A Conversation with Mary Miss
Thursday, April 23, 2026
5:00 – 6:00 PM
Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, Room 150, University of Houston
Mary Miss, artist, in conversation with [María C. Gaztambide, Executive Director and Chief Curator of Public Art UHS, and Roberto Tejada, author and Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor at the University of Houston].
Join us as we discuss 100 Chairs and the [NY-based] artist’s exploration of place and the natural world.
Event Address
Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, Room 150, 4200 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77204
Parking
Metered visitor parking is available in Lot 16B, located across from Wilhelmina’s Grove near Moores Opera House in UH’s Arts District at 3333 Cullen Blvd, Houston, TX 77004 , or in the neighboring Elgin Street Garage.
UH students, faculty and staff with a valid parking pass, regardless of assigned zone, can park in Lot 16 (Zone B) during evenings and weekends free of charge.
For new rates and other updates, check UH.edu/parking
About the Artist
Mary Miss has been redefining how art is integrated into the public realm since the early 1970s. She is interested in how artists can play a more central role in addressing the complex issues of our times—making environmental and social sustainability into tangible experiences is a primary goal. Collaboration has been central to her work as she has developed 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.
Miss’ work crosses boundaries between landscape architecture, architecture, urban design, and graphic communication. Her vision favors site-specificity and human perception over traditional concerns of the public monument. Trained as a sculptor, her work creates situations that emphasize a site’s history, ecology, and aspects of the environment that often go unnoticed. Throughout her career, Mary Miss has collaborated closely with architects, planners, engineers, ecologists, and public administrators. Through these collaborative initiatives, Miss has realized the potential for artists to help encourage the involvement of all citizens and inspire the personal and political will to create revitalized, sustainable cities. In 2009 she initiated work on City as Living Laboratory, a framework for making issues of sustainability compelling to the public.
Mary Miss has won numerous awards, including the 2023 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2017 Bedrock of New York Award, the 2011 Design Excellence Award for The Passage, Staten Island Memorial Green project, 2001 New York Masterworks Award for the Framing Union Square project, the Centennial Medal from the American Academy in Rome in 2001, and an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Washington University in 2000. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Resident Artist at the American Academy in Rome and a recipient of several New York State Council on the Arts grants and NEA grants. City as Living Lab also received a grant from the National Science Foundation for their project, WaterMarks, in Milwaukee in 2021
Recently, Miss’ work has been shown at the Nasher in 2023, the Aldrich Museum in 2022, the Nevada Art Museum in 2021, with Thaddeus Ropac in both Paris and London in 2020 and 2021, the National Gallery of Singapore in 2018 and the Guggenheim Museum (Contemplating the Void) in 2010 among other locations.
Mary Miss, Untitled (100 Chairs)(1996)
Artist Mary Miss is fascinated with marginal spaces, the cultural divide existing between two things or on the edge, as in where the university meets and contrasts with the surrounding neighborhood. In Untitled (100 Chairs) the chairs represent not only a place for people to gather, but the people themselves. Highlighting diversity, the chairs are comprised of a variety of sizes, textures, and colors.