Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History @ Milwaukee Art Museum

Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History

Milwaukee Art Museum

October 25, 2024 – February 23, 2025

The Milwaukee Art Museum presents Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History, an exhibition that features nearly 40 monumental drawings, sculptures, and videos created by the artist over the past decade. The presentation emphasizes Longo’s hyperrealistic charcoal drawings.

“Robert Longo’s work is visually compelling in its exceptional detail and powerful in its reflection of his view of contemporary culture. In this age of constant immersion of images from advertisements to news footage, Longo’s drawings break through the visual deluge in captivating ways,” said Marcelle Polednik, PhD, Donna and Donald Baumgartner Director. “We look forward to engaging our audiences with his most recent body of work, a long-overdue and distinct opportunity.”

Born in 1953 in Brooklyn, Robert Longo has long examined how media images affect people. Rising to prominence in the 1980s as a leading figure of the Pictures Generation alongside Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger, Longo continues to explore the effects of our image-saturated culture. Through his practice, he engages with how people filter, retain, and process the incredible number of images we consume on a routine basis. Today, Robert Longo is widely known for his ambitiously scaled charcoal drawings that reflect on the construction of symbols of power and authority, including images of animals and nature as well as global conflicts and protest movements.

Though based on images from various media sources, Longo’s meticulous drawings are not exact transcriptions. Instead, he combines elements from multiple images with art historical archetypes and compositional elements in an effort to create what the artist considers “a perfect image.” Longo’s drawings result in a new understanding of the source images, one which reflects his views on the subject matter’s significance and urgency. Furthermore, through their monumental scale and technical precision, the images he depicts invite viewers to pause and spend time reflecting on the subject matter.

“Robert Longo’s ability to capture both the essence and experience of an image through his monumental charcoal drawings is unparalleled,” said Margaret Andera, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art. “His subject matter can range from the profound, to the inspiring, to the tragic, and the works resonate with a power that comes from the combination of Longo’s thorough consideration of the image and his meticulous technique.”

The Acceleration of History is the first solo presentation of Longo’s work in the Midwest in more than three decades. It presents this audience with a unique opportunity to engage with Longo’s more recent work and reflect on his response to the compelling issues of our time, such as the divisive U.S. political climate, war, and environmental crises. The exhibition prominently features Longo’s series The Destroyer Cycle, which he began in 2014, along with works from other series including Hungry Ghosts and Gang of Cosmos. Highlights from the exhibition include:

- Untitled (American Eagle 2017), 2017, depicts the sharp profile and soft feathers of a bald eagle, an emblem of the United States; 

- Untitled (Kenny Britt, St. Louis Rams; Hands Up), 2016, depicts a single St. Louis Rams football player standing with his hands raised and head slightly bowed in the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture. The drawing captures the player’s stance of protest and highlights the intersection of sports and social justice following the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, and subsequent protests;

- Untitled (State of the Union, Washington DC, USA, February 5, 2019), 2019, depicts former President Trump’s second State of the Union address at which many congresswomen wore white, referencing the suffragette movement. Longo draws particular attention to the more than 100 women serving in the House of Representatives of the 116th Congress;

- Untitled (Iceberg for Greta Thunberg), 2020, illustrates a tremendous wall of ice above the ocean’s surface. Serving as commentary by Longo on climate change, the drawing is based on photographs he captured during his travels to Newfoundland, Canada, where he witnessed entire sheets of ice breaking off glaciers and falling into the ocean;

- Untitled (Nascar Crash, Daytona), 2021, captures the chaotic and violent nature of a racecar crash, emphasizing the dramatic energy of the sport and serving as an allegory for society’s media consumption; and

- Untitled (The Three Graces; Donetsk, Ukraine; March 14, 2022), 2022, portrays a wedding storefront display of gowns in Donetsk, Ukraine, damaged by bullets from Russian forces. The drawing captures the stark contrast between the delicate beauty of the gowns and the harsh violence of the conflict.

Along with the monumental drawings are Longo’s large-scale, spherical installation Death Star; The Year of 2018. Created in 2022, this captivating work is composed of 40,000 .308 caliber bullets, aluminum, steel l-beams, and chains, measuring 21 feet in diameter. The number of bullets corresponds to the number of gun-related deaths in the U.S. in 2017. The sculpture serves as a commentary by the artist on gun violence and the pervasive threat of mass shootings in contemporary society—a recurring theme in Longo’s work. The Acceleration of History also includes two of Longo’s videos and two additional sculptures.

