Be inspired by paintings of stories, landscapes, people, and more in The Layton Art Collection. Dive into the tradition of painting—from stretching a canvas over a wooden frame and prepping it with gesso, to building up layers of paint to create a finished work of art. Plus, experiment with watercolors and pastels on paper!

Use your hands and a variety of tools to build with clay! Learn a variety of hand-building techniques like pinching, coiling, and joining slabs while making clay sculptures inspired by the Museum’s Collection. Surrealist sculptures by Joán Miró, face jugs in the Folk and Self-Taught Art galleries, and a sculptural scene from Haiti are just a few of the masterworks the class will explore.

Join us for five full days of instrument investigation and art exploration! Each morning starts at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music for group instruction on instruments. Each student will rotate (in small groups) at the Conservatory learning piano, cello, percussion, and a musicianship and rhythm skills class. At lunch time students will travel from the Conservatory to the Milwaukee Art Museum. Transportation will be provided. After lunch and a good stretch in the sunshine, each student will resume instrument sampling with Conservatory faculty on the recorder. The afternoon continues as the Milwaukee Art Museum faculty take students on gallery walks and introduce them to the correlations between music and art. Students will explore visual movement, gesture, emotion, color, and composition as they create their own responsive art works each day. No experience necessary. Cellos courtesy of Brass Bell.

Explore images of people in the special exhibition 30 Americans and the Museum’s Collection, with a special emphasis on portraiture and identity. Create portraits using paint, collage, and mixed-media. And—have one of your works of art publicly displayed at the Kohl’s Art Generation Family Sundays: “Art of the Now” event on July 21!

Celebrate the history of animals in art from ancient times to the present day! Get to know early Chinese farmyard friends, 19th century English dog portraits, Folk Art weathervanes, and so much more! Create both two-dimensional and three-dimensional art in this camp.

Connect your love of writing and art! This camp is a collaboration between the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Milwaukee Writing Project. Half the class is spent making art with Museum teachers, and the other half creative writing with MWP teachers, with lots of time experiencing art in the galleries. Discover artists in the Museum’s Collection and 30 Americans special exhibition who make art with a message, and creatively respond to their work with your own writings, painting, and sculpture.

What is an art supply? Anything and everything in this mixed-media class! Explore the unusual materials that artists in the Museum’s Collection use to express themselves—from found objects like bottle caps, buttons, and bones, to non-traditional combinations like broken dishes and paint over wood. Try your hand at using unusual materials to explore the elements of art and ideas through printmaking and sculpture.

Discover the wide range of creativity found in American art! Explore art of the present day in the special exhibitions 30 Americans, and 30 Wisconsinites, and in American art from the past, including paintings, furniture, and decorative arts. And, check out some patriotic images of Americana in tattoo designs by Amund Dietsel. Make drawings, paintings, and sculpture in this art camp.