> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Remembering Ursula von Rydingsvard - URL: https://hyperallergic.com/remembering-ursula-von-rydingsvard/ - Published: 2026-10-28T10:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-28T10:00:02.000Z - Description: The monumental sculptor dies at 84; plus, how an artist snuck his own work into The Met, and a dispute over watercolors of Roma victims of the Holocaust. - Author: Hyperallergic - Tags: Daily Newsletter, Newsletter Tonight’s the night! If you haven’t gotten your tickets to *Hyperallergic’s* Halloween Party, you still have a few hours to [RSVP](https://hyperallergic.com/hyperallergic-halloween-october-2026/) (and cobble an art costume together — or maybe just tape a banana to your shirt?) Today, we remember the tremendous legacy of Ursula von Rydingsvard, whose monumental, organic sculptures bear the heavy trace of loss and the ever-present possibility of life. Born in Germany to Polish and Ukrainian parents, the artist and her family moved among displacement camps for Polish refugees before immigrating to the United States in 1950\. Working across mediums — most spectacularly cedar beams — she lived a life of art in deep harmony with the natural world. The thread of memory also runs through Roma scholar Cristiana Grigore's must-read essay on the battle over watercolors by the late Holocaust survivor Dina Gottliebova Babbitt. As the artist’s family fights to recover Babbitt’s haunting paintings of Roma prisoners of Auschwitz, currently housed in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Grigore asks: “What would justice look like for them?” — *Valentina Di Liscia, senior editor* --- [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/2026/10/031148868399-1-1-1.jpg)](https://hyperallergic.com/in-battle-over-auschwitz-watercolors-roma-victims-are-getting-left-behind/) [ In Battle Over Auschwitz Watercolors, Roma Victims Are Getting Left Behind ](https://hyperallergic.com/in-battle-over-auschwitz-watercolors-roma-victims-are-getting-left-behind/) The decades-long ownership dispute between the family of late Holocaust survivor Dina Gottliebova Babbitt and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum over seven watercolors depicting Roma prisoners is back in the news. That’s because the dispute culminated in a California lawsuit initiated by her daughters 17 years after their mother’s death. Nicknamed the “Angel of Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele ordered Babbitt to portray the traits of Roma prisoners as part of his pseudo-scientific experiments to prove what he perceived as their racial inferiority. Under these extreme life-and-death circumstances, Babbitt created the watercolors to save her life as well as her mother’s. All the Roma people forced to pose for these portraits were later executed. The news coverage and conversations around the ownership dispute have long missed an essential frame through which to view this tragedy: the rights and dignity of the Roma people who were depicted, killed, and forgotten. What decision would best honor them? How do we stop the harmful experiment’s long-term impact from further stigmatizing Roma identity? | Cristiana Grigore [Read More ](https://hyperallergic.com/in-battle-over-auschwitz-watercolors-roma-victims-are-getting-left-behind/) --- SPONSORED [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/2026/10/SIA_Image3_2400x1350-1.png)](https://hyperallergic.com/studying-contemporary-art-at-sothebys-institute/) ****Studying Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute** Where critical thinking meets contemporary practice across key art world capitals. [Learn more ](https://hyperallergic.com/studying-contemporary-art-at-sothebys-institute/) --- ## News [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/2026/10/image-2-1-1.jpg)](https://hyperallergic.com/artist-sneaks-his-work-into-the-met-museum/) - Amid the spate of publicized museum heists sweeping the globe, one Los Angeles artist flips the script and [adds his own artwork to the walls of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://hyperallergic.com/artist-sneaks-his-work-into-the-met-museum/). - The Crucible, the 27-year-old industrial arts organization and school in West Oakland, has [shuttered](https://www.kqed.org/arts/13995089/the-crucible-closed-oakland-shut-down?ref=hyperallergic.com) its doors suddenly, citing “serious financial circumstances.” \[*KQED*\] - Over 100 DePaul Art Museum supporters [rallied peacefully](https://depauliaonline.com/86170/news/over-100-depaul-art-museum-supporters-participate-in-waiting-protest/?ref=hyperallergic.com) outside the institution on October 8 to protest the museum’s closure last spring. \[*The DePaulia*\] --- ## Art Review [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/2026/10/Copy-of-gm_35391501-2-1-1.jpg)](https://hyperallergic.com/how-mexican-photographers-made-a-nation/) [ How Mexican Photographers Made a Nation ](https://hyperallergic.com/how-mexican-photographers-made-a-nation/) A show at the Getty demonstrates the way modernist approaches to photography shifted the visual culture of Mexico in the 20th century. | Armando Pulido [Read More ](https://hyperallergic.com/how-mexican-photographers-made-a-nation/) --- [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/2026/10/Event-Graphic-Updated-2--1-.jpg)](https://hyperallergic.com/hyperallergic-halloween-october-2026/) ****A Hyperallergic Halloween Party!