Category: Art

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Art

It’s all in the clay: Chipstone’s new “making” video

A screenshot from Dan Ollman’s video of Steve Ferrell, which can be viewed in Chipstone’s round video room on the Museum's Lower Level
A screenshot from Dan Ollman’s video of Steve Ferrell, which can be viewed in Chipstone’s round video room on the Museum's Lower Level

I have previously blogged about the Dave Project, which centered around a Dave Drake pot, and about Chipstone’s round video room at the Milwaukee Art Museum. When we were first planning the Dave Project we had envisioned having a reproduction of Dave’s pot made to tour around with us. We asked Steve Ferrell, a talented potter and Dave enthusiast in Edgefield, South Carolina (the town where Dave Drake was from) to complete the ambitious task. Steve had not only seen Dave pots, but owns Dave pot fragments, and uses clay from the same source as Dave did in his work. While speaking with Dan Ollman, the Milwaukee artist and filmmaker who filmed the Dave Project, we decided that a video of Steve making both the Dave pot reproduction and a South Carolina face jug, would be a good addition to our round room videos on the Milwaukee Art Museum Lower Level.

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Art Art News Events

What’s Happening at the Milwaukee Art Museum: Jan. 31-Feb. 6

Greetings Packers fans! For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with Museum news, the Museum has placed a friendly-but-serious wager on Super Bowl XLV, featuring your Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The wager: If the Green Bay Packers win the Super Bowl, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh will loan its Renoir “Bathers with Crab” to the Milwaukee Art Museum. If the Steelers win, the Milwaukee Art Museum will loan its Caillebotte “Boating on the Yerres” to Carnegie for a few months. It’s French Impressionist v. French Impressionist for the Lombardi Trophy and bragging rights this Sunday, February 6.

But before that, come down to the Museum and see the Caillebotte in person! Thursday, Feb. 3 is Target Free First Thursday, and a great opportunity to head down to the lakefront.

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Art Art News

American Industrial Design Stamps

2011 "Pioneers of American Industrial Design" postage stamps from http://www.usps.com

One could say that I’m jumping the gun on this post. But I’ll argue that I’m giving design-lovers six months fair warning, and I can’t contain my excitement: The United States Postal Service has announced their 2011 special stamps. In July we’ll see a sheet celebrating the “Pioneers of American Industrial Design”!

The stamp series honors twelve of the nation’s most important and influential industrial designers. Their combined work encompasses everything from furniture and appliances to office buildings and locomotives, and it shaped the look of everyday life in the 20th century. This new pane of stamps will be “Forever” rate, so I’ll be stocking up to use these for years of rent checks and utility bills.

The stamps are beautifully designed–and they beautifully connect to many design objects in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s collection.

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Art Art News

Milton Rogovin—“Photography could be an instrument of social change”

Milton Rogovin (American, 1909–2011), from Buffalo's Lower West Side Revisited series, 1972-1992. Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Suzanne and Richard Pieper. M1999.217.1-.3-.243.1-.3

Photographer and social documentarian Milton Rogovin passed away last week at 101. His legacy can be found in his photographs of the underprivileged in the United States, enlightening us and provoking our compassion. His strong drive to explore social inequality led him to political strife and changed his life forever.

The Milwaukee Art Museum held an exhibition of Mr. Rogovin’s photographs in 2001. If you would like to see images of his work and learn more, the exhibition website can be viewed online.

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Art

What’s Happening at the Milwaukee Art Museum: Jan. 24-Jan. 30

Welcome to another busy week at the Milwaukee Art Museum!

On Tuesday, January 25, Curator Mary Weaver Chapin will give a Gallery Talk on Framing a Decade in the Koss Gallery. The exhibition highlights sixty of the over three thousand prints and drawings that the Museum has acquired since 2001.

