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Exhibitions
Exhibitions are organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum unless otherwise noted.
BAKER/ROWLAND GALLERIES
An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain
Dec 3, 2021–March 27, 2022
Organized by Carnegie Museum of Art. Coordinated at the Museum by Lisa J. Sutcliffe, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts
An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain was the first comprehensive survey of the work of photographer An-My Lê (American, b. Vietnam, 1960). The exhibition featured large-format black-and-white and color photographs from across Lê’s career, which she has dedicated to exploring the complexity that envelops war. Lê draws on the traditions of survey photography and classical painting to create evocative images that look upon the landscape as a witness to history.
Major support for this exhibition was provided by Lannan Foundation and the William Talbott Hillman Foundation. Additional support was generously provided by the Virginia Kaufman Fund, the Henry John Simonds Foundation, the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Jennifer and Karl Salatka, the Virginia S. Warner Foundation, Deb and Sam Berkovitz, and the Gouge Family Fund.
Generous support for the exhibition catalogue was provided by Marian Goodman Gallery.
Presenting Sponsor:
Herzfeld Foundation
Supporting Sponsors:
Lawrence W. Oliverson and Donna N. Guthrie
Milwaukee Art Museum’s Photography Council
David C. & Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation
Exhibitions originally scheduled for 2020 at the Milwaukee Art Museum were made possible by the 2020 Visionaries: Donna and Donald Baumgartner, John and Murph Burke, Sheldon and Marianne Lubar, Joel and Caran Quadracci, Sue and Bud Selig, and Jeff and Gail Yabuki and the Yabuki Family Foundation.
Program Highlights
Performance: Present Music “Ablaze,” presented in partnership with the Jewish Museum Milwaukee and featuring No-No Boy, a multimedia project by Vietnamese American artist Julian Saporiti
Sponsored by Shepherd Express and New Music USA Panel Discussion: “Landscape, Trauma, and Generational Healing, ” with Dr. Nan Kim, Associate Professor and Public History Director at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Dr. Mai See Thao, Director of Hmong Studies and Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Global Religions, and Cultures at University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh; Corey Fells, photographer, veteran, and co-founder of Black Space; and Nancy Smith-Watson, Program Director and co-founder of Feast of Crispian, Inc.
Virtual Expert Series: An-My Lê in Conversation with Viet Thahn Nguyen
Sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation
All the Museum’s exhibitions, and the programs that connect the exhibitions to the community, are made possible thanks to the generosity and vision of the Visionaries—the leading philanthropic circle of the Milwaukee Art Museum whose annual sponsorship supports three critical pillars within the Strategic Direction: Art Relevant to the Community, Robust Community Programming, and Expansive Hospitality.
2022 Museum Visionaries:
Donna and Donald Baumgartner
Murph Burke
Joel and Caran Quadracci
Sue and Bud Selig
Jeff and Gail Yabuki and the Yabuki Family Foundation
BAKER/ROWLAND GALLERIES
Always New: The Posters of Jules Chéret
June 3–Oct 16, 2022
Curated by Nikki Otten, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings
Always New: The Posters of Jules Chéret presented 109 posters, prints, and drawings by French artist Jules Chéret (1836–1932) that represent the French interest in novelty at the end of the 19th century. Drawn from James and Susee Wiechmanns’ gift to the Museum of more than 600 works by the artist, the exhibition was organized into five sections that highlighted the pleasures his posters publicize: performances, fashion, newspapers, leisure travel, and consumer products. Always New brought Chéret into focus as a master of his medium and demonstrated how these posters reflect larger societal issues in their depictions of everyday Parisian life.
Presenting Sponsors:
James and Susee Wiechmann
The Wilhelms Family Foundation
Leadership Sponsor:
Milwaukee Art Museum’s Friends of Art
Contributing Sponsors:
Russ Jankowski
Katharine and Sanford Mallin
Milwaukee Art Museum’s Print Forum
Media Sponsor:
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Program Highlights
Opening Lecture: Dr. Karen L. Carter, Professor at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University
Focus Tours + Mini French Lessons
Streets of Paris, a weekend celebration of global Francophone culture, featuring a screening of The Myth of a Colorblind France and panel with Dr. Boubakary “Bouba” Diakite, Associate Professor of French, Marquette University; Dr. Nat Godley, Assistant Professor of History, Alverno College; and Dr. Tami Williams, Associate Professor of English, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Presented in partnership with Black Lens, Milwaukee Film. Sponsored by PNC Bank, Stevens Point Brewery, Black Lens, a pillar of Milwaukee Film, East Town’s Bastille Days.
