Polishing the Glass Ceiling is a three-hour performance set in the Chicago Cultural Center. Working on hands and knees, I silently polished floor and wall mosaics with my grandmother's handkerchief. Moving into the vaulted Preston Bradley Hall, I stood up and burnished the walls, stretching my arms toward the Tiffany ceiling high above. At the culmination of these domestic actions, I read aloud the names of thirty female authors, inserting them into this former Chicago Public Library alongside the inscribed names of thirty canonical male authors. A ritualized performance of symbolic gestures to honor and make visible the unacknowledged labor of female artists in this public space.