Milwaukee Art Museum Advanced Exhibition Schedule as of February 2008

All exhibitions and dates are subject to change; please call to verify before publication. Images available upon request.

FEATURE EXHIBITIONS IN QUADRACCI PAVILION
ON VIEW IN BAKER/ROWLAND EXHIBITION GALLERIES

Gilbert and George
June 14-September 1, 2008

Act/React
October 4, 2008-January 11, 2009

Jan Lievens
February 7-April 26, 2009

ON VIEW IN THE KOSS GALLERY

The Powerful Hand of George Bellows: Drawings from the Boston Public Library
January 10-March 23, 2008

A Revolutionary in Milwaukee: The Designs of George Mann Niedecken
April 17-July 20, 2008

ON VIEW IN SCHROEDER GALLERIA

ON SITE: Santiago Cucullu
April 24, 2008-January 4, 2009

ON VIEW IN THE BAKER/ROWLAND EXHIBITION GALLERIES

Gilbert and George
June 14-September 1, 2008

Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore, two sculptors who met in college, have been creating work for the last forty years that, according to TimeOut London, “tap into public opinion at just the right time.” Confronting the punk anger and racial tensions of the ’70s to consumer capitalism in the ’80s to the terrorism fears of today, the artists’ brightly colored photomontages, though comprised of images gathered within walking distance of the artists’ home on London’s East Side, are raw examinations of human experience. Gilbert and George features two hundred works that trace the stylistic and emotional development of the artists-now icons as the central figures in their art. The picture of British gentility in their dapper tweed suits, Gilbert and George nonetheless wanted to break free of the narrow confines of the art world and communicate beyond those limits, adopting the motto: “art for all.” This exhibition, described by the Associated Press as “bold and racy,” was organized by the Tate Modern and is their largest retrospective of any artist to date.The exhibition is curated by Jan Debbaut and Ben Borthwick, assistant curator at Tate Modern. The exhibition is coordinated at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Chief Curator Joe Ketner.

Act/React
October 4, 2008-January 11, 2009

A first-of-its-kind survey, this exhibition will explore a growing body of installation artwork where the interactivity involved is intuitive, non-technical, and performed with the entire body of the visitor. Act/React explores the physical and conceptual boundaries between artists, artworks, galleries, and viewers, testing historical and contemporary assumptions about these essential elements of art-related forums. The 10,000 square-foot installation will feature talking tables, virtual snowstorms, pathways of fluorescent light, and glowing pools of organic patterns – all dependent upon and subject to the physical influence of the visitor, and groups of visitors, in the gallery space.  Artists contributing work include: Brian Knep, Academy Award-winning computer graphics software developer for Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park; Liz Phillips, a 39-year veteran of interactive sound and multi-media installations; Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, known for their narrative, audio-driven walks through museums and cities; Camille Utterback; Marie Sester, and several others. Act/React is guest curated by George Fifield and coordinated at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Joe Ketner, chief curator. Fifield is founding Director of Boston Cyberarts, Inc., a non-profit arts organization.

Jan Lievens
February 7-April 26, 2009

Jan Lievens (1607-1674) remains one of the most fascinating and enigmatic Dutch artists of the seventeenth century. Daring and innovative as a painter, draughtsman and printmaker, Lievens created a number of memorable character studies, genre scenes, landscapes, formal portraits, and religious and allegorical images that were widely praised and highly valued during his lifetime. Nevertheless, his posthumous reputation has never risen to a level commensurate with the quality of his individual works. This phenomenon is partly explained by the peripatetic character of his career, which began in his native Leiden, but which also included extended stays in London, Antwerp, and Amsterdam, and partly by the range of styles in which he worked. This exhibition will, for the first time, present an overview of the full range of Lievens’ career, one that will allow a needed reassessment of his artistic contribution. It will include about 45 of his finest paintings, drawn from collections in England, Europe, and America, and a select group of his drawings and prints.The exhibition will be organized by Arthur Wheelock, Curator of Northern Baroque Painting at the National Gallery of Art, in conjunction with Laurie Winters, Curator of Earlier European Art at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and Lloyd DeWitt, Lievens scholar and Assistant Curator of European Painting before 1900 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Jan Lievens will be shown at the National Gallery of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Rembrandthuis in Amsterdam.

