For more than twenty years two benches (thrones) created from recycled aluminum have been a hilltop landmark of Danehy Park in Cambridge. They are part of Mierle Ukeles’ broader installation called Turnaround/Surround (1993–2004), which includes fragrant plantings, a welcoming ‘glassphalt’ path and dance floor designed with recycled colored glass.
All these are due for restorations soon, but I want to post at least once before then. The focus here is on selected views of the thrones during different weather and park activities. I hope they convey my admiring fascination with the textures, design, interplay and durability of these functional unique artworks. Quotes and links help explain the artist’s perspective and purpose.
“Ukeles has often explored our relationship with the things we throw away. Danehy Park was once a brickmaking facility, then a town dump where material from Red Line subway construction was added to the trash. In 1990, the city created the park on top of it all. Take the accessible “glassphalt” path to the top of the hill where you will find thrones for a queen and king and a galaxy “dance floor.” “ (quote from Cambridge Public Art Tour Card, Pedals)
“Visitors who ascend the landfill mound can enjoy views of Cambridge and Boston while seated on large cast-aluminum semicircular “thrones” made from recycled cans. (The close observer will notice Ukeles’s signature on the back of a throne.)” ( quote from Art in America article by Kirsten Swenson, Sept 2024, about Earthworks by Women )
“Ukeles has transformed the landfill into a destination that feels special, even celebratory, where visitors can take in the city and the natural environment, including a restored wetlands at the landfill base that was part of her plan. Turnaround/Surround is intended as a place for collective, communal experience—after all, as Ukeles points out, a landfill is a “social sculpture,” made from the “contributions” of every citizen.” ( quote from Art in America article by Kirsten Swenson, Sept 2024, about Earthworks by Women )
“Turnaround/Surround occupies the site of a Cambridge landfill that was active from the 1950s to the 1970s. As you walk through Danehy Park, there are meadows and playing fields but no signs that you’re entering an artwork. This is as Ukeles intended—Turnaround/Surround is meant to be continuous with the larger environment.”(quote from Art in America article by Kirsten Swenson, Sept 2024, about Earthworks by Women )
“Mierle Laderman Ukeles (born 1939) is a New York City-based artist known for her feminist and service-oriented artworks, which relate the idea of process in conceptual art to domestic and civic “maintenance”.Since 1977, she has been the Artist in Residence (unsalaried) of the New York City Department of Sanitation.]” ( quote from Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Wikipedia)
” Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s dense and radiant Queens Museum retrospective is not only about maintenance but about commitment: a groundbreaking practice of labor and care that the artist invented and to which she has remained devoted for decades.” (quote from review by Johanna Fateman of MAINTENANCE ART, Mierle Laderman Ukeles Queens Museum )
KEY RESOURCES
“Earthworks by Women in Cities Have Been Less Visible Than Heizers and Smithsons in Remote Locales. That’s Changing” by Kirsten Swenson, Art Forum Sept 2024: https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/earthworks-by-women-in-cities-1234716162/
Cambridge Public Art Tour Card, Pedals, Turnaround/Suround: https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media/Files/artscouncil/publicart/publicarttourcardspdf/CA_PublicArt_Cards_Pedals.pdf)
Cambridge Arts, Public Art Map: https://www.cambridgema.gov/arts/publicart/publicartmap
Mierle Laderman Ukeles,Ronald Feldman Gallery: https://feldmangallery.com/artist-home/mierle-laderman-ukeles
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mierle_Laderman_Ukeles
Turnaround/Surround, Danehy Park, near 99 Sherman Street, Cambridge, MA
“Since 1977, when Mierle Laderman Ukeles became the official, unsalaried Artist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation—a position she still holds—she has created art that deals with the endless maintenance and service work that “keeps the city alive,” urban waste flows, recycling, ecology, urban sustainability and our power to transform degraded land and water into healthy inhabitable public places.” (quote from Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Ronald Feldman Gallery)
Art Outdoors 