Mierle Laderman Ukeles facts for kids

Mierle Laderman Ukeles (born in 1939) is an artist from New York City. She is famous for her art that focuses on everyday tasks and public service, often called "maintenance art." Since 1977, she has worked as the Artist in Residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation. This means she's the only artist who has ever held this special job!

About Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Early Life and Education

Mierle Laderman Ukeles was born in Denver, Colorado. She is Jewish and her father was a rabbi. She studied history and international studies at Barnard College. Later, she began learning art at the Pratt Institute in New York in 1962. She also studied art education at the University of Denver. She got married in 1966 and had her first child two years later. In 1974, she earned a Master's degree from New York University in Inter-related Arts.

Her Career as an Artist

In 1969, Ukeles wrote an important paper called Maintenance Art Manifesto 1969! Proposal for an exhibition "CARE". She wrote it while thinking about her roles as an artist and a mother. She wanted to show that the daily tasks of keeping a home, like cooking, cleaning, and raising children, are important and should be seen as art. She called herself a "maintenance artist."

Her manifesto also talked about public maintenance, like cleaning streets, and earth maintenance, like cleaning polluted water. Her art shows and performances aimed to make people realize that maintenance work, which often pays very little or nothing (like for homemakers), is valuable. In her shows, she would do the same tasks she did every day, like cleaning or entertaining guests.

In the 1970s, she performed maintenance tasks in art spaces. For example, at the Wadsworth Atheneum museum in Hartford in 1973, she cleaned the museum's entrance steps. This was part of an art show featuring only female artists.

Since 1977, Ukeles has been the Artist in Residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation. She is the only artist to ever have this position. In 2019, she received the Francis J. Greenburger Award for her amazing work.

In 1989, Ukeles was asked to work on a big project at the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island. This was a huge landfill that was being turned into a park called Freshkills Park. Ukeles invited people from all over New York City to create small artworks using trash.

In 2020, Mierle Laderman Ukeles showed a new artwork called For ⟶ forever.... This was a 15-second video that appeared on billboards in Times Square, on the Queens Museum, and on subway screens in New York. It showed a message:

Dear Service Worker,
"Thank you for keeping NYC alive!"
For ⟶ forever...

Ukeles' art changed how people thought about modern art. She focused on the often-unseen work that keeps society running. Her Maintenance Art project, which started in the 1970s, was very new because it showed domestic work as fine art. Her role with the New York City Department of Sanitation also showed how artists can work with communities and organizations.

In 2025, a documentary film about Ukeles' life, called Maintenance Artist, was released.

Her Art Ideas and Methods

Ukeles believes that artists can be like activists. They can help people think differently and change society's values. She wanted to challenge the idea that artists are always independent and that art is separate from everyday life. For Ukeles, art is an ongoing process connected to daily life. Her Manifesto for Maintenance Art says that everyday activities can be part of art.

She started doing these big "domestic actions" as art after her first child was born in 1968. She felt that her identity as an artist became less important because of how people viewed mothers. She realized that famous male artists didn't have to make the same choices. She said, "I felt like two separate people...the free artists and the mother/maintenance worker...Then I had an epiphany... I have the freedom to name maintenance as art."

The Manifesto For Maintenance Art 1969!

This manifesto was first written as a plan for an art show called Care. It highlights maintenance—keeping things clean, working, and cared for—as a creative way to make art. Ukeles wrote it after having her first child because she found it hard to balance being an artist and a mother. She noticed that male artists she admired didn't face the same challenges. She realized she could call her necessary daily tasks "art."

The manifesto has two main parts. In the first part, called 'Ideas', she talks about two systems: 'Development' and 'Maintenance'. 'Development' is about new ideas and change, while 'Maintenance' is about keeping things going, like "keeping the dust off the pure individual creation." She famously asked, "after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?" This was different from how art was usually seen, where the artist's unique ideas were most important, and daily life was ignored.

The second part describes her plan for the exhibition. It has three sections: A) Part One: Personal, B) Part Two: General, and C) Part Three: Earth Maintenance. She starts by saying, "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 artwork Touch Sanitation, which took almost a year, Ukeles met over 8,500 employees of the New York Sanitation Department. She shook hands with each of them and said, “Thank you for keeping New York City alive.” She kept records of her visits and conversations with the workers. Ukeles wrote down their personal stories to help change the negative ways people sometimes talked about sanitation workers.

Awards and Honors

Mierle Laderman Ukeles has received special honorary doctorates from several art schools. She has also won many important awards and fellowships, including:

• Francis J. Greenburger Award, Art Omi, 2019
• 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

Key Artworks

• Manifesto For Maintenance Art 1969! Proposal for an Exhibition "CARE" (1969) - This was a plan to show maintenance work as modern art. It was published in Artforum magazine in 1971. Ukeles then took part in Lucy R. Lippard's traveling art show c. 7,500 (1973–74), and her work was shown in many other museums.
• Maintenance Art Tasks (1973) - This is a collection of photographs showing household activities done by Ukeles and her husband. Each activity had many pictures, from 12 to 90.
• Maintenance Art Tasks performances at the Wadsworth Atheneum, 1973 - In 1973, Ukeles performed several pieces at the Wadsworth Atheneum. These included The Keeping of the Keys, Transfer: The Maintenance of the Art Object: Mummy Maintenance: With the Maintenance Man, The Maintenance Artist, and the Museum Conservator, and Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Inside and Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside.
• Hartford Wash: Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside (1973)
• Hartford Wash: Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Inside (1973)
• Touch Sanitation (1978–80)
• The Work Ballets, - These were seven ballets that used large machines. They happened between 1983 and 2013 in different cities like Rotterdam and New York City.
• Turnaround Surround, (1997-2002) - This is a path made of "Glassphalt" in Danehy Park in North Cambridge, Massachusetts. The park was built on an old dump and landfill.