Ursula Merchant Ursula Merchant Ursula Merchant (born September 10, 1932 in Rostock) is a German Las Vegas-based performance artist, conceptual artist, carpenter. She is probably best known for her series 'Forkin' Hell'. Merchant was born "Ursula S. Wernerberger" in post-war Rostock. Her parents were of Russian extraction. Her father abandoned Ursula and her mother early in Ursula's youth, when he returned from a prisoner of war camp after World War II. Her family moved to a remote village in the Black Mountains of Switzerland after the house next to theirs was destroyed during the bombing at the close of World War II.
Ursula Hoff Ursula Hoff Ursula Hoff (26 December 1909 in London, UK – 10 January 2005 in Melbourne) – Australian scholar, academic, curator, writer, critic, and lecturer; Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1968–1973); London Adviser of the Felton Bequest (1975–83); author of numerous books, catalogues, articles, reviews, and scholarly publications on art. Ursula Hoff was born on 26 December 1909 in London to Hans Leopold Hoff, Hamburg-based German Jewish merchant, and his wife, née Thusnelde Margarethe (Tussi) Bulcke, of a German Lutheran upper-middle-class family. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Hamburg, where Ursula grew up and