On Wednesday, January 26, be sure to tune in to your local FOX affiliate to watch American Idol, featuring your Milwaukee Art Museum! According to the judges, Milwaukee had the most talent of any other city, so this is one audition show that’s not-to-be-missed.

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Art

From the Collection: Squirrel with Grapes Netsuke

View of three netsuke, Asian galleries

What’s the smallest thing on view in the galleries right now? These netsuke might just be it. In fact, they’re so tiny that you may have missed them the last time you were in the Asian Art Gallery. Don’t feel bad—just go back and visit them. They’ll be happy to see you. These quirky little figurines seem trivial and cutesy (a squirrel holding grapes?) but they actually served a very important purpose in Japanese society. Not too shabby for a little object no bigger than your thumb.

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Art Exhibitions Library/Archives

The ‘American Engineer’, My ‘Big Chief’… Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography. Frank Lloyd Wright. London: Longman’s, Green and Co., 1932.
Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography. Frank Lloyd Wright. London: Longman’s, Green and Co., 1932.

As we approach the opening of Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century (February 12–May 15, 2011) this is the perfect opportunity to highlight one of the library’s most interesting volumes:  a first edition of Frank Lloyd Wright: An Autobiography (1932).

Written with wit and charm, Frank Lloyd Wright’s (1867–1959) An Autobiography is an account of the master architect’s philosophy and work, as well as the story of his personal life, turmoil and all.  From his youth in rural Wisconsin to his apprenticeship with Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan in Chicago (where Wright found inspiration for his signature style), through to the tragic fire and murders at Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s autobiography tells the tale of a man that was truly larger than life.

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Art Events Exhibitions

What’s Happening at the Milwaukee Art Museum: Jan 17-Jan 23

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to everyone. The Museum is open today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the Kohl’s Art Generation Studio is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Kids 12 and under are free, so brave the elements and bring the whole family. (Don’t forget the heated, underground parking at the Museum!)

On Tuesday, January 18, Chief Educator Barbara Brown Lee will be giving a Gallery Talk on “The Lunatic Fringe” at 1:30 p.m.

This Friday, MAM After Dark returns with MAD HOT, a night filled with Salsa dancing, live music by Cache, a salsa tasting station, Bloody Mary’s courtesy of Jimmy Luv, and as always, DIY and Photobooth, plus food by Cafe Calatrava.

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Art Curatorial

From the Collection–The Newsboy

American (Pawtucket, Rhode Island), The Newsboy, 1888. Carved, assembled and painted wood with folded tin. Milwaukee Art Museum, The Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art. Photo by John Nienhuis.

The Museum often uses The Newsboy as a poster child for our spectacular Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art. The education department includes it on our Family Audio Tour, and the energetic boy has a place of honor on view in the Museum’s Folk & Self-Taught Galleries on the Upper Level. However, I personally didn’t know a thing about this wonderful….er.. sculpture? Statue? Sign? I didn’t even know what to call him!

For this “From the Collection” I thought it was time for me to learn more about this Museum treasure.

The Newsboy is a trade sign. An artful sculpture, certainly, but also an object that was made with a pragmatic purpose in mind. In 1888 Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where this trade sign was made by an unknown artist, a larger percentage of the population would have been illiterate. Merchants relied on eye-catching storefront signs like this one to grab the attention of passers-by without the need for words.

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Art Curatorial

Gothic Ivories Project

It’s always exciting to be contacted by colleagues at other museums about objects in the Museum’s permanent collection.  It helps us find out more information about what we have!

In early 2010, I was contacted by Dr. Catherine Yvard, the project manager for the Gothic Ivories Project at the Courtauld Institute in London.

The goal of the project was to produce an electronic catalogue of images and information about sculptures in ivory made in Europe between 1200 and 1530, as well as modern imitations.  This database, which required the cooperation of many different institutions around the world, would give researches a powerful tool.

The last comprehensive survey of Gothic ivories was published in 1924, so you can see that an updated catalogue is overdue!

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