KRUGER, BARBARA

born Jan. 26, 1945, Newark, N.J., U.S. American artist who manipulated images in her photographic compositions to evoke surprise and challenge cultural assumptions. Kruger attended Syracuse (New York) University and continued her training in 1966 at New York City's Parsons School of Design. During her career she moved from a concentration on soft sculpture to painting to photography. Her large-scale photographic works appropriate anonymous cultural images and text and juxtapose them in unexpected ways; the resultant pieces have the effect of questioning accepted beliefs. In her 1989 work Untitled (Your Body Is a Battleground), for example, Kruger employed an oversized image of a model's face and divided it into a number of sections. Placed across the image is the phrase your body is a battleground, by which Kruger calls into question the objectification of women and also brings to mind the ongoing struggle for women's reproductive rights. Kruger's work appears in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York City.