The exhibition continues the Museum’s longstanding relationship with the contemporary artist. Its collection is home to two lithographs by Robert Longo: Men in the Cities, Joanna (1983) and Men in the Cities, Larry (1983). One month before the exhibition opens, on September 21, the Museum recognized Robert Longo as the 2024 honoree at the Art:Forward Gala, an annual benefit that supports the Museum’s contemporary art program.

In addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, Longo’s work has been exhibited around the world and is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Tate, London; among others. Beyond his drawings and sculpture, Robert Longo has directed music videos like R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” (1987) and movies such as Johnny Mnemonic (1995) with Keanu Reeves. During the exhibition’s run, the Museum and Milwaukee Film will partner to screen Johnny Mnemonic: In Black and White at the Oriental Theatre on November 21, at which Robert Longo will be present and participate in a post-screening discussion.

Robert Longo: The Acceleration of History was curated by Margaret Andera, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Milwaukee Art Museum. 

A catalogue with essays written by Margaret Andera, journalist Tom Teicholz, and artist Rashid Johnson accompanies the exhibition.

MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM

700 N. Art Museum Dr., Milwaukee, WI 53202

mam.org

Derrick Adams @ Milwaukee Art Museum - Our Time Together - Large-Scale Mural Installation

Derrick Adams: Our Time Together

Large-Scale Mural Installation

Milwaukee Art Museum

Derrick Adams (American, b. 1970)

Our Time Together (detail), 2021 

Inkjet print on vinyl. 1130 in. x 179 in

Commissioned by the Milwaukee Art Museum

© Derrick Adams

Artist Derrick Adams in his Brooklyn studio  

Photo courtesy of Derrick Adams Studio 

A commissioned large-scale wall mural and sculptural installation was unveiled October 29 at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Created by Brooklyn-based artist Derrick Adams, Our Time Together is a 93-foot work that reframes historical Black narratives.  

“In Our Time Together, I highlight Milwaukee by representing commercial and social spaces known within the Black community,” said Derrick Adams. “These dwellings, and those who occupy them, are essential to the cultural, political and creative growth of American society, which is then spread out to a global audience. The installation reflects my respect and admiration for the perseverance of Black Americans in their pursuit of happiness and speaks to transformation, belonging and normalcy.” 

Inspired by Victor Hugo Green’s The Negro Motorist Green Book, a traveler’s guide for Black Americans during the Jim Crow era, Adams celebrates the rituals of everyday Black life and leisure. The monumental wall mural includes references to important sites of Black culture in Milwaukee including Gee’s Clippers, Coffee Makes You Black and the Wisconsin Black Historical Society, combined with vernacular photographs from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and dynamic figures that Adams created. By referring to sites of intergenerational congregation, ordinary moments and pop culture, the imagery references a richer and more nuanced understanding of Black life in America, beyond historical trauma. 

“Through his monumental wall mural and sculptural installation, Adams underlines the importance of commemorating—and archiving—ordinary daily activities as central to shaping community and collective identity,” said Lisa Sutcliffe, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts, Milwaukee Art Museum. “We’re honored to share and support this site-specific commission, which celebrates Black-owned businesses and culture, and asks important questions about the role of media and visual imagery in the construction of identity and cultural value.” 

The Green Book was revolutionary in its day as a travel guide that listed Black-owned businesses, restaurants and lodgings that were safe for Black travelers in the 1930s through the 1960s, during the height of the Jim Crow era of racial segregation.  

Derrick Adams visited Milwaukee in 2018 and 2019 to explore sites of importance in the Black community, including the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. He also met with Black artists and business owners, researched places listed in the Green Book, and viewed an archive of civil rights era photographs from local newspapers. Derrick Adams has stressed the importance of archives to Milwaukee, where none of the historic Green Book sites still exist. For Adams, pointing to the significance of these archives is a vital form of honoring Black innovation, Black stories and resilience in the face of adversity. 

On view through 2024, Our Time Together is the first in the Museum’s On Site series to activate the East End. The exhibition series, which began in 2001, invites contemporary artists to make new works that respond to a specific location within the Museum. Artists previously featured in the series include Chakaia Booker, Liam Gillick and Andrea Zittel. 

“On Site: Derrick Adams allows the Museum to take a different approach in programming. We have three years to explore the amazing themes of this commission: to gather together, archive Black everyday experiences and histories, and honor Black-owned businesses and service industries,” said Kantara Souffrant, Curator of Community Dialogue, Milwaukee Art Museum. “I want to use this time to co-build with community partners, organizations, and Black artists, to create events and opportunities together that help us strengthen Milwaukee’s arts ecosystem and promote a more unified community.” 

