Coosje van Bruggen (b. June 6, 1942 Groningen, the Netherlands- d. January 10, 2009 Los Angeles, CA) was an artist, a writer, and an art historian. She lived and worked in New York City, Los Angeles, and Beaumont-sur-Dême in the Loire Valley, France.

After receiving a master’s degree in Art History from the Rijksuniversiteit of Groningen, the Netherlands, she served on the curatorial staff in the Painting and Sculpture Department at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from 1967 until 1971. For the next five years, she taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Enschede, the Netherlands. Ms. van Bruggen was co-editor of the catalogue for Sonsbeek 71, a multi-sited exhibition of contemporary sculpture installed throughout the Netherlands in 1971.

In 1976, Ms. van Bruggen worked with Claes Oldenburg for the first time on the reconstruction and relocation of the 41 foot tall Trowel I (1971-76)—originally shown at Sonsbeek 71—to the Kröller-Müller Museum grounds in Otterlo, the Netherlands. Oldenburg and van Bruggen married in 1977, and the following year, she moved to New York City to begin their collaboration on site-specific, urban works she named Large-Scale Projects. Flashlight, the first work of art the two formally co-signed, was installed in 1981 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Coosje van Bruggen also maintained her career as an international independent curator and critic. She served on the selection committee for Documenta, selecting artists for Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany 1982.  She contributed to Artforum magazine (1983-88) and she was the senior critic in the Department of Sculpture at Yale University School of Art in New Haven, CT (1996-97).

In 1993 Ms. van Bruggen became an American citizen.

In addition to her writings on Oldenburg's early work as well as their collaborative projects, she created the characters for Il Corso del Coltello (Venice, 1985), a performance by Oldenburg, van Bruggen, curator Germano Celant and the architect Frank O. Gehry, whom van Bruggen met when she nominated him for Documenta 7. Gehry became a close friend of the artists and the three collaborated on additional projects, including Toppling Ladder with Spilling Paint (1986), Loyola Law School, Los Angeles and Binoculars, Chiat/Day Building (1991), Venice, California. In 1997 van Bruggen authored Frank O. Gehry: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997).

Ms. van Bruggen wrote extensively on other artists including essays on Richard Artschwager and Gerhard Richter and definitive monographs on Bruce Nauman (Rizzoli, 1989), John Baldessari (Rizzoli, 1990), and Hanne Darboven (Rizzoli, 1991).

Since 1979 Ms. van Bruggen’s work with Claes Oldenburg was the subject of nearly 40 two-person exhibitions including major surveys at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1979), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1986, 1995); Serpentine Gallery, London (1988); Palais de la Beaux-Arts, Brussels (1988); IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia (1989); National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1995); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1995); and the Hayward Gallery, London (1996) among others.

Fifteen years after Il Corso del Coltello was performed at the Campo dell’Arsenale in Venice, the Museo Correr in Venice presented an extensive exhibition of Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s work that explored their creative working methods.  

During the summer of 2002, a group of the artists’ recent sculptures were exhibited on the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

In 2006, the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy organized and presented Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: Sculpture by the Way, a critically-acclaimed exhibition that examined the past twenty years of work beginning with Il Corso del Coltello. Sculpture by the Way traveled to the Fundaciò Joan Mirò, Barcelona, in 2007.

Drawings On Site, a survey exhibition devoted to Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s studies for Large-Scale Projects, is scheduled to open in spring 2009 at the Menil Collection.  Bernice Rose, Chief Curator at The Menil Drawings Institute and Study Center in Houston (and formerly of PaceWildenstein), worked closely with Ms. van Bruggen organizing the show.

Together the artists executed more than 40 large-scale projects throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, including Batcolumn (1977), Chicago; Spoonbridge and Cherry (1988), Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center; Bicyclette Ensevelie (Buried Bicycle) (1990), Parc de la Villette, Paris; Monument to the Last Horse (1991), The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas; Mistos (Match Cover) (1992), Barcelona; Shuttlecocks (1994), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Soft Shuttlecock (1995), Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Saw, Sawing (1996), Tokyo; Lion’s Tail (1999), Musei Civici Veneziani, Venice; Ago, Filo e Nodo (Needle, Thread and Knot) (2000), Milan; the 40-foot-high Dropped Cone (2001) atop the Neumarkt Galerie, Cologne, Germany; Cupid’s Span (2002), Rincon Park, San Francisco; The Big Sweep (2006), Denver Museum of Art; and most recently Spring (2006), the first work entirely designed by Ms. van Bruggen, in Seoul, South Korea.  Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s partnership also encompassed many smaller park and garden sculptures in addition to indoor installations.  Ms. van Bruggen’s final project with Mr. Oldenburg, Tumbling Tacks, a large-scale project for the Kistefos Sculpture Park in the countryside of Norway, north of Oslo, is scheduled to be installed in May 2009.

The state of California has the largest number of site-specific sculptures by the pair, with works in Los Angeles, Salinas, San Francisco, and Venice.

Oldenburg and van Bruggen's work can be found in numerous public collections including: The Art Institute of Chicago; Dallas Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; IVAM Centre Julio González, Valencia; Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Together, the artists received honorary degrees from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, (1996); University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, England (1999); Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (2005); and College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan (2005).

Oldenburg and van Bruggen were honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award, International Sculpture Center, Washington, D.C. (1994); Distinction in Sculpture, Sculpture Center, New York (1994); Nathaniel S. Saltonstall Award, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (1996); Partners in Education Award, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2002); and Medal Award, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2004).

The artists have been represented by PaceWildenstein since 1990.