The Department of Philosophy,  University of Pittsburgh and Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) Presents

                      “MAINTENANCE ARTIST”

                     A film screening

                    USA, 95 minutes, 2025

                     Free and open to the public

                    Doors: 5:00 pm

                    Film Screening: 5:30 pm

Join us at the end of this semester for a movie screening at the Frick Fine Arts Auditorium. This event is hosted by the Philosophy Department in cooperation with its MAP (Minorities and Philosophy) chapter. We are excited to show you a one-time only screening of Maintenance Artist, the highly rated documentary by Toby Perl Freilich. It is a story about the life and art of feminist artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Her highly acclaimed artwork has challenged notions of care and art. In linking care work, cleaning, and sanitation, she interrogated how we value maintenance work and how this valuation is linked to gender, class, and race. 

Please join us and share the event broadly.

SYNOPSIS

After becoming a mother disrupted her career as an artist, Mierle Laderman Ukeles published a daring manifesto: from now on, all her acts of childcare and household maintenance would be performance art. The Manifesto propelled Ukeles into the 1960’s avant-garde, a largely male scene that prized the solitary creator but scorned those who “keep the dust off the pure individual creation.”

Recognizing that this devaluation of care was systemic, Ukeles began scaling up her maintenance revolution to include collaborations with the often invisible cleaners and guards who care for museums — poking at the concealed hierarchies embedded in the white cube space. In 1977, in a move that would radically reframe public art, Ukeles was invited to establish an unprecedented artist-in-residency at the NYC Sanitation Department, where she championed a demeaned but essential class of workers within a vast urban system.

Set during the impassioned social and artistic upheavals of the late 20th century and using newly digitized archival footage, Maintenance Artist is the story of an artist who raised maintenance to an art form and became a force in contemporary art.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

“Forty-six years after she embedded with the Sanitation Department, Ms. Ukeles’s populist convictions, her belief in the dignity of labor, her wariness of feminist art committed narrowly to liberating women from the male gaze speak with a power to the tensions between class and gender politics roiling the country right now.” - The New York Times

“One of the most anticipated films of the 2025 Tribeca Festival. Riveting and long overdue.” - Filmmaker Magazine

“A visually explosive portrait of a one-of-a-kind creative.” - NBC New York

“A fascinating look at an undeterred feminist and advocate for the working class who constantly defied such easy labels.” - Documentary Magazine

“‘Maintenance Artist’ Highlights Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Radical, Caring Approach to Public Art.” - Colossal

“Through Ukele’s works, the definition of art is blurred and becomes a multidimensional instrument to examine human nature. From showcasing motherhood to sanitation workers, Ukeles transformed what art could be and who it could highlight.” - The Torch

“Whether you’re a fan of experimental art, social practice, or simply intrigued by how creativity can infiltrate the bureaucratic machinery of city life, this documentary is a must-watch. It serves as both a tribute and a testament to how one woman’s practice continues to shape conversations around care, community, and the creative potential of labor.” - StupidDOPE

BACKGROUND

Ukeles pioneered the notion of care as an artistic ethic, anticipating political and cultural questions that remain cutting-edge to this day. In linking childcare, cleaning, and sanitation, she interrogated how we value maintenance work and how this valuation is linked to gender, class, and race. By challenging the romanticization of the lone, white male genius artist, she helped expand the boundaries of an exclusive art world to include more women and low-paid wage earners. She has been a leading artistic voice exploring such urgent issues as unchecked consumerism’s catastrophic impact on climate change. Maintenance Artist traces art’s radical revolution in the mid-20th century, upending millennia of tradition. Decrying art’s over-commercialization, artists asked whether art should even have materiality. Should it separate itself from society at large, enshrined in museums? Who controlled those museums? Why did men dominate the avant-garde agenda? How should artists use their work to resist growing environmental devastation? What is art altogether? Ukeles was in the vanguard of this debate.

Rooted in Second Wave Feminism and the Land Art movement, Ukeles’ work advocates for conservation, ritual, cooperation, and deceleration over modern valorizations of innovation, individualism, and speed. It warns of impending climate disaster if western societies continue to single-mindedly promote consumption and rapid disposal at the expense of preservation. Ukeles’ genius is her ability to get us to consider the mundane in new ways, to move us from thought to action. Maintenance Artist heralds her vision for a radically more equitable society.