Mary Miss (born May 27, 1944) is an American artist and designer. Her work has crossed boundaries between architecture, landscape architecture, engineering and urban design. Her installations are collaborative in nature: she has worked with scientists, historians, designers, and public administrators. She is primarily interested in how to engage the public in decoding their surrounding environment.
Early life and education
Miss was born May 27, 1944, in New York City, but she spent her youth moving every year while living primarily in the western United States.[1]
As a public artist, Miss is considered a pioneer in environmental art and site-specific art, as well a leading sculptor during the feminist movement of the 1970s. She was a founding member of the journal Heresies. From her earliest work, she has been interested in bringing the specific attributes of a site into focus along with and audience engagement within public space. Miss’ work crosses boundaries between landscape architecture, architecture, urban design, and graphic communication. Her work creates situations that emphasize a site's history, ecology, or aspects of the environment that have gone unnoticed. She has been particularly interested in redefining the role of the artist in the public domain.[citation needed]
In her influential 1979 essay, Sculpture in the Expanded Field, art critic Rosalind Krauss opens with a description of Mary Miss's, Perimeters/Pavilions/Decoys.[4] Krauss uses Miss's work to support her examination of sculpture's interdisciplinary nature between architecture and landscape. South Cove (1988)[5], a permanent public project in Battery Park, is a seminal project in Miss' career as it signified new possibilities for artists working in the public realm. The project, located on a three-acre site at the base of the riverfront Esplande, was made in collaboration with architect Stanton Eckstut and landscape designer Susan Child. "South Cove brings the public more intimately in contact with the water than any other component of Battery park City or, indeed, any other Manhattan riverside park."[6]
Miss has worked on the development of the project City as Living Laboratory, which, according to the project's description, collaborates with artists, environmental designers and scientists to focus on and explore sustainability in cities.[7]
Selected works
Battery Park Landfill (1973) installation was a temporary piece of five signboard-like structures, placed 50-feet apart across the landfill site.[8] A series of large cut out circles descended into the ground describing a column of air that materialized only when the viewer stood with the boards aligned.[citation needed]
Untitled (1973)[9] was created in April and May 1973 at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio, as part of the exhibition Four Young Americans (which also featured Ann McCoy, Ree Morton, and Jackie Winsor). This initial version of the work comprised wooden slats protruding directly along the sides of a square hole cut into the ground on the northeast lawn of the museum. The museum subsequently invited Miss to re-create the work using permanent materials—making this her first permanent commissioned work and her earliest extant public work. Constructed in the summer of 1975 under the artist's supervision, the second version was created with powder-coated steel slats protruding from tinted concrete, in its original siting.[citation needed]
The Des Moines Art Center (1989–96),[10] Des Moines, Iowa, is a 7.5-acre site developed as both an art installation and restoration site. It includes a demonstration wetland, outdoor classroom, overhanging walkways, a pavilion, and a curved trellis. The structures highlight the connection between land and water. Visual elements and images are interwoven throughout the site to reflect the history of the park and its surroundings. The structure "Greenwood Pond: Double Site" is deteriorated and there are plans to dismantle it.[11]
Framing Union Square, 14th Street Subway, NYC
Framing Union Square] (installed 1998),[12] New York City, Miss collaborated with architect Lee Harris Pomeroy to create 125 red frame elements scattered throughout the 14th Street–Union Square station. The red elements highlight the disappearance of lost infrastructure as well as industrial elements that remain.[citation needed]
CALL projects
Roshanara's Net (2008)[13] created a temporary garden of medicinal plants—ayurvedic herbs, trees and bushes—in New Delhi, India. The installation focused on the health and well being of the individuals and their communities.[citation needed]
StreamLines (2013)[14] installed a cluster of mirrors and red beams in five Indianapolis neighborhoods, which radiate out from a central point to nearby streams and waterways. The installation was intended to get visitors to follow the beams to the nearby waterways. This project was made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation.[citation needed]
Along with others, Miss's work has been included in the exhibitions Decoys, Complexes and Triggers at the Sculpture Center in New York, Weather Report: Art and Climate Change organized by Lucy Lippard at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, More Than Minimal: Feminism and Abstraction in the 1970s at the Rose Art Museum, and Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis at the Tate Modern.[16]
Miss has also been the subject of exhibitions at the Harvard University Art Museum, Brown University Gallery, The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Architectural Association in London, Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, and the Des Moines Art Center.[16]
Selected group exhibitions
Sculpture Annual (1970) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York[17]
Whitney Biennial (1973) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York[18]
Rooms (1976) P.S. 1, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Long Island City, New York[19]
Nine Artists: Theodoran Awards (1977) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY[20]
Architectural Analogues (1978) Whitney Museum of American Art, New York[21]
The Minimal Tradition (1979) Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut[22]
Global Excellence Award, Urban Land Institute (2018)[68]
She was named as a distinguished alumni of UC Santa Barbara in 1985.[69]
Personal life
Miss married sculptor Bruce Colvin in 1967,[70] but later divorced in 1986.[71] She is currently married to George Peck, a New York-based artist.[72] They live together in Tribeca where Miss also has her studio.[73]
Further reading
Kingsley, April. "Six Women at Work in a Landscape." Arts Magazine 52 (April 1978): 108–12.
Lippard, Lucy. "Mary Miss: An Extremely Clear Situation." Art in America 62 (March–April 1974): 76–7.
Marter, Joan M. "Collaborations: Artists and Architects on Public Sites." Art Journal 48 (1989): 315–20.
Miss, Mary. "On a Redefinition of Public Sculpture." Perspecta, no. 21 (1984): 52–69.
^Whitney Museum of American Art (1981). 1981 Biennial exhibition. Frances Mulhall Achilles Library Whitney Museum of American Art. Whitney Museum of American Art.
^Creative Artists Public Service Program (1973). Photographers, Sculptors, Painters, Printmakers 1972-1973. Gallery Association of New York State Inc.
^Creative Artists Public Service Program (1977). Visual Art: Graphic Artists, Painters, Photographers, Sculptors 1976-1977. Gallery Association of New York State Inc.
