Mary Anne Friel works in sculpture, drawing and print. She received a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Before joining the RISD faculty in 2011 she worked for over two decades as Project Coordinator and Master Printer at The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) developing new works of contemporary art and related exhibitions in an experimental context with artists from across disciplines including Doug Aitken, Chris Burden, Ed Ruscha, Carrie Mae Weems, and Rachel Whiteread. She expanded FWM's interdisciplinary studio practice by engaging architects, composers, engineers, videographers, industrial fabricators and scientists to collaborate on artist projects.

Friel worked in FWM’s Philadelphia and New York studios and established a west coast studio in Oakland, CA that she directed from 1990–99. The FWM projects she has realized are included in the permanent collections of the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Tate Gallery, London.

Recent independent curatorial projects include Relatively Related – Solo of Xiang Yang, SZ Art Center, Beijing; Blur: Six Artists/Six Designers in Contemporary Practice with Mark Campbell at University of the Arts, Philadelphia; and Natural Discourse: Artists, Architects, Scientists & Poets in the Garden with Shirley Watts at the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley.

Fall 2018 Courses

• TEXT-4805-01 Changing Fabric Surface
• TEXT-2232-01 Fort Adams: Site Installation
• SCULP-2232-01 Fort Adams: Site Installation
• IDISC-2232-01 Fort Adams: Site Installation

Wintersession 2019 Courses

• NMSE-8960-10 Professional Internship