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Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Touch Sanitation Performance, July 24, 1979–June 26, 1980. Citywide performance with 8,500 Sanitation workers across all 59 New York City Sanitation districts. Photo by Robin Holland. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York
Exhibition
Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Maintenance Art
18 Sep 2016 – 19 Feb 2017
Regular hours
- Sunday
- 11:00 – 17:00
- Wednesday
- 12:00 – 17:00
- Thursday
- 12:00 – 17:00
- Friday
- 12:00 – 17:00
- Saturday
- 11:00 – 17:00
Address
- New York City Building
- Flushing Meadows Corona Park
- New York
New York - 11368
- United States
Since the late 1960s, Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ performances, sculptural installations, and writing have explored issues profoundly important to society today: the role of women in society, cultures of work and labor, and urban and community resilience.
About
Her MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART 1969! laid out the hidden, yet essential role of maintenance in Western society—and the radical implications of actively valuing rather than dismissing or hiding it
This first survey of Ukeles’ work is organized by the Queens Museum’s Larissa Harris and guest co-curator Patricia C. Phillips, who initiated the project in 2012. The show will span five decades, from her work as a pioneer of feminist performance to a practitioner of public art, in which Ukeles invites us to reconsider indispensable urban systems and the workers who maintain them. Ukeles is undoubtedly best-known for her 36+ year role as the official, unsalaried Artist-in-Residence at New York’s Department of Sanitation. Unprecedented when it began in 1978, this residency has now become a model for municipalities engaging with artists as creative agents.
The accompanying publication, Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art (Prestel: August 2016) features a major essay by Patricia C. Phillips; interviews by Tom Finkelpearl with four Sanitation Commissioners who have worked with Ukeles; contributions by Larissa Harris, Lucy Lippard, and Laura Raicovich; writings by the artist; and over 300 striking color images. Together, important perspectives on an artist who has transformed our notions of public art and the potential for the artist in the city.