ON VIEW IN THE KOSS GALLERY

The Powerful Hand of George Bellows: Drawings from the Boston Public Library
January 10-March 23, 2008

A key figure in early twentieth-century American art, George Bellows captured the atmosphere of modern life in America at street level-its smell, its taste, its grit, and its excitement. This exhibition presents a selection of his graphic work including studies and finished drawings that evoke the first blush of his quick-witted line on paper, and a small number of lithographs that flesh out his achievement. The Milwaukee Art Museum will highlight the ten works by Bellows in the Collection, including the celebrated painting, The Sawdust Trail (1916), as well as several rare prints.This exhibition is organized by the Trust for Museum Exhibitions, Washington, D.C., in collaboration with the Boston Public Library, and coordinated at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Mary Weaver Chapin, assistant curator of prints and drawings.

A Revolutionary in Milwaukee: The Designs of George Mann Niedecken
April 17-July 20, 2008

It is easy to look back over the twentieth century and witness the rise and fall of particular styles of interior decoration. However, in placing ourselves in the shoes of those Milwaukeeans in 1907, we are able to see how the revolutionary interior designs of George Mann Niedecken must have appeared shocking, strange, and yet, intriguing. As outside of the norm as some of his creations appeared, Niedecken was able to garner a substantial list of clients from Milwaukee’s upper social strata.This retrospective of his works in the greater Milwaukee area seeks to explore his commissions as defined by the space, the client, and the designer himself. While Niedecken is often defined by his important work with Frank Lloyd Wright, it is by no means the entire story. The exhibition will also delve into his work with the Demmer, Pabst, Bogk, Harnischfeger, and Mayer families, among others, and how he employed different architectural modes for each project. His work and relationships with other Milwaukee architects will also be discussed.

ON VIEW IN SCHROEDER GALLERIA

ON SITE: Santiago Cucullu
April 24-January 4, 2009

Milwaukee-based Argentinean artist Santiago Cucullu merges biographical details from the lives of largely forgotten historical figures with places and people recollected from his own, creating composite visual storyboards that mix references to high and low culture, range across the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and freely jumble the contemporary with the historical.Cucullu’s chosen material for his large wall drawings is contact paper-no different from that found in hardware stores and used to line kitchen cabinets. He arranges a random and roughly geometric pattern of swatches on the wall before outlining and coloring in the negative space of his image in white; the whitened segments are then excised with an X-acto knife, leaving an elegantly composed multicolored cut-out ready to be glued to the gallery wall. His compositional choices, often made on-site while installing, add a performative element to an art form that already engages in a sophisticated flirtation with traditions of drawing and painting.Santiago Cucullu was born in 1969 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and currently lives in Milwaukee. He received his M.F.A. from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1999 and his B.F.A. from the Hartford Art School in Connecticut. Recent solo projects include exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Group exhibitions include the 2004 Whitney Biennial; How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Fresh: The Altoids Collection at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, New York.

MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM FACTS

The Milwaukee Art Museum includes the Santiago Calatrava-designed Quadracci Pavilion, completed in October 2001. The Milwaukee Art Museum’s far-reaching holdings include more than 20,000 works spanning antiquity to the present day.

HOURS
Open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.Thursdays until 8 p.m. (Supported by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation). Closed Thanksgiving Day and December 25.

ADMISSION
General admission prices: free for Museum Members, $8 adults, $6 seniors, and $4 students; children 12 and under free

FEATURE EXHIBITIONS
Some feature exhibitions require a separate ticket; a feature exhibition ticket includes general Museum admission. See http://www.mam.org/ for details.

GROUP TOURS
For group tour reservations and discounts, call 414-224-3842.

 

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