Madeleine Keller & Janet Ziff, The Fine Art of Waitressing, Just Above Midtown/Downtown, Invitation, 1982
Offset print, 8 1/2″ x 11″, torn on top to mimic a restaurant check.
“The Fine Art of Waitressing” is a multi-media presentation about waitressing that includes slides, a filmed demonstration, interviews and a fashion show of specially designed aprons by Janet Ziff and Madeleine Keller.
Keller and Ziff’s performance piece reflected growing concerns (also expressed in other works like Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s “Maintenance Art” and Martha Rosler’s “Semiotics of the Kitchen”) about the under-recognition of what was historically women’s labor.