Pioneering New York-based artist Mary Miss has accepted an invitation from the Weitzman School to speak at its May 18, 2024, Commencement Ceremony.
“Mary Miss is one of America’s most poetic champions of sustainability,” says Weitzman Dean and Paley Professor Fritz Steiner. “Her embrace of collective imagination, her ability to transcend disciplinary boundaries, her commitment to art that engages the complex issues of our time—these are perfectly aligned with the mission of the Weitzman School.”
“Place is my medium,” Miss says of her practice in a short documentary produced by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2023. Through projects as diverse as creating a temporary memorial around the perimeter of Ground Zero, marking the predicted flood level of Boulder, Colorado, or revealing the history of the Union Square Subway station in New York City, she has been redefining how art is integrated into the public realm since the early 1970s.
Miss’s work crosses boundaries between landscape architecture, architecture, urban and graphic design to create situations in which people connect with a site’s history, ecology, or other aspects of a place that often go unnoticed. Originally trained as a sculptor, she has collaborated closely with architects, planners, engineers, ecologists, and public administrators to develop initiatives that encourage everyday people to play an active role in shaping their environment. In 2009, she formalized this work by founding City as Living Laboratory (CALL), an organization that she continues to lead.
Recent exhibitions of Miss’s work include Groundswell: Women of Land Art at the Nasher Sculpture Center, 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Water by Design at the Nevada Art Museum, and Dimensions of Realty: Female Minimal at Thaddeus Ropac (Paris and London). She has won numerous awards, including the 2023 Arts and Letters Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2017 Bedrock of New York Award, the 2011 Design Excellence Award for The Passage, 2001 MASterworks Award from the Municipal Art Society of New York for Framing Union Square, the Centennial Medal from the American Academy in Rome in 2001, and an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Washington University. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Resident Artist at the American Academy in Rome.
Weitzman’s Class of 2024 is expected to include 335 individuals from 25 countries and 32 states: 164 students in the Department of Architecture, 69 in City & Regional Planning, 44 in Landscape Architecture, 21 in Urban Spatial Analytics, 19 in Fine Arts, 13 in Historic Preservation, and 5 dual-degree students. In addition, Dean Steiner will present a posthumous Bachelor of Architecture degree to the acclaimed Chinese architect and preservationist Lin Huiyin (1904-1955).
The ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, May 18, 6:00pm EDT. Attendance for the in-person event is limited to ticketed graduates and their guests, but the event will be streamed on YouTube.
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