuart Collection’s goal is to spread commissioned sculpture throughout the campus, including both traditional sculptures and integration with features of the campus such as landscaping and buildings. It is supported by the UCSD Department of Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and many other organizations and individuals. Mary Beebe has been the director of the UCSD Stuart Collection since it started. During her tenure, she has had some amazing experiences. In this talk, Mary will discuss some of the set backs and triumphs as well as future plans for this vibrant and important collection.

About the Speaker

Since its inception in 1981, Mary Beebe has been the Director of the Stuart Collection which is an on-going program commissioning outdoor sculpture for the 1200-acre campus at the University of California, San Diego.  Prior to moving to San Diego Beebe was Director for nine years of the Portland Center for the Visual Arts in Portland, Oregon where she oversaw an important program of exhibitions, installations, performance art, music, dance and other major or minor forms of artistic expressions in the seventies. Beebe serves on numerous boards and committees including the Board of Directors of Art Matters, Inc., New York, the Art Advisory Board for the University of California, San Francisco’s new Mission Bay campus and the Public Art Committee for the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. She has been a member of the Art Steering Committees for the Greater Toronto Airport (Ontario) and the Denver International Airport, the Art Advisory Committees for the University of Washington, Seattle and Harvard and Radcliffe, Cambridge. She has lectured widely and served on many panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and as juror or advisor for public art projects across the country and in Europe Beebe graduated from Bryn Mawr College and attended the Sorbonne University in Paris. In the sixties she worked at the Portland (Oregon) Art Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. She is married to Charles J. Reilly, Brown University, ’65.