Artist’s Talk with Mierle Laderman Ukeles:
I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day
August 24th, 3:00pm
Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, Sixth floor
Free with museum admission
Thursday August 24th the Whitney Museum features an artist’s talk on I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day (1976), on view as part of the exhibition An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017, opening August 18th.
Due to preservation constraints, the piece will be shown for three months only – August 18th through mid-November. This is the last time the piece will be exhibited before it goes to “rest” for ten years!
In 1976, Mierle Laderman Ukeles invited three hundred maintenance workers at 55 Water Street, the site of the Whitney Museum’s former downtown branch, to conceive of their work as “maintenance art” for one hour every day during their eight-hour work shift. The resulting work I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day (1976) exemplifies her commitment to tikkun olam, making art engaged with the endless maintenance and service work that is essential but often invisible. On the occasion of the exhibition An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017, Ukeles speaks about I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day, her role as the official, unsalaried Artist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation, and her creation of art as activism.
An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017 opens August 18th, 2017.
The Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District, Manhattan