Expert Series: Artist Ericka Walker, commissioned by the Museum to create a poster for the exhibition
On Site: Derrick Adams: Our Time Together Oct 29, 2021–ongoing
Curated by Lisa J. Sutcliffe, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts
On Site: Derrick Adams features a multimedia wall mural and sculptural installation Derrick Adams (American, b. 1970) made specifically for the Museum’s East End, on commission. Inspired by Victor Hugo Green’s The Negro Motorist Green Book (published 1936–66), a traveler’s guide for Black Americans during the Jim Crow era, Adams celebrates the rituals of everyday Black life and leisure and reframes historical Black narratives.
Derrick Adams: Our Time Together is the first in the Museum’s On Site series to activate the East End. The exhibition series, which began in 2001, involves inviting contemporary artists to make new work that responds to a location within the Museum.
Presenting Sponsors: Bader Philanthropies, Inc.
Milwaukee Art Museum’s Contemporary Art Society
Supporting Sponsor: Herzfeld Foundation
Program Highlights
Expert Series: Derrick Adams in Conversation with Dr. Adrienne Brown, Associate Professor, University of Chicago, and Director of Arts+Public Life
Sponsored by Milwaukee Art Museum’s African American Art Alliance and Contemporary Art Society
“On Site: Derrick Adams”: Block Party, a lakefront party that honored and celebrated everyday Black life and leisure in Milwaukee
Sponsored by Bader Philanthropies
Currents 38: Christy Matson
Feb 25–July 17, 2022
Curated by Monica Obniski, Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, High Museum of Art and former Demmer Curator of 20th- and 21st-Century Design. Coordinated at the Museum by Margaret Andera, Interim Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art
Currents 38 presented more than 40 woven compositions by Los Angeles–based artist Christy Matson (b. 1979), who thinks of herself as a painter. Her woven pictures participate in minimalism, abstraction, and decoration. She employs historical weaving structures and techniques to explore memory; the gendered history of textile production, long considered a feminized form of labor; and issues around sustainability.
The Museum’s Currents series began in 1982 to highlight new trends in contemporary art; Matson is the first fiber artist to be featured in the series.
Presenting Sponsor: Milwaukee Art Museum’s Friends of Art Research was supported by a Craft Research Fund grant from the Center for Craft. Exhibitions originally scheduled for 2020 at the Milwaukee Art Museum were made possible by the 2020 Visionaries: Donna and Donald Baumgartner, John and Murph Burke, Sheldon and Marianne Lubar, Joel and Caran Quadracci, Sue and Bud Selig, and Jeff and Gail Yabuki and the Yabuki Family Foundation.
Program Highlights
Expert Series: Christy Matson in Conversation with Shannon Stratton
Sponsored by the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Contemporary Art Society
A O SMITH CORPORATION GALLERY (AMERICAN ART GALLERY K230)
American Memory: Commemoration, Nostalgia, and Revision
Curated by Brandon Ruud, Abert Family Curator of American Art, and Phoenix Brown, Abert Family Curatorial Fellow
Told in three chapters across the galleries, this exhibition examined how images—paintings, prints, and documentary photographs—shape our memories and understanding of historical and current events. American Memory amplified underrepresented voices and analyzed the impact of slanted narratives, employing social history to move beyond purely aesthetic readings of the works.
Chapter 3: Responses and Revisions
Oct 1, 2021–Jan 16, 2022
This third and final chapter highlighted how the images we use and see in the schoolroom, in books and travel guides, and online and through social media can shape our memories and perceptions of historical events.
Distinctive Individuality: George Mann Niedecken’s Milwaukee Interiors
March 25–Oct 9, 2022
Curated by Brandon Ruud, Abert Family Curator of American Art, and Chyna Bounds, Assistant Curator
Local furniture designer and self-described “interior architect,” George Mann Niedecken (American, 1878–1945) blended the simplicity and natural forms emphasized by the Arts and Crafts movement and Prairie School with the decorative embellishments associated with the Art Nouveau and European Secessionist styles. Drawn from the Museum’s collection and its George Mann Niedecken Archives, Distinctive Individuality spotlighted Niedecken’s approach to design for creating a home in complete harmony.
The exhibition focused on Niedecken’s Dining Table and Eight Chairs for the Frank T. Boesel Residence. Never before shown at the Museum, the set featured recently restored chairs.
