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20th and 21st Century Design Art Curatorial Exhibitions

John J. Reiss: Artist, Designer, and Collector

John J. Reiss, photographed for Wisconsin Architect, January 1968
John J. Reiss, photographed for Wisconsin Architect, January 1968

Milwaukee has been home to many talented designers over the years, but they often fly under the radar. A designer’s main concern is to convey a message or idea on behalf of a client; one’s identity is secondary, but a talented designer finds a way to stand out.

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20th and 21st Century Design Art Collection Curatorial Exhibitions Prints and Drawings

John Rieben’s Homage to Josef Müller-Brockmann

Polar bear growling next to text that says Chicago has two great zoos
John Rieben (American, b. 1935), Chicago Has Two Great Zoos, 1965–1966. Photolithograph. 50 × 35 in. (127 × 88.9 cm). Lent by John Rieben.
Polar bear growling next to text that says Chicago has two great zoos
John Rieben (American, b. 1935), Chicago Has Two Great Zoos, 1965–1966. Photolithograph. 50 × 35 in. (127 × 88.9 cm). Lent by John Rieben.

The exhibition currently on view in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Bradley Family Gallery (through June 25) is How Posters Work. On Thursday, April 6, 2017, the museum hosted a program in conjunction with the exhibition called Local Luminaries: Poster Provocation. This gallery tour welcomed luminaries from the Milwaukee area to share their unique perspectives about the works in the show.

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20th and 21st Century Design Art Curatorial

And All That Jazz!

What did socialites in Milwaukee read during the jazz age of the late 1920s?

Well, naturally, everyone was reading The Modern Milwaukeean!

The magazine circulated from September of 1928 through the spring of 1930 and billed itself as the key publication for keeping up with the latest technological trends and everything modern. It proposed modernity as a way of life, but what really set The Modern Milwaukeean apart was its modern graphic design.

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Behind the Scenes Exhibitions

MAM Behind the Scenes: David Russick, Exhibition Designer

David Russick sitting with papers on the walls behind
David Russick, Exhibition Designer. Photo by the author

This is the second in a series of blog posts highlighting a variety of different positions within the Milwaukee Art Museum. Each day, hundreds of visitors enter the Milwaukee Art Museum to stare in awe at the incredible wealth of artworks within the museum’s collection. But what can too often go unrecognized is the equally awe-inspiring work of the many museum staff members, without whom the museum in its current state could not exist. “MAM Behind the Scenes” is a blog series written by Digital Learning intern Emma Fallone to showcase the wide range of positions that make up a museum, and to reveal just a few of the many people whose work makes the Milwaukee Art Museum a source of inspiration and education.

Can you give a brief description of your job, in thirty seconds or less?

To use an analogy: the exhibition designer is the person who shows up on moving day when you’re moving into a new apartment, and helps you to arrange everything so that the space is used efficiently and everything looks really good! At the Milwaukee Art Museum, the “apartment” is usually the special exhibition space, which is cleared out and rearranged for each new show. So, every time we have a new special exhibit, it’s like one tenant is moving out and another is moving in – and their belongings are the artworks which are going to be displayed. The exhibition designer works with the curator to figure out what goes where, so that you don’t have your kitchen appliances in the bathroom, so to speak!

Categories
Behind the Scenes Exhibitions

The Design Behind Color Rush

Color Rush Advertisement
Color Rush Advertisement
When the design team was tasked with developing the identity for Color Rush: 75 Years of Color Photography in America, a comprehensive exhibition charting the history of color photography in the United States from 1907 to 1981 and including nearly 200 objects, we knew we had our work cut out for us. The work in Color Rush is robust, ranging from early experimentation to oversaturated mid-century advertisements to the conceptual thrust of the late 1970s. We wondered, how would we create a strong typographical mark that would encompass and speak for such a full and varied exhibition?