Who?

<p>The beating heart of a socially engaged art project is the web of relationships that it brings together. Artists find fresh ways to interact with people who compel them and complement their own aesthetic expertise. Artists can often point to an experience that awakened their desire to partner with someone not centered in the art world but rather in the throes of an issue or power imbalance they want to address. Such artists may become allies to and co-authors with people whose expertise comes from another source than art. Or, the artists may be able to compassionately challenge perspectives that they disagree with because they are held by people they care so much about.</p> <p>Issue #2 begins with a conversation about partnerships between three artists and staff/constituents of three New York City municipal agencies—Mierle Laderman Ukeles with the Department of Sanitation (DSNY), Rad Pereira with foster LGBTQ+ youth in the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), and A Blade of Grass Fellow Rachel Barnard with officers and clients at the Department of Probation. Ukeles’ Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! Proposal for an Exhibition “CARE,” 1969, made a profound connection between women and sanitation workers as the people charged with taking care of the world on a somewhat invisible, day-to-day level, setting off a forty-plus year partnership with DSNY. Her identification with san men (and the few san women at the agency) led to large-scale ballets performed with garbage trucks, inspiring a new chapter in Ukeles’ art making and bringing more public recognition to the people who clean NYC streets. Ukeles inspired NYC’s Public Artists in Residence program (PAIR), which since 2015 has embedded artists in various agencies. We hear briefly from Rad and Barnard about their very recent PAIR partnerships…</p>