Mechtild Widrich received her MagPhil from the University of Vienna and her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Architecture Department. She has been a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2015 and has taught at the University of Vienna, and, in was Guest Professor at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, in spring 2022.
Her areas of expertise are art in public space and participatory practices in architecture, and she has written extensively on the Viennese Actionists and VALIE EXPORT. She is the author of the books “Performative Monuments” (2014) and “Monumental Cares” (2-23) and translator (with Andrei Pop) of Karl Rosenkranz's “Ästhetik des Häßlichen / Aesthetics of Ugliness” (1853/2015).
