Categories
Art Curatorial Exhibitions

Telling Tattoos: Harold Wright Remembers Amund Dietzel

Harold Wright with Amund Dietzel tattoos. Photo by the author.
Harold Wright with Amund Dietzel tattoos. Photo by the author.

Because he was a tattoo artist, Amund Dietzel’s most valuable works will eventually disappear by nature of his canvas.  The Museum’s Tattoo: Flash Art of Amund Dietzel exhibits photographs, equipment and designs of Dietzel’s work. In this interview, Harold Wright, a prep cook for the Museum’s own Café Calatrava, adds his own personal remembrances, and several Amund Dietzel tattoos in the flesh.

Wright was personally inked by Deitzel in his tattoo parlor. Here he recounts meeting Dietzel at the age of eighteen following the recommendation of his older brother, after which Wright and Dietzel developed a friendship that spanned many years – not to mention six tattoos.

Read on to find Wright’s story in his own voice.

Categories
Art Library/Archives

A Museum’s History in Moving Image

Film still: View in to the Layton Art Gallery’s sculpture court, circa 1957. Milwaukee Art Museum, Institutional Archives.
Film still: View in to the Layton Art Gallery’s sculpture court, circa 1957. Milwaukee Art Museum, Institutional Archives.

One of my favorite film gems in the Museum’s audio-visual archive is rare film footage of the institution’s changing location and architecture. This film–soundless, in black and white, circa 1957–features the Layton Art Gallery, the Milwaukee Art Institute, and the Eero Saarinen-designed War Memorial and Milwaukee Art Center building, into which the museum moved officially in 1957.

While the 15-minute film is rather grainy and hazy, the images are nevertheless a stunning peek into the last days of the Layton Art Gallery and the Milwaukee Art Institute in the early 1950s before their demolition, and the subsequent rise of the War Memorial building and the (then) Milwaukee Art Center. Excerpts from this film will be featured in our upcoming 125th Anniversary Exhibition, but if you’d like a sneak peek, read on.