Mary Miss


Mary Miss is an American artist and designer whose primary interest is the public realm. 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.
Miss studied art and received a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1966. Miss later received an M.F.A. from the Rhinehart School of Sculpture of Maryland Institute College of Art in 1968.

Influence in public art

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 '. 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.
In her influential 1979 essay, , art critic Rosalind Krauss opens with a description of Mary Miss’s, . Krauss uses Miss's work to support her examination of sculpture's interdisciplinary nature between architecture and landscape. South Cove ', 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."
Since 2008 Miss has worked on the development of the , a non- profit organization which nurtures teams of artists and scientists working with neighborhood communities to bring about greater environmental awareness and envision more livable cities of sustenance.

Notable work

Ropes/Shore ' traced the edge of Ward's Island with ropes staked and pulled taut at 20-foot intervals.
 installation was a temporary piece of five signboard-like structures, placed 50-feet apart across the landfill site. 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.
 was created in April and May 1973 at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio, as part of the exhibition Four Young Americans. This initial version of the work comprised wooden slats protruding directly from the soil 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.
Perimeters/Pavilions/Decoys , located at the Nassau County Museum. For this installation, three tower-like structures, two mounds and an underground courtyard were built on a 5-acre park site. The towers varied in size, from 12’ to 18’ tall. After passing between the earth mounds, the viewer came upon a 16’ square opening in the ground with a protruding ladder. Approaching the hole and descending, a sunken courtyard is revealed. Inside the submerged courtyard were numerous doorways, windows and corridors to venture. The viewer encounters experiences and multiple perspectives, both above and below ground.
South Cove , New York City, the Battery Park City Fine Arts Commission chose Miss to be the lead artist for South Cove, a restoration and waterfront promenade along the Hudson River in Manhattan. The 3.5-acre park near the tip of Manhattan, is composed of wooden pilings, trellises, grids, and a steel mesh overlook. The project also served restorative functions for both the damaged landscape and isolated waterfront. Miss worked in collaboration with landscape architect Susan Child and architect Stanton Eckstut on this project. , New York City, Miss collaborated with architect Lee Harris Pomeroy to create 125 red frame elements scattered throughout the Fourteenth Street Union Square Subway Station. The red elements highlight the disappearance of lost infrastructure as well as industrial elements that remain.
 ', 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.
CALL/City as Living Laboratory: Sustainability Made Tangible through the Arts . CaLL focuses on reshaping the boundaries between artists and urban infrastructure by articulating a vision of the public sphere where artists are able to address environmental issues of our time. Multiple projects have been developed or are under development as part of this initiative.

CALL projects

is a long-term initiative to establish Broadway as the “green” corridor of New York City. It was started by Miss in City as Living Laboratory.
Ravenswood/CaLL was a project to highlight ecology, the history of manufacturing, and the presence of small-scale artisanal fabrication and artists in New York City's Long Island City neighborhood. The project focuses on the submerged Sunswick Creek, which is traced through the neighborhood.
' was a project made up of a series of ‘stopping places’ along a six-mile stretch of the White River between the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the center of Indianapolis.
The Passage was a project intended for a ride on the Staten Island Ferry from Manhattan to the Staten Island Courthouse Memorial Green.
' created a temporary garden of medicinal plants—ayurvedic herbs, trees and bushes—in New Delhi, India. The installation focused on the small scale—the health and well being of the individuals and their communities.
' was developed by Mary Miss during the Master Plan phase for the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, California that would encourage active participation and collaboration in city parks. The goal was to create a Research and Residency Center, a place where artists could collaborate/engage with scientists and social scientists.
' 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.

Exhibitions

Miss was included in the exhibition Twenty-Six Contemporary Women Artists at the Aldrich Museum in 1971. Lucy Lippard was the curator, and other artists included Alice Aycock and Jackie Winsor. She was also included in the exhibition Four Young Americans alongside the artists Ann McCoy, Ree Morton, and Jackie Winsor, curated by Ellen H. Johnson and Athena Tacha at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College.
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.
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.

Selected group exhibitions

Miss received the New York City American Society of Landscape Architects President's Award in 2010, the American Academy in Rome's Centennial Medal in 2001, and a Medal of Honor from the American Institute of Architects in 1990. She received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1986. She was awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984, 1975, and 1974.
She was named as a distinguished alumni of UC Santa Barbara in 1985 with RMS Titanic-discoverer Robert Ballard.

Personal life

Miss married sculptor Bruce Colvin in 1967, but later divorced in 1986. She is currently married to George Peck, a New York-based artist. They live together in Tribeca where Miss also has her studio.