Categories
Art Contemporary Education Spotlight Sessions

Spotlight Sessions: “Nobody’s Watching” by Klassik

Man with headphones and a mic standing in front of Untitled Anxious Audience by Rashid Johnson
Local artist Klassik performing in front of Untitled Anxious Audience (detail), 2017, by Rashid Johnson (American, b. 1977). Ceramic tile, soap, and wax. 95 1/2 × 159 × 2 1/2 in. Purchase, with funds from Mark and Debbie Attanasio, Marianne and Sheldon Lubar, Joanne Murphy, the African American Art Alliance, and the Modern and Contemporary Art Deaccession Funds, M2017.60 © Rashid Johnson

The Milwaukee Art Museum is excited to introduce Spotlight Sessions, a virtual series featuring an artist or local luminary interpreting or responding to an artwork in the collection. This series captures the unique perspective an artist brings to either their own or another’s work of art, broadening the experience of a painting, sculpture, or other selected work. Over the next three years, six local and visiting artists will be featured in this series. Viewers will have a range of opportunities to learn about and engage with Spotlight Sessions, including on the website, through social media, and at in-person events.

Categories
Art Art News Education Exhibitions

“The Art of Now” on View in the 2021 Scholastic Art Awards: Wisconsin Exhibition

Young woman looking at the screen with stick people drawings in the background holding hands
Victoria Fernandez, “We All Hold Hands,” 2020 (detail). Acrylic and watercolor. National American Visions Award and Gold Medal in Painting. Grade 12, Pius XI Catholic High, Milwaukee, Cathy Burnett, instructor.

This year marks the 45th year the Milwaukee Art Museum has hosted the Scholastic Art Awards: Wisconsin Exhibition, celebrating the artistic talent of students in grades 7–12 from across our state. Unlike in years past, the exhibition is entirely virtual, with more than two hundred works available for viewing through March 21, 2021.

Selecting the works to include in the annual Scholastic exhibition is a challenge in normal times. When twenty-nine arts professionals from across Milwaukee’s creative community gathered online in early January to judge the over 1,800 art submissions, they all agreed this exhibition of next-generation art felt more essential than ever.

Categories
Education

“Save Your Opinions For Your Quilt”

American, "Presidents to Jackson" wholecloth quilt, 1829-37. Winterthur Museum, Bequest of Henry Francis duPont.

This month’s book salon found me revisiting a book I first read in college: How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto.  Well, we all know that just as we can never step into the same river, we can never read the same book.  Happily, it did read like a new book–partly because I didn’t have to write a paper about it afterwards– but mostly because I read it surrounded by 40 handmade quilts on display in the American Quilts exhibition.