06/16/2026
MAINTENANCE ARTIST: Documentary w/ Director Q&A, Sunday, June 21st, Doors 7:30pm
“After the Revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday Morning?” Believing that acts of routine maintenance—diaper changing, trash collection, environmental care—could be reframed as art, trailblazing artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles transformed the concept of public art in radical ways.
Maintenance Artist (2025, 90 min, English and Japanese with English subtitles). This vibrant portrait chronicles the life and work of trailblazing artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, drawing from never-before-seen archival footage, Maintenance Artist offers a deeply moving meditation on care, labor, and visibility during the social and artistic upheavals of the last fifty years.
“After the Revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?” challenged artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. After she became a mother, Ukeles published a daring manifesto declaring all her acts of household maintenance, including childcare, to be performance art. As she blasted her way into the largely male late-1960s avant-garde, Ukeles began to scale up her “maintenance revolution,” collaborating with the invisible class of workers who maintain museums, galleries and public spaces. In 1977, she radically reframed public art by becoming the first official, unsalaried artist-in-residence at NYC’s Sanitation Department. With unprecedented access to the artist and never-before-seen archival material from her private collection, the film traces Ukeles’ career through her own creative journey, and within the nexus of 1960s-70s feminism, budding environmental awareness, and the artistic revolution that nurtured it.
