Thursday, October 25, 6:30 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
Delivering a special presentation co-sponsored by River Action and Chris and Marty Rayburn, the widely fêted environmental artist Mary Miss serves as the special guest in an October 25 Artist Talk at Davenport's Figge Art Museum, discussing the reshaping of boundaries between sculpture, architecture, landscape design and installation art, and how artists can play a more central role in addressing the complex issues of our times.
Trained as a sculptor, Miss' work creates situations emphasizing a site’s history, its ecology, or aspects of the environment that have gone unnoticed. She has been redefining how art is integrated into the public realm since the early 1970s, and remains interested in how artists can help turn environmental and social sustainability into tangible experiences. Collaboration has been central to her work as she has developed projects as diverse as creating a temporary memorial around the perimeter of Ground Zero, marking the predicted flood level of Boulder, Colorado, revealing the history of the Union Square Subway station in New York City, and in WaterMarks – her current project creating an atlas of water for the city of Milwaukee.
Miss has 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. Among others, her works have been included in the exhibitions Decoys, Complexes & Triggers at the Sculpture Center in New York; Weather Report: Art & Climate Change curated by Lucy Lippard and co-presented by the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and EcoArts Connections; More Than Minimal: Feminism & Abstraction in the 70’s through Brandeis Museum’s Rose Art Museum; and Century City: Art & Culture in the Modern Metropolis at the Tate Modern. Miss’ influential work has also been recognized with numerous awards, including the Urban Land Institute’s Global Award for Excellence and the 2017 Bedrock of New York City Award, and she was awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1974, 1975, and 1984.
Mary Miss' October 25 Artist Talk begins at 6:30 p.m. on October 25, the presentation is free with $4-7 museum admission, and more information is available by calling (563)326-7804 or visiting FiggeArtMuseum.org.
