Milwaukee Art Museum BlogWith a new exhibition opening this week and “Holiday By Design” Family Sunday, it is a very busy time here.
This Thursday, December 9, the Museum opens its newest exhibition, Framing a Decade: Acquisitions of Prints and Drawings, 2001-2011. Featured in the Koss Gallery, this exhibition showcases 50 of the over 3,000 works on paper that the Museum has acquired since the Quadracci Pavilion opened in 2001. It includes works by Picasso, Rembrandt, Gauguin, Nauman, Francis, and more.
This week, there are a lot of opportunities to experience the Museum, including an American Ceramics Circle Symposium; free admission for everyone on Thursday, November 4, and free admission for veterans on Saturday, November 6; a lecture with Luke Beckerdite on the Art In Clay exhibition on Thursday at 6:15 p.m.; and a European Design Since 1985 Express Talk.
This Thursday, November 4, is Target Free First Thursday. Admission to the Museum is FREE for everyone, thanks to Target. It’s a great opportunity to experience everything the Museum has to offer. And while you are here, be sure to experience the European Design Since 1985 Express Talk at 12 p.m.
This is a busy time of year at the Museum. On view is European Design Since 1985 and On Site: Chakaia Booker, and Portrait Miniatures closes on October 31. That means there’s plenty to do here, and lots of reasons to visit.
On Tuesday, October 26, the Museum will start its “Soup for Soup” food drive to benefit Hunger Task Force of Milwaukee. Every visitor who makes a donation at the Museum will receive a voucher for a complimentary cup of soup at the Museum’s own Cafe Calatrava. “Soup for Soup” runs through Sunday, November 14. Stop by the admissions desks to learn more.
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!
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.
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.
Between each exhibition in the Museum’s Baker/Rowland Galleries, the walls are entirely rearranged. This past weekend, I watched (bringing donuts, getting in the way, occasionally being helpful) as the installation crew moved walls and started spackling and painting in preparation for European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century.
As the team moved large 12 foot x 10 foot x 2 foot wall sections from their American Quilts exhibition layout into the new European Design arrangement, I was surprised at what was revealed behind—layers and layers of paint that colorfully represents our exhibition history.
Does the Museum show work by Wisconsin artists? What’s the deal with frames? What’s the piece that has a hole in the floor? How do curators deal with new technology? Any ancient Chinese paintings? And the all-important question: are we hiring? These are just a sampling of the many juicy questions asked by visitors on Ask a Curator Day, last week.
Did you ever wonder what goes into producing Museum audio guides? I imagined that it involved a script, some research and a microphone, but I had no idea what the technical side looked like. I didn’t know if we recorded this at the Museum, or how everyone manages to sound so clear and polished. Now I know the answer to both.
Preparations for the design of an exhibition begin many months, sometimes years, in advance of installation. For us at the Milwaukee Art Museum, planning for the placement of art in our main exhibition begins the minute the previous exhibition opens. For instance, when Street Seen opened in January, the next week the exhibition designer removed little to-scale black and white photographs from the gallery model, and our team went to work carefully placing pictures of miniature quilts for the summer’s American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection exhibition.