PABST BREWING COMPANY GALLERY (EUROPEAN GALLERY S202)
In the Dark: European Prints, 1600–1910 Jan 14–June 5, 2022
Curated by Nikki Otten, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings
In the Dark featured 20 prints that revealed the many facets of darkness artists have explored over the centuries. Some depicted physical spaces, others adopted the dark as a metaphor for despair or grief, and still others represented primordial states from which life emerges. Made between the early 1600s and the early 1900s by artists including Paul Gauguin, Francisco de Goya, Käthe Kollwitz, and Rembrandt van Rijn, all of the works were drawn from the Museum’s collection. Together, they offered an opportunity to reflect on the generative potential of darkness during some of the shortest days in Wisconsin.
Convoy of Wounded: An Artist’s Experience of War
Layton Art Collection Focus Exhibition
Aug 5, 2022–March 26, 2023
Curated by Catherine Sawinski, Assistant Curator of European Art
Edouard Castres’s painting Convoy of Wounded (Franco-Prussian War 1870) received wide acclaim after its display at the 1872 Paris Salon. A citizen of neutral Switzerland and member of the newly formed International Red Cross, Castres (1838–1902) was uniquely positioned to capture the humanitarian disaster that occurred toward the end of the Franco-Prussian War. Castres and the conflict that inspired the painting were brought into critical focus in this exhibition.
Program Highlights
Lecture: “War Imagery in Nineteenth Century France,” with Katie Hornstein, Associate Professor of Art History at Dartmouth College
Sponsored by Layton Art Collection Inc.
Herzfeld Center For Photography And Media Arts
Shifting Perspectives: Landscape Photographs from the Collection
March 18–July 3, 2022
Curated by Lisa J. Sutcliffe, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts, and Ariel Pate, Assistant Curator of Photography
Shifting Perspectives explored how photography transforms our understanding of the physical world— of the places we call home. Photographers have been documenting and reflecting upon the landscape since the early 1800s, when camera technology made capturing an image possible. Their pictures often trace the effects that political and social forces, including war, climate change, manufacturing, and development, have on the land. Together, the more than 65 photographs in the exhibition traced the various ways we see and understand the landscape, from metaphor to speculative terrain.
Exhibitions in the Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts sponsored by: Herzfeld Foundation
Program Highlights
Artist Gallery Talk: Pao Houa Her
Haberman Local Luminaries, featuring in-gallery reflections by Dr. Chia Youyee Vang, PhD, Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Dr. Ermitte Saint Jacques, Assistant Professor, African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; and Antonio Butts, Executive Director, Walnut Way Conservation Corp.
Sponsored by the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Photography Council Community Voices Audio Guide, with Leana Yang, Hmong American Women’s Association; Rafael Smith, Citizen Action of Wisconsin; Josie Lee, Ho-Chunk Nation Museum and Cultural Center; Ck Ledesma, Milwaukee County Parks; Dr. Fran Kaplan, Nurturing Diversity Partners; and Billie Carter-Rankin, Milwaukee Art Museum
Schroeder Galleria
2022 Scholastic Art Awards: Wisconsin Exhibition
Feb 5–March 20, 2022
The annual exhibition that celebrates young talent in our state was back on-site this year. More than 300 artworks by Wisconsin students in grades 7–12 were featured in the 2022 Scholastic Art Awards: Wisconsin Exhibition at the Museum. The juried exhibition is drawn from some 2,000 submissions in the categories of Architecture & Industrial Design, Ceramics & Glass, Comic Art, Design, Digital Art, Drawing & Illustration, Editorial Cartoon, Expanded Projects, Fashion, Film & Animation, Jewelry, Mixed Media, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture, and Senior Art Portfolios.
This program was supported with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Contributing Sponsors:
The Heller Foundation and Mary Ellen Heller in memory of Avis Heller
Peter and Debra Johnson
An anonymous donor
Traveling Exhibitions
Scandinavian Design & USA: Människor, möten och idéer, 1890–1980
(Scandinavian Design and the United States: People, Encounters and Ideas, 1890–1980)
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden
Oct 14, 2021–Jan 9, 2022
Scandinavian Design og USA 1890–1980
(Scandinavian Design & USA: 1890–1980)
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, Norway
March 18–Aug 7, 2022
Milwaukee Scenes
Central Library Art Gallery, Milwaukee Public Library
Jan 28, 2020–ongoing
