“Since 1970 (76?) she has been the unsalaried artist-in-residence for New York City’s Sanitation Department where she builds and orchestrates major public projects that explore the social and ecological issues of waste management.” Ok, stop right there. Why is this woman not compensated in cash money? I’m gonna try and find out. Surely work like Penetration and Transparency: Morphed has monetary as well as social value. And how ’bout her glassphalt galaxy at Danehy Park? Stay tuned for a follow-up post on the value of women and art.

Social Mirror — work and image copyright Mierle Laderman Ukeles
courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York /  www.feldmangallery.com

From March 4 through July 16 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles had a show called WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Here’s a quote from their page on Mierle and her very important Manifesto for Maintenance Art.

After childbirth in 1968, Ukeles became a mother/maintenance worker and fell out of the picture of the avant-garde. In a rage, she wrote the Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969, applied equally to the home, all kinds of service work, the urban environment, and the sustenance of the earth itself. She viewed the Manifesto as “a world vision and a call for revolution for the workers of survival who could, if organized, reshape the world.”

photo: Hartford Wash: Washing, Tracks, Maintenance: Outside, 1973 performance at Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, part of Maintenance Art Performance Series, 1973-74