The Milwaukee Art Museum extends its sincere thanks to the 2021 Visionaries: Donna and Donald Baumgartner, Murph Burke, Joel and Caran Quadracci, and Sue and Bud Selig. The Visionaries support the Museum through annual sponsorship of three critical pillars within the Strategic Direction: Art Relevant to the Community, Robust Community Programming and Expansive Hospitality.  

Critical leadership support for Our Time Together has been provided by the Presenting Sponsors: Bader Philanthropies, with support of community engagement and installation activities, and the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Contemporary Art Society, with support for the commission and acquisition of the work. Generous Supporting Sponsorship is provided by the Herzfeld Foundation. 

MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM

700 N. Art Museum Dr. Milwaukee, WI 53202

mam.org

Updated Post 14-11-2023

Rineke Dijkstra @ Milwaukee Art Museum

Rineke Dijkstra 
Rehearsals
Milwaukee Art Museum
Through January 1, 2017

RINEKE DIJKSTRA

Marianna (The Fairy Doll), 2014

One-channel HD video installation, surround sound;19 min. 13 sec., looped.

Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery.

© Rineke Dijkstra

The Milwaukee Art Museum presents the recent video installations of internationally acclaimed artist RINEKE DIJKSTRA (Dutch, b. 1959) in Rehearsals, in the Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts. Two video installations—Marianna (The Fairy Doll) and The Gymschool, St. Petersburg—will make their museum debut in this Milwaukee-originated exhibition organized by Lisa J. Sutcliffe, curator of photography and media arts.

Rineke Dijkstra filmed the two video installations featured in Rehearsals in Russia; the works examine the intensive rehearsals of young girls. Marianna (The Fairy Doll), a single-channel video never shown in the United States, presents a touching portrait of a ballerina as she practices for an audition in the prestigious Vaganova ballet academy. The Gymschool, St. Petersburg, a three channel video, highlights the flexibility and strict discipline of a group of young rhythmic gymnasts. Both videos, which Rineke Dijkstra produced for Manifesta, the European biennial of contemporary art, in 2014, reveal complex layers of determination and fragility as the girls attempt to conceal their emotions and perfect their crafts.

Over the past 30 years, Rineke Dijkstra has produced a sensitive and eloquent body of photographic and video work. In her large-scale photographs and video installations, she is particularly interested in moments of transition, especially adolescence, a time when individuals build their own identities and begin to present themselves in the way they wish to be perceived. Known for her acclaimed photographs of bathers—adolescents Dijkstra met on beaches from Poland to South Carolina—her subjects range from teenagers to mothers who have just given birth, bull fighters fresh from the ring and military recruits. In contrast to her earlier videos of visitors and dancers in nightclubs, Dijkstra’s recent videos capture young girls who have dedicated their lives to practicing incredible athletic routines. She does not concentrate on the final, polished performance but, rather, focuses on what is in fact a more impressive feat: the repetition, resolve, determination and constant practice that it takes to become a truly gifted performer. As the girls attempt to conceal their personal emotions, Dijkstra finds beauty in the moments of imperfection when they reveal their humanity.

Accompanying the Rehearsals exhibition is The Lives of Other: Portraits from the Photography Collection. This presentation of works from the Museum’s photography collection explores the interest many photographers have had in understanding how people present themselves to the world. The exhibition is organized thematically and includes an important new acquisition, Rineke Dijkstra’s Almerisa (1994–ongoing), purchased through the Christine A. Symchych and James P. McNulty Acquisition Fund. The work is an 11-part series that follows the transition of a young Bosnian refugee as she adapts to life in the West and grows from a girl to a woman with her own child.

“This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to view Rineke Dijkstra’s video installations in the context of contemporary and historical portraiture,” said Lisa J. Sutcliffe, the Milwaukee Art Museum’s curator of photography and media arts. “Marianna (The Fairy Doll) and The Gymschool, St. Petersburg reveal Dijkstra’s continued interest in examining the nature of transformation by closely observing the act of rehearsal itself.”

Both exhibitions are sponsored by the Herzfeld Foundation and on view through January 1, 2017.

About RINEKE DIJKSTRA: Short biography

Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra (b. 1959, Sittard, The Netherlands) studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Her work has appeared in many international exhibitions and biennials including the 1997 and 2001 Venice Biennale, the 2005 Sharjah Biennial, and the 1998 Sao Paulo Biennial. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam organized a large overview of her work, Rineke Dijkstra: Portraits, in 2005, which traveled to Jeu de Paume in Paris, La Caixa in Barcelona and Fotomuseum Winterthur. In the United States, a major retrospective of her work was organized in 2013 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize in 1998. She lives and works in Amsterdam.

