From Playground to Classroom: Evolution of the Situation in the Art of Mary Miss Open Access
Price, Zoe (Spring 2025)
Abstract
This thesis traces the evolution of Mary Miss’s practice from the 1970s until now. Since the 1970s, Miss’s artwork has been physically in public, but how she has engaged the viewer in the public realm has changed. Scholars have attempted to craft a narrative of continuity in Miss’s practice that centers on environmental activism. I, however, argue that there was a pivotal moment in Mary Miss’s career when, in 1982, she adapted the formal and experiential elements of her monumental constructions to fulfill the new needs in public art, which she outlines in her lecture “On a Redefinition of Public Sculpture.” After this moment, Miss increasingly incorporated the public realm and the environment into her work.
I argue that before 1982, Miss explored how the “expanded situation” of viewing, defined under minimalism, changed outdoors. The “expanded situation” involves not just the object but also the space around it and the viewer’s embodied experience within the space. I examine how the terms—object, space, and viewer—evolve as Miss’s intentions as a public artist change. Battery Park Landfill, 1973, and Field Rotation, 1980-81, represent what I have termed the playground in Miss’s practice because they emphasize embodied exploration over education. In contrast, Greenwood Pond: Double Site, 1986-1989, represents a transitional moment in which embodied exploration is combined with educational and sustainable programs representing the playground/outdoor classroom hybrid. Finally, in the present, Miss is focusing on City as a Living Laboratory (CaLL), which relies on signage and community programming to educate the public on a particular issue of sustainability. The current phase of Miss’s practice represents the full move out of the playground and into the classroom.
By situating key moments in Miss’s practice within changing paradigms in public art — antagonistic, ecological, educational—I not only account for the change in her work but also examine different models of working in public over time. Considering issues of sustainability, legibility, and maintenance through the lens of Mary Miss, this paper traces how the expectations for public artists and their ability to install work in public have changed, which can impact the work’s effectiveness.
Table of Contents
1) Introduction
7) Theories of Engagement: From the Expanded to the Extremely Clear Situation
20) Transitioning from Playground to Classroom
32) Site, Viewer, Information System: City as Living Laboratory
43) Conclusion
48) Bibliography
52) Images
About this Honors Thesis
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From Playground to Classroom: Evolution of the Situation in the Art of Mary Miss () | 2025-04-09 09:49:40 -0400 |
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