Categories
Events

What’s Happening at the Milwaukee Art Museum: Oct. 11–17

Ole Jensen, Washing Up bowl and brush, 1996. Photo courtesy Normann Copenhagen.
Ole Jensen, Washing Up bowl and brush, 1996. Photo courtesy Normann Copenhagen.

Have you seen the Museum’s newest feature exhibition, European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century? This colorful exhibition explores the work of over 100 European designers with over 200 objects, including chairs, tables, lamps, vases, watering cans, utensils, metalworks, and even a vacuum cleaner. European Design Since 1985 has been receiving rave reviews from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Third Coast Digest, OnMilwaukee.com and even the New York Times. Experience for yourself why these are not just objects!

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Categories
Art Curatorial

From the Collection—Bengtsson’s Slice Chair

Mathias Bengtsson (Danish, b. 1971) Slice Chair, 1999 Aluminum 29 1/2 x 35 x 29 in. (74.93 x 88.9 x 73.66 cm) Gift of Friends of Art M2011.11 Photo credit John R. Glembin © Mathias Bengtsson, Courtesy of Industry Gallery
Mathias Bengtsson (Danish, b. 1971), Slice Chair, 1999. Aluminum; 29 1/2 x 35 x 29 in. Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Friends of Art M2011.11. Photo credit John R. Glembin. © Mathias Bengtsson, Courtesy of Industry Gallery.

In honor of last week’s opening of European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century, I thought I’d share a bit about why the Museum has used this striking aluminum chair so heavily in the exhibition’s marketing.

You saw this chair’s curves on banners and the cover of the MAM Insider (the Museum’s Member magazine), all over the Museum’s exhibition website, and even on little details like admission vouchers.

As a lover of beautiful things, I’m drawn to the dazzling shimmer of the aluminum surface and the undulating form of this design.

As a curator who loves to talk about art, I’m also drawn to the ideas behind the chair. I feel like you could talk about this chair all day.

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Categories
Membership

A Simple Thank You Goes A Mighty Long Way…

Lakefront Festival of the Arts 2010
Lakefront Festival of the Arts 2010

When I began my journey at the Milwaukee Art Museum as Membership Marketing Coordinator, my main goal was to come up with ways to solicit new Members and to keep all of our Members happy. Everyday someone presents me with an issue, question or comment that I do my best to assist with. Sometimes the answers are easy, others take some digging and investigating but before the conversation is over, the two words I strive to hear are Thank You! That is the validation needed to let me know that I’m doing my job to the best of my ability.

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Categories
Art

From the Collection: Gustave Courbet’s “Clement Laurier”

Portrait of a man in a black suit
Gustave Courbet, Clément Laurier, 1855 (detail). Gift of Friends of Art. Photo by John Nienhuis, Dedra Walls.
Portrait of a man in a black suit
Gustave Courbet, Clément Laurier, 1855. Gift of Friends of Art. Photo by John Nienhuis, Dedra Walls.

Speaking of curious museum coincidences, here’s yet one more. I knew the identity of the man in the Museum’s Courbet painting (Clement Laurier), but what I didn’t know was that Courbet also painted a portrait of Laurier’s wife. After popping onto the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Timeline of Art History for some entirely unrelated research, I came across Courbet’s rendering of Madame Laurier, which lives in the Met! And then I immediately sat down to write this blog post instead of doing my original research. Always nice when your procrastination relates to your job, right?

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Categories
Art Events Exhibitions

What’s happening at the Milwaukee Art Museum Sept. 30-Oct. 9

It is a busy week at the Museum, with two exhibitions opening and one closing, plus free admission on Thursday, October 7. The time to visit is now!

On Thursday, September 30, experience the opening of the newest on site installation by featured artist Chakaia Booker. Manhattan-based Booker uses cut tires to create relief, free standing, pedestal, and outdoor sculpture. Over a dozen works will be on display in Baumgartner Galleria through February, 2011, for On Site: Chakaia Booker.

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Categories
Curatorial

Exploring The Body Politic

Have you ever been downstairs at the Milwaukee Art Museum? If you haven’t, next time you visit the Museum, walk by the contemporary art, as if going towards the Warrington Colescott exhibition. On the way, you will find a staircase punctuated by a hypnotic video drawing you downstairs. There you will find the interactive Chair Park made up of various reproductions of historical chairs, which you can sit on, relax, and experience fully as you converse with others sitting around you. You will also find the Word Cloud, a social tagging experiment that asks you to describe three seemingly disparate pieces with one word. Continuing east, you will come upon a small installation titled The Body Politic.

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Categories
Art

From the Collection: Edwin Landseer’s “Portrait of a Terrier”

Edwin Landseer (English, 1802–1873), Portrait of a Terrier, The Property of Owen Williams, ESQ., M.P. (Jocko with a Hedgehog), 1828 (detail). Oil on canvas
39 15/16 × 49 3/16 in. (101.44 × 124.94 cm). Gift of Erwin C. Uihlein M1967.79. Photo by Larry Sanders
Edwin Landseer (English, 1802–1873), Portrait of a Terrier, The Property of Owen Williams, ESQ., M.P. (Jocko with a Hedgehog), 1828. Oil on canvas
39 15/16 × 49 3/16 in. (101.44 × 124.94 cm). Gift of Erwin C. Uihlein M1967.79. Photo by Larry Sanders

This week is National Dog Week—and what better Museum dweller to highlight than brave Jocko (and his unfortunate companion, the hedgehog) in honor of this important holiday?

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Categories
Education

Satellite: It Begins!

Work of art on an iPad screen

The most exciting and challenging part of my job this semester is teaching the Satellite Program, a 30-year-old program meant to introduce high school students to Western art history. Not only do I have big shoes to fill (Chief Educator Barbara Brown Lee passed the Satellite torch to me this year), but I also have a couple of big questions to consider: How do I teach a solid, but fun, overview of art history using the Museum’s collection as our textbook? How can I incorporate new technology into the class to enhance our looking experience, and not distract from the artwork?

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Categories
Behind the Scenes Museum Store

Art that You Wear

I’ll admit truly: one of my favorite pastimes is helping people pick out jewelry.  I’ll watch a person walking casually along the outside rim of the cases Santiago Calatrava designed for the Museum Store, and then I’ll see the double-take and the excitement in their eyes as they hold that special item in their view.  

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Categories
Curatorial Library/Archives

From the Library and the Archives

Everyone knows what a library is. But did you know that most art museums have their own libraries? And they’re not just for Museum staff–they’re for anyone and everyone who is interested in looking at anything from an exhibition catalogue for the artist George Catlin from 1848, to a letter from Georgia O’Keeffe from 1972. The Milwaukee Art Museum’s library, tucked within the Saarinen building, is a treasure trove of anything and everything to do with our Collection.

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