Milwaukee Art Museum
www.mam.org

Francis Bacon, Milwaukee Art Museum

Francis Bacon in the 1950s  
Milwaukee Art Museum
January 27-April 15, 2007

During the 1950s, painter Francis Bacon began to formulate the iconography of his dark and troubled world in paint. The exhibition, Francis Bacon in the 1950s , opening at the Milwaukee Art Museum, January 27-April 15, 2007, features nearly fifty paintings from the period in which Bacon was at the height of his creative powers. In this intensely fertile time, many of Bacon’s themes-screaming popes, howling dogs, and haunting figures trapped in tortured isolation-began to materialize as the man himself was becoming one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century.

Francis Bacon in the 1950s takes a profoundly personal look at this fascinating period in Bacon’s career and is the first exhibition to examine Bacon’s formative works. Curated by Michael Peppiatt, a close friend of Bacon’s, the exhibition provides a first-person perspective on the artist’s emerging style in the first decades of his career through paintings, drawings, and a selection of archival materials that illustrate the artist’s life and work.

At the core of the exhibition are thirteen paintings collected by Sir Robert and Lady Sainsbury, who were among the artist’s earliest patrons and, eventually, close friends. The works include loans from public and private collections across the world, a number of which have rarely been seen in public.

Throughout his life, Bacon controlled every aspect of his art, from the selection and presentation of his work to the interpretation. He commanded that all exhibitions of his art be classic retrospectives, focusing on his most recent works. As a result, his later work was more visible. In contrast, Francis Bacon in the 1950s brings together paintings from a single decade in that earlier, less visible period.

“The usual feeling you get in a Bacon show is of tortured, strangled human beings alone in a room,” explained Michael Peppiatt. “These paintings have a much more narrative quality, a much more approachable Bacon, of sorts. Someone who hadn’t decided who he was going to be, someone still in search of himself.”

By the 1950s, Francis Bacon had acquired sufficient technical prowess as a painter and expressed his often dark vision with force, but he was not fully in command of his disturbing images. Eager to explore themes and take risks in his early career, Bacon created images that contain a rawness and sense of urgency that would be lost in his later works.

To guest curator Michael Peppiatt, the fifties seemed to hold a lot of the clues to who Francis Bacon was: “That was when he located his biggest themes. He felt that he had to focus on the most important things of all to man…his existence. ”

Francis Bacon is one of the most unique and powerful artistic visionaries of post-war European art. The 1950s were the most fruitful years in Bacon’s career, but they were also the most tumultuous and tortured of the artist’s existence. During this time, the artist was regularly without a fixed address, borrowing rooms and changing studios with incredible frequency. The artist established a pattern of all-night revelry, culminating in a feverish fit of creativity-painting into the early morning hours. Much like Bacon’s approach to life, his approach to the canvas was radical, aggressive, and seething with raw human emotion.

FRANCIS BACON

Bacon’s staunchly Catholic father banished him from their Irish home when he was sixteen after learning of his homosexual activities. Bacon departed for Berlin, where he participated in the bohemian nightlife. Leaving Berlin in 1927, Bacon traveled to Paris where he saw an exhibition of drawings by Picasso that inspired him to become an artist.

The Surrealism of Picasso was not the only influence on the artist; poetry and film had a significant role in forming Bacon’s artistic vision. Bacon described his process: “I am like a grinding machine, I look at everything, and everything goes in and gets ground up very fine.” For example, Sergei Eisentein’s famous film, Battleship Potemkin (1925), had a major impact on the artist. The blood-splattered face of the screaming nurse in this film was an enduring image for the artist, and one that featured in many of his paintings, most significantly, Study for the Head of a Screaming Pope, 1952.

Although he never attended art school, Francis Bacon began to draw and paint in watercolor upon his return to London in 1929. There he established himself as a furniture and interior designer. While Bacon did not seriously pursue painting, he did exhibit a few early paintings alongside his design work. It was not until the end of the war when he began to formulate his evocative style of misshapen figures that reflect his disturbed worldview.

