Milwaukee Art Museum
Encyclopedia
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located entirely within the United States. It is the second largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third largest by surface area, after Lake Superior and Lake Huron...
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...
.
Beginning around 1872, multiple organizations were founded in order to bring an art gallery to Milwaukee, as the city was still a growing port town with little or no facilities to hold major art exhibitions. Over the span of at least nine years, all attempts to build a major art gallery had failed. In 1881, exhibitions were held at Milwaukee's Exposition Hall, which was Milwaukee's primary event venue at the time. Shortly after that year, Alexander Mitchell donated all of her collection into constructing Milwaukee's first permanent art gallery in the city's history.
The art gallery, the Quadracci Pavilion, was designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava
Santiago Calatrava
Santiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish architect, sculptor and structural engineer whose principal office is in Zürich, Switzerland. Classed now among the elite designers of the world, he has offices in Zürich, Paris, Valencia, and New York City....
. The Reiman Bridge
Reiman Bridge
The Reiman Pedestrian Bridge is a cable-stayed footbridge in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin that spans Lincoln Memorial Drive, connecting the Milwaukee Art Museum on the lakeshore to the east side of the downtown's central business district. The bridge was built in 2001 as part of a major expansion...
, also designed by Calatrava, connects to the pavilion and provides pedestrian access to and from downtown. With the exception of the temporary exhibition gallery, the galleries are contained in both the Saarinen building and a 1975 addition designed by local architect David Kahler. This addition was commissioned in 1969 to make room for other exhibits and donations.
History
The museum's history began in 1882 when the Milwaukee Museum of Fine Arts was founded. The museum dissolved six years later. In 1888, the Milwaukee Art Association was created by a group of GermanGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
panorama
Panorama
A panorama is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film/video, or a three-dimensional model....
artists and local businessmen; its first home was the Layton Art Gallery. In 1911, the Milwaukee Art Institute, another building constructed to hold other exhibitions and collections, was completed. The institute was built right next to the Layton Art Gallery. Alfred George Pelikan, who received his Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, was the Director of the Milwaukee Art Institute from 1926 to 1942.
The Milwaukee Art Center (now the Milwaukee Art Museum) was formed when the Milwaukee Art Institute and Layton Art Gallery merged their collections in 1957 and moved into a three-story building underneath the Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.-Biography:Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father,...
-designed Milwaukee County War Memorial
Milwaukee County War Memorial
The Milwaukee County War Memorial is a memorial building located on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, WI. It was designed by architect Eero Saarinen. Construction began in 1955 and the building was dedicated on Veterans Day in 1957. The mosaic mural by Edmund D. Lewandowski was installed in 1959.-...
.
Works
The museum is home to over 25,000 works of art. Its permanent holdings contain an important collection of Old Masters and 19th-century and 20th-century artwork, as well as some of the nation's best collections of German ExpressionismExpressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, folk and Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
an art, American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
decorative arts, and post-1960 American art. The museum holds a large number of works by Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...
, as well as many works by the German Expressionist, Gabriele Münter
Gabriele Münter
Gabriele Münter was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. Artists and writers associated with German Expressionism shared a rebellious attitude toward the materialism and mores of German imperial and bourgeois society...
.
Awards
The MAM recently gained international recognition with the construction of the white concrete Quadracci Pavilion, designed by Santiago CalatravaSantiago Calatrava
Santiago Calatrava Valls is a Spanish architect, sculptor and structural engineer whose principal office is in Zürich, Switzerland. Classed now among the elite designers of the world, he has offices in Zürich, Paris, Valencia, and New York City....
(his first completed project in the United States), which opened on May 4, 2001. The pavilion was engineered by the Milwaukee-based engineering firm, Graef, while the construction manager was also Milwaukee-based, C.G. Schmidt. The structure contains a movable, wing-like brise soleil
Brise soleil
Brise soleil, sometimes brise-soleil , from French, "sun breaker"), in architecture refers to a variety of permanent sun-shading techniques, ranging from the simple patterned concrete walls popularized by Le Corbusier to the elaborate wing-like mechanism devised by Santiago Calatrava for the...
which opens up for a wingspan of 217 feet during the day, folding over the tall, arched structure at night or during inclement weather. The brise soleil has since become a symbol for the city of Milwaukee. In addition to a gallery devoted to temporary exhibits, the pavilion houses the museum's store and its restaurant, Cafe Calatrava. The pavilion received the 2004 Outstanding Structure Award
Outstanding Structure Award
The Outstanding Structure Award is an award presented by the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering to the Engineer, Architect, Contractor, and the Owner in recognition of the most remarkable, innovative, creative or otherwise stimulating structure completed within the last...
from the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering
International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering
The International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering is a non-profit organisation with mission to promote the exchange of knowledge and to advance the practice of structural engineering worldwide in the service of the profession and society, taking into consideration technical,...
.
The museum held auditions for the 10th season of American Idol
American Idol (season 10)
The tenth season of American Idol premiered on January 19, 2011 and concluded on May 25, 2011, on Fox. The show underwent a number of changes from season nine, including the reduction of the judging panel to its original number of just three judges , a returning executive producer, a new music...
in 2010.
The Quadracci Pavilion was prominently featured in the 2011 blockbuster, Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
See Also
- ArgoArgo (Liberman)Argo is a public artwork by Russian artist Alexander Liberman located on the south lawn of the Milwaukee Art Museum, which is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.A. The artwork was made in 1974 from steel cylinders painted with a reflective white epoxy finish...
- a sculpture on the grounds.
It also has paintings by these European painters: Nardo di Cione
Nardo di Cione
Nardo di Cione , was an Italian painter, sculptor and architect from Florence. He was the brother of the more accomplished Andrea di Cione, called Orcagna, as well as Jacopo di Cione; they were important members of the Painter’s Guild of Florence...
, Francesco Botticini
Francesco Botticini
Francesco di Giovanni Botticini was an Italian Early Renaissance painter. He studied under Cosimo Rosselli and Andrea del Verrocchio. He was born in Florence in 1446 and is mostly remembered for his painting entitled "Assumption of the Virgin"; he died in 1498...
, Jan Swart Van Groningen, Ferdinand Bol
Ferdinand Bol
Ferdinand Bol was a Dutch artist, etcher, and draftsman. Although his surviving work is rare, it displays Rembrandt's influence; like his master, Bol favored historical subjects, portraits, numerous self-portraits, and single figures in exotic finery.The street Ferdinand Bolstraat in Amsterdam was...
, Jan Goyen, Hendrick Van Vliet, Franz Von Lenbach ("Bavarian Girl"), Ferdinand Waldmuller ("Interuption"), Carl Spitzweg
Carl Spitzweg
Carl Spitzweg was a German romanticist painter and poet. He is considered to be one of the most important artists of the Biedermeier era....
, Christian Bokelman ("Broken Bank"), Bougereau, Gerome ("2 Majesties"), Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
("Waterloo Bridge, Sunset Effect"), Gustave Caillebotte
Gustave Caillebotte
Gustave Caillebotte was a French painter, member and patron of the group of artists known as Impressionists, though he painted in a much more realistic manner than many other artists in the group...
, Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...
, Alfred Kowalski ("Winter in Russia"), and Max Pechstein
Max Pechstein
Hermann Max Pechstein was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke group.-Life and career:...
.