Barbara Luderowski (January 26, 1930 – May 30, 2018) was an American artist and museum administrator, who founded the

Mattress Factory The Mattress Factory is a contemporary art museum located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a pioneer of site-specific installation art and features permanent installations by artists Yayoi Kusama, James Turrell, and Greer Lankton. The museu ...

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

and served as the museum's president and co-director. With her ten-year-old daughter, Luderowski moved to Pittsburgh from

Birmingham, Michigan Birmingham is a city in Oakland County, Michigan, Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is a northern suburb of Detroit located along the Woodward Corridor (M-1 (Michigan highway), M-1). As of the 2010 United States Census, 2010 censu ...

around 1972, and decided to buy a condemned home after taking a tour of the city's North Side. In 1975 she purchased an empty six-story factory in the Central Northside, where mattresses had been manufactured at the turn of the 20th century. She immediately moved in, and from the beginning envisioned the building as a place where she could work on her own sculpture while sharing studio space and conversation with other artists. Luderowski founded the namesake Mattress Factory museum in 1977, dedicating it to site-specific

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific art, site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior intervent ...

, much of it by artists in residence. Although Mattress Factory installations change regularly, with some 650 different artists showing installation and performance pieces over its nearly 40-year history,Mattress Factory History
Mattress.org
accessed March 6, 2016. permanent exhibits include important works by

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and Installation art, installation, and she is also active in painting, performance art, performance, video art, Fashion design, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her wo ...

and Greer Lankton, as well as three installations by

James Turrell James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist known for his work within the Light and Space movement. He is considered the "master of light" often creating art installations that mix natural light with artificial color through openings ...

.''Mattress Factory: Installation and Performance 1982-1989''. Mattress Factory, 500 Sampsonia Way, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1991. p. 13. Luderowski owned several properties around the Mattress Factory, which she donated to both local and internationally-known artists and curators for projects. She lived (with museum co-director Michael Olijnyk, also an artist) in a two-story loft-like apartment at the top of the original Mattress Factory building.

References

External links

The Mattress Factory official websiteObituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Luderowski, Barbara American artists