Holly Metz is a writer and public historian. She's been writing about social, legal, and cultural issues—and where they intersect—for over twenty-five years, and has been documenting American art environments for nearly as long. Her writing has appeared in a wide range of newspapers, journals, and magazines, including Metropolis, Preservation magazine, Raw Vision (U.K), Poets & Writers, Southern Art Quarterly, Public Art Review, Threepenny Review, and the New York Times. For nine years she was a contributing writer for The Progressive and the American Bar Association publication Student Lawyer.
Holly began her research into art environments in 1987. Beginning with her adopted home state of New Jersey, she worked with photographer Robert Foster to document the state’s art environments for a traveling exhibit (Two Arks, A Palace, Some Robots and Mr. Freedom’s Fabulous Fifty Acres), then proceeded to document environments in two-dozen states over the next ten years. Their findings informed their class at the New School in New York City and numerous lectures at institutions in the United States and England.
As a public historian, Holly founded the Hoboken Oral History Project. She serves as editor of its "Vanishing Hoboken" chapbooks series. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.
