Currents 37: Lawrence Weiner: INHERENT INNATE TENSION

Influential contemporary artist Lawrence Weiner visited Milwaukee in 2013 to familiarize himself with the Milwaukee Art Museum and to choose a site for his large-scale work. He focused on the Santiago Calatrava–designed Windhover Hall and, using models of the building, designed two installations for the Museum’s grand hall. Visitors who step into Windhover Hall, step right into the site-specific installation featured in this special exhibition.

Lawrence Weiner is an internationally renowned New York- and Amsterdam-based artist. His work reached public awareness in the 1960s and the 1970s, when art was taking on new forms. Weiner’s book Statements, from 1968, is one of the key treatises of contemporary art. In it he describes the materials, processes, and composition of sculpture in such a way that the text represents or becomes the sculpture itself. This, in turn, became the basis for Weiner’s work.

Initiated in 1982, the Currents exhibition series brings significant work by living artists into the Museum. Through these exhibitions, the Museum has made key acquisitions that are now cornerstones of its contemporary art collection.