Mierle Laderman Ukeles (born 1939) is a

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

-based artist known for her

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

and service-oriented artworks, which relate the idea of process in conceptual art to domestic and civic "maintenance". Since 1977, she has been the Artist in Residence (unsalaried) of the New York City Department of Sanitation.

Personal life and education

Born in

Denver Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

, Ukeles is

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

and the daughter of a

rabbi A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...

. As an undergraduate, Ukeles studied

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

and

international studies International relations (IR, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns al ...

Barnard College Barnard College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a grou ...

and later began her artistic training at the

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York. It has an additional campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The institute was founded in 18 ...

in New York in 1962. Her time at the Pratt Institute came with controversy, as her artworks (bulbous-like sculptures at the time) were deemed "over-sexed". While one of her teachers, Robert Richenburg, resigned in protest, she left the school shortly after. She then enrolled in art education at the

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private research university in Denver, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1864, it has an enrollment of approximately 5,700 undergraduate students and 7,200 graduate students. It is classified among "R1: D ...

. She married in 1966. Two years later she had her first of three children. Ukeles earned a Master's degree from New York University in 1974 in Inter-related Arts.

Career

In 1969, Ukeles wrote a manifesto entitled ''Maintenance Art Manifesto 1969! Proposal for an exhibition "CARE"'', as she pondered her position as an artist and mother. Her claim was to challenge the domestic role of women by reframing herself as a "maintenance artist". Maintenance, for Ukeles, includes the household activities that keep things going, such as cooking, cleaning and child-rearing. Aside from "personal" or household maintenance, the manifesto also addressed "general" or public maintenance (cleaning a building, or a street) and earth maintenance, such as addressing polluted waters. Her exhibitions and performances were intended to bring awareness to the low social status of maintenance work, generally paying either minimum wage or no payments for housewives and workers. During her exhibitions, she performed the same tasks that she would perform in her daily life, including entertaining guests or partaking in a

Mikveh A mikveh or mikvah (, ''mikva'ot'', ''mikvot'', or (Ashkenazi Hebrew, Ashkenazic) ''mikves'', lit., "a collection") is a bath used for ritual washing in Judaism#Full-body immersion, ritual immersion in Judaism to achieve Tumah and taharah, ...

."Maintenance Art Manifesto 1969
." Feldman Gallery. Retrieved on 2014-02-02. Several of her performances in the 1970s involved the maintenance of art spaces, including the

Wadsworth Atheneum The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionism, Impressionist paintings, Hudson Riv ...

in Hartford. At the Wadsworth Atheneum, Ukeles cleaned the steps of the museum's entrance, as part of the 1973 all-female exhibition c.7500, curated by

Lucy Lippard Lucy Rowland Lippard (born April 14, 1937) is an American writer, art critic, activist, and curator. Lippard was among the first writers to argue for the " dematerialization" at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art. ...

. Since 1977, she has been the Artist in Residence (unsalaried) of the New York City Department of Sanitation.Trash Talk: The Department of Sanitation’s Artist in Residence Is a Real Survivor , Gallerist
Galleristny.com. Retrieved on 2014-02-02. She is the only artist to ever hold that position. In 2019, she received the Francis J. Greenburger Award for artists whom the art world knows to be of extraordinary merit but who have not been fully recognized by the public. In 1989, Ukeles was commissioned by the

Fresh Kills Landfill The Fresh Kills Landfill was a landfill covering in the borough of Staten Island in New York City, United States. The name comes from the landfill's location along the banks of the Fresh Kills estuary in western Staten Island. The landfill op ...

in Staten Island, to work on the reclamation project to transform the 2200-acre, largest manmade site, to a recreational park known as Freshkills Park. Ukeles invited New Yorkers from all five boroughs to contribute palm-sized artworks made of trash. In 2020, Mierle Laderman Ukeles unveiled a new artwork entitled ''For ⟶ forever...''. The work, a 15-second video piece, was put on display on Time Square billboards, the Queens Museum's facade, and on New York's subway screens and showed: Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ works redefined the scope of contemporary art by focusing on the often invisible labor that sustains society, creating a dialogue between art and everyday work. Her ''Maintenance Art'' project, initiated in the 1970s, was groundbreaking in its exploration of domestic labor, which she elevated to the level of fine art through conceptual and performance-based works. Ukeles' involvement with the New York City Department of sanitation as the first artist-in-residence in 1977 set a precedent for artists, integrating community engagement and institutional collaboration into their practice.

Concepts and methodologies

The role of the artist for Ukeles is that of an

activist Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...

: empowering people to act and change societal values and norms. This agenda stems from a feminist concern with challenging the privileged and gendered notion of the independent artist. For Ukeles, art is not fixed and complete but an ongoing process that is connected to everyday life and her ''Manifesto for Maintenance Art'' proclaims the infection of art by everyday mundane activities. The gargantuan domestic actions that she performed primarily became inaugurated out of her role as artist and mother in the 70s. After the birth of her first child in 1968, Ukeles believes that her public identity as an artist slipped into second place, because of the public perception of the role of a mother.

''Manifesto For Maintenance Art 1969!''