The artist’s work was met with financial success during the 1950s, and the artist himself became an instant hit in art circles, showing work at major galleries and moving comfortably between his aristocratic patrons and the seedy side of society. Throughout this period, Francis Bacon visited exotic places where he engaged in relationships that would shape his life and influence his work. Bacon’s relationships with his lovers were vibrant and interesting, like the artist himself; however, some had violent and tumultuous overtones. Bacon’s personal relationships often bled onto the canvas, and are evident in the violence, intimacy, and passion portrayed in his work. According to the artist: “My work is like a diary. To understand it, you have to see how it mirrors my life.”

In the early 1960s Francis Bacon settled into a studio space in South Kensington, where he resided until his death in 1992. Bacon described the studio: “I feel at home here in this chaos because chaos suggests images to me.” Heaps of photos, bits of illustrations, books, catalogues, magazines, and newspapers provided nearly all of his visual sources. Bacon added: “Images also help me find and realize ideas. I look at hundreds of very different, contrasting images and I pinch details from them, rather like people who eat from other people’s plates.”

The artist utilized the entire space: paint was mixed on the door, and scraps of clothing were used to apply paint. When the artist died, seventy works on paper were found along with one hundred slashed canvases.

Catalogue and Tour

A fully illustrated, 174-page catalogue is available.

The exhibition will be on view at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, UK, October-December 2006. From Norwich, the exhibition will travel to the Milwaukee Art Museum, January 27-April 15, 2007; then on to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, May 5-July 30, 2007.

This exhibition was initiated by the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, with funding from the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Charitable Trust. It was curated by Michael Peppiatt, who is also the author of the exhibition catalogue. The exhibition has been made possible by UBS, the global financial services firm.

Milwaukee Art Museum
www.mam.org

Laura Owens at Milwaukee Art Museum

Laura Owens 
Milwaukee Art Museum
October 18, 2003 - January 18, 2004 

Los Angeles-based artist Laura Owens is one of the most highly regarded young painters working today. The exhibition Laura Owens, on view in the Milwaukee Art Museum's Vogel/Helfaer Contemporary Galleries is the first major monographic survey of the artist's work and traces her development from 1997 to the present. Incorporating a wide and imaginative range of subjects and techniques, her work moves with ease between high and low, personal and social, figuration and abstraction. The exhibition, Laura Owens' most significant presentation to date, features approximately 20 paintings and several drawings, including a group of new large-scale works created for this presentation. 

Laura Owens is part of an international movement of emerging painters who investigate the formal issues of the medium through a highly personal blend of abstract and representational imagery. Her work incorporates an eclectic range of visual references, including English embroidery, Chinese and Japanese landscape painting, European and American modernism, and her own photography. Her unique style moves from landscape to abstraction with energetic, thick brushstrokes, fanciful childlike doodles, whimsical collage and sophisticated fine line drawings. 

"Laura Owens is one of the most important painters to emerge in the past decade," said Margaret Andera, exhibition coordinator at MAM and associate curator. "We are happy to be able to have her work on view for Milwaukeeans and visitors to enjoy." 

The Milwaukee Art Museum's presentation of Laura Owens allows viewers to track the artist's development and to forge links between works that, in many cases, have never been shown together. Laura Owens is creating significant new, large-scale paintings for the exhibition. Among them is Untitled (2002), a spacious desert landscape comprised of washes of color, strange sponge effects, and cacti drawn in outline with paint squeezed from a tube. 

Laura Owens' paintings, which challenge traditional concepts of painting, are often grandly scaled. They envelop the viewer and incorporate the walls and floors of the room in which they were made or exhibited. Her practice takes the exhibition site into account and she frequently plays with the installation of works to enhance their meaning. Installed on one wall but spaced apart, her two-panel painting Untitled (1999) features monkeys who beckon to each other across the blank space between them. The viewer who stands between the two canvases ends up occupying the virtual space of the work of art. Another work, Untitled (2000) is one of a pair of works created for an installation at Inverleith House in Edinburgh; it was both inspired by and made to compete with the view from the gallery windows of the surrounding botanical garden. 

Laura Owens' work has been included in the most important surveys of new painting, including Examining Pictures (Whitechapel Art Gallery, London and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1999), Painting at the End of the World (Walker Art Center, 2001), Painting on the Move (Kunstmuseum, Kunsthalle, and Museum für Gegenwartkunst, Basel, 2002), as well as the 1999-2000 Carnegie International and Drawing Now: Eight Propositions (The Museum of Modern Art, 2002-03). 

Born in 1970 in Euclid, Ohio, Laura Owens is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine; and the California Institute of Arts, Valencia. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Since her first solo show in 1995, Laura Owens has exhibited extensively and has enjoyed wide international exposure and substantial critical acclaim. Her works are in the collections of MOCA, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. 

