received the Francis J. Greenburger Award for artists whom the art world knows to be of extraordinary merit but who have not been fully recognized by the public. In 1989, Ukeles was commissioned by the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, to work on the reclamation project to transform the 2200-acre, largest manmade site, to a recreational park known as Freshkills Park. Ukeles invited New Yorkers from all five boroughs to contribute palm-sized artworks made of trash. In 2020, Mierle Laderman Ukeles unveiled a new artwork entitled For ⟶ forever.... The work, a 15-second video piece, was put on display on Time Square billboards, the Queens Museum's facade, and on New York's subway screens and showed: Concepts and methodologies The role of the artist for Ukeles is that of an activist: empowering people to act and change societal values and norms. This agenda stems from a feminist concern with challenging the privileged and gendered notion of the independent artist. For Ukeles, art is not fixed and complete but an ongoing process that is connected to everyday life and her Manifesto for Maintenance Art proclaims the infection of art by everyday mundane activities. The gargantuan domestic actions that she performed primarily became inaugurated out of her role as artist and mother in the 70s. After the birth of her first child in 1968, Ukeles believes that her public identity as an artist slipped into second place, because of the public perception of the role of a mother. Manifesto For Maintenance Art 1969! Initially written as a proposal for an exhibition entitled Care, the Manifesto For Maintenance Art emphasizes maintenance—keeping things clean, working and cared for—as a creative strategy. The manifesto came about after Ukeles gave birth to her first child. Suddenly she had to balance her time as an artist and mother, and had little time to create art. She noted that the famous male artists that she admired never had to make such sacrifices. She has described this feeling and the epiphany that lead to the manifesto in this way, "I felt like two separate people...the free artists and the mother/maintenance worker...I was never working so hard in my whole life, trying to keep together the two people I had become. Yet people said to me, when they saw me pushing my baby carriage, "Do you do anything?"...Then I had an epiphany... I have the freedom to name maintenance as