keep the contemporaryartmuseum groovy - keep the home fires burning

The starting point of the article is the ambivalence of an increased visibility of female artists and women in art institutions. Through an analysis of Mierle Laderman Ukeles' Maintenance Art, I want to investigate past feminist critiques of institutions and their consequent integration into art institutions. Beginning in the late 1960s, Ukeles' criticism can be understood as a reflection of the social expectations directed at women of the white middle-class and, furthermore, as a multilayered critique of the museum. Today, the artist represents a feminist institutional critique of the 1970s and is therefore integrated into the institution. Is her canonization a sign of increased gender equality or rather one of the co-option of criticism?