The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and coordinated at MAM by Margaret Andera, associate curator. The exhibition is accompanied by a major catalogue, with essays by exhibition curator Paul Schimmel and art historian Thomas Lawson. Nationally, Laura Owens is made possible by the generous support of Mark S. Siegel, The Pasadena Art Alliance, Kathi and Gary Cypres, David Hockney and Betye Monell Burton. 

The exhibition comes to the Milwaukee Art Museum after its debut at MOCA and showing at the Aspen Art Museum (August 2 - September 28, 2003). After MAM, the exhibition travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (March 4 - May 9, 2004).

MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM
700 N. Art Museum Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53202
www.mam.org

Updated 02.07.2019

Rolling Sculptures The Art of Harley-Davidson at Milwaukee Art Museum

Rolling Sculptures: The Art of Harley-Davidson
Milwaukee Art Museum
August 1 - September 14, 2003

Rolling Sculptures: The Art of Harley-Davidson is the first museum-quality presentation to explore the timeless design and styling of America's most iconic motorcycles. Developed and curated by Harley-Davidson Motor Company as part of its official 100th Anniversary activities, with guidance from Willie G. Davidson, Harley's senior vice president of styling and grandson of one of the company's founders, the exhibition includes rare renderings, models and drawings that have never been seen before by the public. 

Often referred to as "rolling sculptures," Harley-Davidson motorcycles are recognized around the world for their stunning visual appeal. This exhibition explores the artistry that is the essence of the Milwaukee motorcycle maker's products, and features a number of important milestones in the company's rich design history. The milestones include the development of highly styled "factory customs" first introduced in the 1970s; the creation of tank designs, logos and other graphics; and the development of the new V-Rod line which adds a new dimension to the famous Harley-Davidson look. 

MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM
700 N. Art Museum Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53202
www.mam.org

Updated 03.07.2019

Danny Lyon's "The Bikeriders": Pictures and Audio from the 1960s at Milwaukee Art Museum

Danny Lyon's "The Bikeriders": Pictures and Audio from the 1960s
Milwaukee Art Museum
Through September 14, 2003

Danny Lyon's "The Bikeriders": Pictures and Audio from the 1960s takes a new look at photojournalist Danny Lyon's seminal series The Bikeriders, which documented motorcycle club culture in the Midwest. Two special aspects of this exhibition are the inclusion of previously unreleased images from the original vintage negatives, and audio recordings of interviews Lyon conducted with racers and members of the Chicago and Milwaukee motorcycle club he knew when he was shooting the series. 

By including both audio and visual, Danny Lyon's "The Bikeriders" attempts to communicate the authentic and intimate relationship of the artist to his subject, and give visitors both a realistic and romantic window into the biker world of the 1960s. 

Danny Lyon (born 1942) is one of the most significant documentary photographers and filmmakers of the late twentieth century. His career began in the early 1960s when he photographed for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in their campaign for Civil Rights in the South. Other major projects include a series on Midwest motorcycle club members, inmates in Texas penitentiaries, demolition derby drivers, the destruction of Lower Manhattan through urban renewal, revolutions in Haiti and life in inner city Brooklyn. The exhibition is guest curated at MAM by Michael Davidson and Tom Kenney.

MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM
700 N. Art Museum Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53202
www.mam.org

Updated 30.07.2019

Milton Avery: The Late Paintings, Milwaukee Art Museum

Milton Avery: The Late Paintings

Milwaukee Art Museum

November 30, 2001 - January 27, 2002

The first survey to explore the late paintings of one of the most influential American modernists, Milton Avery: The Late Paintings premieres at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Along with Milton Avery: The Late Paintings, the Milwaukee Art Museum exhibits Wisconsin Collects Avery. This exhibition contains MAM’s Avery artworks, as well as works from Wisconsin institutions and private collections.

Milton Avery: The Late Paintings, organized by the American Federations of Arts and supported by the National Patrons of the AFA, comprises more than 50 exemplary paintings produced in the last two decades of Milton Avery’s life (1885–1965). The works feature nudes, interiors, seascapes, landscapes and Avery’s eloquent Self-Portrait (1947), depicting the artist with brush in hand surrounded by his own paintings. The paintings were executed between 1947, when Milton Avery had his first gallery retrospective, My Daughter, March (a survey of his own art and a celebration of his daughter’s life), and 1963, when he was forced to stop painting due to poor health.