Initially written as a proposal for an exhibition entitled ''Care'', the ''Manifesto For Maintenance Art'' emphasizes maintenance—keeping things clean, working and cared for—as a creative strategy. The manifesto came about after Ukeles gave birth to her first child. Suddenly she had to balance her time as an artist and mother, and had little time to create art. She noted that the famous male artists that she admired never had to make such sacrifices. She has described this feeling and the epiphany that lead to the manifesto in this way, "I felt like two separate people...the free artists and the mother/maintenance worker...I was never working so hard in my whole life, trying to keep together the two people I had become. Yet people said to me, when they saw me pushing my baby carriage, "Do you do anything?"...Then I had an epiphany... I have the freedom to name maintenance as art. I can collide freedom into its supposed opposite and call that art. I name necessity art." The manifesto is formed into two major parts. In part I, under the rubric 'Ideas' she makes a distinction between the two basic systems of 'Development' and 'Maintenance', where the former is associated with 'pure individual creation', 'the new', 'change' and the latter is tasked with 'keep the dust off the pure individual creation, preserve the new, sustain the change'. She asks, "after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?". This contrasts with the modernist tradition in which the originality of an artist is foregrounded and the mundane material reality of an artist's everyday life is disregarded.Knight, Sarah (2013)
Mierle Laderman Ukeles Maintenance Art Works 1969–1980 Exhibition Guide
Arnolfini, Bristol The second part describes her proposal for the exhibition and is made up of three parts ''A) Part One: Personal'', ''B) Part Two: General'' and ''C) Part Three: Earth Maintenance''. She begins with the statement “I am an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother. (Random order) I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking, renewing, supporting, preserving, etc. Also, (up to now separately) I ‘do’ Art. Now I will simply do these everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art ..MY WORKING WILL BE THE WORK”

''Touch Sanitation'' (1979-80)

In her work ''Touch Sanitation'', taking almost a year, Ukeles met over 8500 employees of the New York Sanitation Department, shaking hands with each of them and saying, “Thank you for keeping New York City alive”. She documented her activities on a map, recording her conversations with the workers. Ukeles documented the workers' private stories in an attempt to change some of the negative words used about them.

Honors and awards

Laderman Ukeles was given honorary doctorates from: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, and Maine College of Art, Portland, ME. She has been awarded several prestigious awards and fellowships including: * Francis J. Greenburger Award, Art Omi, 2019, Charlotta Kotik, Presenter * Public Art Dialogue Award, College Art Association, 2017 * Lily Auchincloss Foundation, 2015 * The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, 2015. * Queens Museum Honoree, 2015. * Ann Chamberlain Distinguished Fellow, San Francisco Art Institute, 2010. * Jewish Cultural Achievement Awards, National Foundation for Jewish Culture, 2003. * Anonymous was a Woman Foundation Award, 2001.

Works

* ''Manifesto For Maintenance Art 1969! Proposal for an Exhibition "CARE"'' (1969) - a proposal for an exhibition to display maintenance work as contemporary art, which was published in ''

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

'' in 1971. Ukeles then participated in

's traveling exhibition of conceptual female artists ''c. 7,500'' (1973–74) and fourteen other exhibitions and interventions in museums followed, including in the

. * ''Maintenance Art Tasks'' (1973) - a photograph collection of household activities performed by Laderman Ukeles and her husband, with 12 to 90 images per activity. * ''Maintenance Art Tasks'' performances at the Wadsworth Atheneum, 1973 - During the course of 1973, Laderman performed ''The Keeping of the Keys'' (July 20, 1973), ''Transfer: The Maintenance of the Art Object: Mummy Maintenance: With the Maintenance Man, The Maintenance Artist, and the Museum Conservator'' (July 20, 1973), ''Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Inside'' and ''Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside'' (July 23, 1973) at the

* ''Hartford Wash: Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside'' (1973) * ''Hartford Wash: Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Inside'' (1973) * ''Touch Sanitation'' (1978–80) * ''The Work Ballets,'' seven ballets for large-machinery that took place intermittently between 1983 and 2013 in Rotterdam, New York City, Givors, Pittsburgh and Echigo-Tsumari. They are the subject of Ukeles' first monograph published by Sternberg Press in 2015 and edited by Kari Conte. * ''Turnaround Surround,'' "Glassphalt" path in Danehy Park in North Cambridge, Massachusetts. Park is built on site of a dump and landfill closed in 1972. (1997-2002)

Publications

;Author *"A Journey: Earth/City/Flow." ''Art Journal'' (Summer 1992): 12-14. *"Maintenance Art Activity (1973)." ''Documents'' 10 (Fall 1977):8. *"Manifesto For Maintenance Art 1969! Proposal for an exhibition 'Care'."; Originally published in Jack Burnham. "Problems of Criticism." ''Artforum'' (January 1971) 41; reprinted in Lucy Lippard. ''Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object.'' New York:New York University Press, 1979: 220-221. *"Sanitation Manifesto! (1984)." ''The Act'' 2, no.1, (1990): 84-85. ;Coauthor *Ukeles, Mierle Laderman and Alexandra Schwartz. "Mierle Laderman Ukeles in conversation with Alexandra Schwartz." in Butler, Cornelia et al.''From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard's Numbers Shows 1969-1974'' London: Afterall, 2012.

References

External links

Touch Sanitation: Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Ecological Restoration: Mierle Ukeles, Flow City

2009 Art In American interview

NYC Department of Cultural Affairs website for Ukeles's work ''Honor 2000'' (2000)

Ukeles's site at the Brooklyn Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ukeles, Mierle Laderman 1939 births 20th-century American women artists American conceptual artists American contemporary artists Artists from Colorado Artists from New York City Jewish American artists Jewish American feminists Barnard College alumni American feminist artists Living people American modern artists American women conceptual artists 21st-century American women artists 21st-century American Jews