Head North: On in Milwaukee
BY BIANCA BOVA
For an ideal day or weekend trip out of Chicago, make the drive (or board the Hiawatha) up to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Though not often considered an art destination, there is much of note to be seen in the city’s museums, galleries, and on the streets through the summer.
Milwaukee Art Museum –
50 Paintings
Now on view in the famed winged Santiago Calatrava-designed museum is 50 Paintings, a comprehensive survey of works created within the last five years by 50 international artists. Co-curated by the museum’s senior curator of contemporary art Margaret Andera, and renowned artist-curator Michelle Grabner, this landmark exhibition is not to be missed.
Through June 23, 2024
Idris Khan: Repeat After Me
Also on view through August 11 is British artist Idris Khan's first U.S. museum solo exhibition, which traces Khan’s investigations across time and media. Showcasing major works covering every facet of the artist’s career, the exhibition also inaugurates a never-before-seen body of paintings Khan created expressly for the presentation at the Museum. In these works, Khan synthesizes his earliest concerns with photographic reproduction while delving into the integral role of color in iconic masterworks of art history and our memories of them.
Make time to visit the permanent collection galleries while you’re there, if only to see Robert Gober’s mesmeric 1997 work Untitled (Suitcase), back on view following a years-long period of conservation.
• Mam.org
Sculpture Milwaukee, Nature Doesn’t Know About Us; Actual Fractals, Act I & II
The nonprofit organization producing exhibitions of contemporary sculpture with a dedicated focus on public art practices has three concurrent exhibitions running on the streets of Milwaukee. Nature Doesn’t Know About Us, curated by Ugo Rondinone and featuring a laundry list of bluechip artists remains on view, alongside Actual Fractals: Act I curated by the organization’s new executive director, the artist and dealer John Riepenhoff. Actual Fractals: Act II, also curated by Riepenhoff, opens this June. Pick up a map from a streetside box on arrival, and keep an eye out as you transit the city.
Nature Doesn’t Know About Us and Actual Fractals: Act I are on view through October 2024; Actual Fractals: Act II is on view
June 2024-October 2025
Kim Storage Gallery, The Beginning is Always Today
Pay a visit to Milwaukee’s newest gallery, which presents its program as being concerned with the “evolving landscape of contemporary art.” Gallerist Kimberly Storage (“Storage” being her surname, and not a modifier of “Gallery” as one might assume) presents her inaugural exhibition, The Beginning is Always Today, as a survey of work by roughly a dozen artists of varying style and pedigree in a space in the Historic Third Ward’s Marshall Building.
On view through May 4
The Suburban, Lisa Sigal
Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam’s storied gallery, now in its twenty-fifth year, currently features new work by Lisa Sigal, an artist and educator based in Brooklyn. Her work encompasses painting, sculpture, socially-engaged projects, curating, and public art. Over the last three decades, she has exhibited in galleries and institutions in North America, Europe, and Asia. With Nova Benway, Sigal was a co-founder of Open Sessions at the Drawing Center, an initiative that offers support and exhibition space to early-career artists. With Byron Kim, she now co-directs the Yale Norfolk School of Art, a summer residency program in Norfolk, CT.
Also on view are Timeology by Tyree Guyton (part of Sculpture Milwaukee’s Nature Doesn’t Know About Us curated by Ugo Rondinone) and Half Ton Box by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle.
Lisa Sigal's work is on view May-August 2024
The Haggerty Museum of Art, Image in Dispute: Dutch & Flemish Art From the Collection of the Haggerty
Marquette University’s art museum houses a surprisingly eclectic permanent collection of historical and contemporary art. This exhibition by the Haggerty’s Consulting Curator of European Art Kirk Nickel examines artistic responses to the changes reshaping community identity in the Low Countries between 1560 and 1675. Narrow in its scope and breathtaking in the lavishness of the works included, it’s a must-see for anyone craving a counterbalance to the incoming onslaught of blockbuster summer shows at major museums.
Image in Dispute: Dutch & Flemish Art from the Collection of the Haggerty is on view through May 12, 2024
• marquette.edu/haggerty-museum/