During his lifetime, Milton Avery combined aspects of Impressionist subject matter with Abstract Expressionism, American interest in the everyday and Abstract Expressionist color and handling, effectively uniting American traditions and modernism. He is celebrated for his bold experiments with color and his spare, graceful style. In the 1950s and early 60s, Milton Avery intensified the contradictions between representation and abstraction in increasingly larger canvases, some measuring as much as five by six feet, and explored extreme simplification of forms.

“Avery’s common subjects and simple forms invite viewers to take the images at face value, but upon careful examination, his paintings reflect a powerful play between realism and abstraction,” said Russell Bowman, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum and curator of the exhibition at the Museum. “They also have a wit and vitality that make them wonderfully accessible.”

Frequently considered the last of the American painterly figurative artists, Milton Avery is reassessed in this survey as a pioneer and forerunner of a new generation of artists. He had an enduring influence on mid-century American art and was an inspiration to younger Abstract Expressionists such as Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko, both life-long friends of Avery. In Avery’s eulogy, Mark Rothko acknowledged the debt that he and others owed, “For Avery was a great poet inventor who invented sonorities never seen nor heard before. From these we have learned much and will learn more for a long time to come.”

Wisconsin Collects Avery

The exhibition Milton Avery: The Late Paintings allows the Milwaukee Art Museum to highlight its own Avery collection and the acquisition of Milton Avery works among Wisconsin collectors. The Museum owns seven Avery paintings, which are displayed as part of its Bradley Collection. Collecting of Avery’s work in Milwaukee was led by art patron Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley’s special interest in the artist combined with the David Barnett Gallery’s numerous exhibitions of works from the Avery estate in the 1980s and 90s. Comprised of more than 30 works, Wisconsin Collects Avery includes paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints; and reflects the full range of works produced during the artist’s career.

After the presentation in Milwaukee, Milton Avery: The Late Paintings travels to the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, where it is on view from February 16 through April 14, 2002.

PUBLICATION: A fully illustrated catalogue published by the American Federation of Arts and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., accompanies the exhibition. Milton Avery: The Late Paintings features an extensive essay by Robert Hobbs, examining the philosophical underpinnings of Avery’s style and the ways in which modernist themes culminate in his late work. It also appraises the role that Avery played in the formation of the Color Field painters of Abstract Expressionism. A seminal essay on Milton Avery by Clement Greenberg that originally appeared in the December 1957 issue of Arts Magazine, and was later revised by the author, is reprinted. The renowned critic placed Avery in the vanguard of a tradition that united abstraction and representation, applying American ingenuity and an international sensibility. More than 110 pages containing approximately 52 colorplates and 35 black-and-white illustrations. 10 x 10 inches. Paperbound; $25.

MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM - MAM 

700 N. Art Museum Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53202

www.mam.org

O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum + Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection

Milwaukee Art Museum

May 4 - August 19, 2001

The Milwaukee Art Museum presents O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection, the first exhibition to showcase the artist's works from her own collection and to explore how her management of this collection shaped her public image. An intimate portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe, the exhibition features many of the works she treasured for their beauty and significance, including works which she kept hidden from public view. O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes presents visitors with a groundbreaking voyage through Georgia O'Keeffe's life as an artist, collector and craftswoman of her own legacy. It reveals a woman who actively worked to control the public perceptions of herself and of her work, demonstrating that Georgia O'Keeffe was much more than the secluded painter of desert subjects that many believe her to be.

O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: The Artist's Collection encompasses 73 works, spanning more than 50 years of art, from the 1910s through the 1960s. The exhibition draws from the Milwaukee Art Museum's significant collection of Georgia O'Keeffe's work, which is the fourth largest of its kind of any museum in the United States. O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes is the premiere exhibition in the Museum's new exhibition galleries, located in the new Santiago Calatrava-designed Quadracci Pavilion. 

After the Milwakee Art Museum, the exhibition will travel to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, where it will be on view September 14, 2001 through January 13, 2002.

O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes is co-organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and is curated by Barbara Buhler Lynes, Curator of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and Director of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Research Center, with Russell Bowman, Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

"We are delighted to have the opportunity to present the first exhibition exploring Georgia O'Keeffe's motivations as an artist, collector and patron of her own work," said Russell Bowman. "It is especially fitting that we focus on the work of this Wisconsin-born artist as we begin to open our new Quadracci Pavilion and celebrate the increased opportunities our newly expanded Museum will provide for visitors from the region and beyond."

