Christy Rupp


Christy Rupp is an American artist and activist.

Early career

Rupp attended Colgate University, Rhode Island School of Design - RISD, and the Maryland Institute College of Art, Rinehart School of Sculpture. As a resident of lower Manhattan in the late 1970s, Rupp exhibited in early artist-run spaces including Exit Art, 3 Mercer Street Store, P.A.D.D., Artmakers, Ventana. Her work appeared in early publications of The Soho News, East Village Eye, Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, World War 3 Illustrated
The first publicly visible work was "The Rat Patrol," which was an outdoor poster project of a life-size rat pasted where garbage accumulated, pointing out the fact the city is a living ecosystem with a delicate balance. Art critic Douglas Crimp reflected on this work by writing, "Surely a photograph of a rat borrowed from Health Department files and mechanically reproduced is not a creation of artistic imagination; it has no claim to universality; it would be unthinkable to see the picture on exhibition in a museum."

Mid-career and recent work

In the mid-1980s, Rupp turned her attention to global ecological struggles, such as agribusiness and water contamination. One example being the Watershed Glassware, a set of glasses for drinking tap water, featuring printed images of "perfectly harmless" organisms like Giardia, Cryptosporidium, and Fluoride. She began to make public art works including Social Progress, a commission for the Public Art Fund. Recent works include sculptures of fake ivory and its association with commercial arms trade and oil extraction. In a statement, the artist explains that her work is less about animals than it is concerned with our attitudes towards habitat. Other recent works include the series "Extinct Birds Previously Consumed by Humans," that was shown at the Museum of Art and Design's exhibition, Dead or Alive.

Catalogue and book citations

  • "," Pub Exit Art, NYC, 1982
  • "," Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 1984
  • " Artists Space publisher, 1984
  • "Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change," Lucy Lippard, E.P. Dutton, 1984. Publisher: E. P. Dutton, 1984
  • "ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery," Alan Moore and Marc Miller, ABC No Rio with Collaborative Projects, 1985
  • "Committed to print: social and political themes in recent American printed art," Deborah Wye, The Museum of Modern Art, 1988
  • "," Dia Art Foundation: Discussions in Contemporary Art Number 5, Bay Press/Dia Art Foundation, 1990.“Artworks: Christy Rupp,” Williams College Museum of Art, 1991
  • "The Artist Project Portraits of the Real Art World C: New York Artists 1981-1990," Peter Bellamy, IN Publishing, 1991
  • “Natural Selection- The work of Christy Rupp,” Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY, essay Lucy Lippard, 1992
  • "Signs Of Life: Kiki Smith, Rebecca Howland, Cara Perlman & Christy Rupp," University Galleries of Illinois State University, March 2, 1993
  • The New Press, 1995
  • “Christy Rupp, The Landscape Within," Castellani Art Museum, Niagara University, Niagara Falls, NY, 1999
  • "Urban Mythologies: The Bronx Represented Since 1960's," Lydia Yee, The Bronx Museum, August 1999
  • “Christy Rupp: Swimming in the Gene Pool,” MASS MoCA Kidspace, North Adams, MA, 2000
  • "Welded Sculpture of the Twentieth Century," Judy Collischan, Hudson Hills; 1st edition, May 2, 2000
  • "Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution," Marvin Heiferman and Carole Kismaric, Tang, 2001
  • "Alternative Art, New York, 1965-1985: A Cultural Politics Book for the Social Text Collective," Julie Aul, University of Minnesota Press, 2002
  • “Nature In Pieces: The Environmental Sculpture of Christy Rupp,” Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, 2002
  • "," Suzanne Anker & Dorothy Nelkin, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2003
  • "City Art: New York's Percent For Art Program," Eleanor Heartney, Merrell, 2005
  • "The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984," Marvin J. Taylor, Fales Library, Austin Museum of Art, Princeton University Press, 2006
  • "," A & C Black, London, 2006
  • "," Tate Publishing, 2006
  • "Espèces d’espace: The Eighties First Part,"Yves Aupetitallot, Le Magasin; CNAC, 2008
  • "," Anna Kress and Suellyn Winkle, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008
  • "The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States," National Endowment for the Arts, 2008
  • "Punk. No One Is Innocent," John Savage, Verlag fur moderne Kunst, 2008
  • "," Michele Cohen, The Monacelli Press, 2009
  • "," David McFadden & Lowery Stokes Sims, pub Museum of Arts and Design, 2010
  • "Mixed Use Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the Present," edited by Lynne Cooke and Douglas Crimp for the Reina Sofia in Madrid. Co-published by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and MIT Press, 2010
  • "Trespass: A History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art," Carlo McCormick, Taschen, 2010
  • "This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s," Helen Molesworth, Published by MCA Chicago in association with Yale University Press, 2012
  • "American Dreamers: Reality and Imagination in Contemporary American Art," Bartholmew Bland, Franziska Nori, The Center for Contemporary Strozzina, Florence, 2012
  • "," by Douglas Crimp, V-A-C Foundation, Moscow, Russia, figure 55, p. 242, 2014
  • "Talk About Street Art," Jerome Catz, Flammarion, 2014
  • "Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West," Lucy Lippard, The New Press, 2014
  • “Carbon Mostly,” Christy Rupp, 2015
  • "", Lutz Haber author, 2015
  • "A Book About Colab" Edited by Max Schumann, Printed Matter, 2016
  • "Exit Art: Unfinished Memories: 30 Years of Exit Art," Susan Harris, Mary Staniszewski, Papo Colo, Holland Cotter, Steidl, 2016
  • "," Sabra Moore, Village Press, 2016
  • "," Intellectual Property Quarterly, Issue 2, 2017, Enrico Bonadio. City University London - The City Law School, Lecturer in Law, 2017
  • "," From Here to Fame Books, 2017
  • "," Fairfield University Art Museum, 2021
  • "" Object A- Creative Studio, 2021
  • "" by  Ellen K. Levy , Charissa N. Terranova, Meredith Tromble , 2021
  • ," by Christy Rupp, Simon & Schuster, Mandala Publishing, 2021
  • "," Issue 21, Spring 2022
  • Scott Volz, "," PhD Dissertation, 2022
  • "," UCCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Beijing, Catalog, 2023