** ​Join us on October 28 in Brooklyn, NY for an evening of spooky cocktails, devilish delights, an art-themed costume contest, and more. [RSVP today ](https://hyperallergic.com/hyperallergic-halloween-october-2026/) --- ## Obituary [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/2026/10/GettyImages-472222496-1-1.jpg)](https://hyperallergic.com/ursula-von-rydingsvard-who-sculpted-monuments-of-cedar-dies-at-84/) [ Ursula von Rydingsvard, Who Sculpted Monuments of Cedar, Dies at 84 ](https://hyperallergic.com/ursula-von-rydingsvard-who-sculpted-monuments-of-cedar-dies-at-84/) Ursula von Rydingsvard, a sculptor whose monumental objects were partly inspired by her childhood in post-World War II refugee camps, died in her Manhattan home October 27, at 84\. During her over five-decade career, Von Rydingsvard chipped away at enormous cedar beams to create a menagerie of massive sculptures, from an assembly of cones to a 17-foot-tall tornado-shaped behemoth made from 15,000 pounds of wood. The abstract sculptor worked with an array of other materials, including bronze, textiles, and animal intestines. | Anna Lee [Read More ](https://hyperallergic.com/ursula-von-rydingsvard-who-sculpted-monuments-of-cedar-dies-at-84/) --- ## Interview [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/2026/10/Long-Soldier--Layli--Ben-Calabaza--COLOR-1-1.jpg)](https://hyperallergic.com/layli-long-soldiers-poetic-lifeblood/) [ Layli Long Soldier’s Poetic Lifeblood ](https://hyperallergic.com/layli-long-soldiers-poetic-lifeblood/) I spoke to the poet, who is my longtime friend and colleague, about her new book, the threads connecting poetry and visual art, and how Lakota philosophy suffuses her work. | Dyani White Hawk [Read More ](https://hyperallergic.com/layli-long-soldiers-poetic-lifeblood/) --- ## Guide [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/2026/10/Bey_1185_TheSecretsWeKeep_hires-1.jpg)](https://hyperallergic.com/10-art-shows-to-see-in-los-angeles-this-november/) [ 10 Art Shows to See in Los Angeles This November ](https://hyperallergic.com/10-art-shows-to-see-in-los-angeles-this-november/) The art community in Los Angeles is digging deep into history this November, excavating and reframing it through novel juxtapositions and archival findings. Isabelle Frances McGuire tackles the Salem Witch Trials with a video game that bears uneasy relevance to our current age of creeping authoritarianism (just in time for next week’s midterms). Milano Chow draws on the archives of the LA Public Library to create ghostly architectural facades that seem at once familiar and foreign. At LACMA, an exhibition gives proper due to the city’s pioneering Brockman Gallery of 1967–90, which gave early support to scores of Black artists. And at the Brick, a retrospective brings together the two sides of Todd Gray’s long career: his commercial photos of musical acts and his post-modern tableaux, which themselves pull from archival images to construct new narratives. | Matt Stromberg [Read More ](https://hyperallergic.com/10-art-shows-to-see-in-los-angeles-this-november/) --- ## Hyper links - Just when I thought I was losing faith in humanity, this [video](https://www.instagram.com/reel/De-epy1DbD3/?vrfl=NzV2aGhpZGlycWJp&ref=hyperallergic.com) of Mayor Mamdani getting a kiss from Pickles the Seal at the New York Aquarium renewed my hope. \[Instagram\] - … never mind. A US startup’s plan to launch 50,000 satellites that would light up Earth from space would “[end the night sky as we know it](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/26/california-sunlight-space-mirrors-satellites?ref=hyperallergic.com),” environmental advocates warn. \[*Guardian*\] - Delight in one-liners like “Peter Thiel would describe art as a perfect competition market” in [comedian Brian Park](https://www.instagram.com/reel/De-I6Sqstt6?ref=hyperallergic.com)’s spot-on impersonation of a Yale MFA grad on a date with their future first husband. \[Instagram\] - “They are treated as some sort of mysterious, violent group who steal and smash things”: Author and Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux speaks out on police violence against French student protesters in a new [interview](https://www.vulture.com/article/annie-ernaux-interview-french-protests-nobel-prize.html?ref=hyperallergic.com). \[*Vulture*\] --- ## From the Archive [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/2026/10/DWH-206-1.jpg)](https://hyperallergic.com/for-dyani-white-hawk-love-is-an-act-of-resistance/) [ For Dyani White Hawk, Love Is an Act of Resistance ](https://hyperallergic.com/for-dyani-white-hawk-love-is-an-act-of-resistance/)Her exhibition “Love Language” invites viewers into the vibrant cultural legacies of Native art, and connections to land, lineage, and community. | Sheila Dickinson [Read More ](https://hyperallergic.com/for-dyani-white-hawk-love-is-an-act-of-resistance/)