This major exhibition explores a new perspective on the artist's life and celebrated career and demonstrates how O'Keeffe managed her collection and career in a way that countered stereotypes about her life and work. During the early years of her career, O'Keeffe's artistic output was managed by Alfred Stieglitz, the renowned photographer who became her husband in 1924. Following Stieglitz's death, Georgia O'Keeffe assumed responsibility for the administration of her career and she created a lifestyle - through the carefully phased sale of her work - that allowed her freedom to paint. At the core of this was a fluid system for ranking her work that determined which works would be made available for sale or exhibition, which would be lent or given to private and public collections, which retained, and which reacquired. By presenting a broad selection of works that O'Keeffe held in her collection or placed with public institutions, O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes offers insight into the artist's personal and artistic assessments and what motivated her to lend, sell or keep certain works out of public view.

Georgia O'Keeffe and her Collection

At the time of her death in 1986, O'Keeffe owned more than half of her body of work. Her personal collection, distinguished by its range and depth, included more than 700 sketches spanning from 1901 to 1984; originals and casts of the three sculptures; all of her works in clay; and approximately 350 works in oil and on paper created from 1915 to the mid 1970s. The collection also included approximately 250 works previously unknown to scholars and the public.

"Georgia O'Keeffe is one of America's best-known yet most enigmatic artists. The mythology that has grown up around her - her relationship with Alfred Stieglitz and her persona of self-reliant individualist taking refuge in the desert - has obscured her contributions as an artist of the very first rank," said Barbara Buhler Lynes. "We are very pleased to partner with the Milwaukee Art Museum on this important exhibition which will illuminate a dramatically new aspect of O'Keeffe's career."

Nearly one-third of the works O'Keeffe owned at her death were produced during the first seven of the more than 70 years of her mature career. More than half of these early works were abstractions, many of which had not been seen since they were first exhibited around 1920. Other early abstractions - some of which are among her most outstanding achievements - were never exhibited, including a number of early charcoal drawings, watercolors and most of the important Series paintings of 1918 ?1920 which are featured in O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes. O'Keeffe's secreting of these early abstractions and her decision to make them unavailable for exhibition are part of several strategies that she adopted in an attempt to discourage Freudian interpretations of her art, which Stieglitz applied early in her career and which remained central to much of the critical appraisal of her work. She was also aware that the market for the abstractions was not particularly strong and she retained these works, a decision that was likely part of a conscious strategy to control the perception of her work, the market for her work, as well as to maintain control of works that she regarded as particularly important. While she chose to define herself as a painter of landscapes, flowers, and bones, she recognized the importance of her early abstractions to her own history and to American art.

O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes presents works in the context of the artist's somewhat flexible ranking system which provides a broader understanding and appreciation of O'Keeffe's personal motivations and assessments. For example, substantial differences in prices provide insight into O'Keeffe's rationale for selling and her reticence to part with certain works because they were of particular importance to her personally. Georgia O'Keeffe also carefully controlled how works entered the public domain. In addition to sales of her work, she regulated gifts and bequests to institutions which further shaped public access to and perception of her work.

The Milwaukee Art Museum's Georgia O'Keeffe Collection

The Milwaukee Art Museum is a leading repository for Georgia O'Keeffe's work. Most of the Museum's first 11 O'Keeffes were gifts of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley. In fact, the artist graciously attended the 1975 opening of the Museum's last major addition which houses the Bradley collection. During the late 1990's, the Museum received a gift of 10 additional O'Keeffe works, from the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation and Jane Bradley Pettit, who continued and expanded her mother's legacy. With this acquisition and one additional work from the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, the number of O'Keeffe works in the Milwaukee Art Museum's permanent collection is now at 22, making the Milwaukee Art Museum an important center for the study and presentation of this celebrated artist's work. All the works will be permanently installed at the Milwaukee Art Museum when the exhibition concludes its travels.

O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes: Exhibition Catalogue

A scholarly exhibition catalogue includes color reproductions of all the works showcased in O'Keeffe's O'Keeffes. The catalogue also includes a preface by Russell Bowman and George King, directors of the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum respectively, an introduction by Bowman, and an extensive examination by Barbara Buhler Lynes of O'Keeffe's intentions as both collector and distributor.

O'Keeffe First Exhibition in Museum's New Galleries

The Milwaukee Art Museum is currently undergoing a $100 million renovation and expansion project that encompasses a dramatic new 142,050-square-foot addition, the Santiago Calatrava-designed Quadracci Pavilion; renovated gallery spaces; and the Cudahy Gardens, a new public garden. This ambitious project significantly expands the Milwaukee Art Museum's role as a comprehensive art institution and strengthens its position as a cultural cornerstone for the Milwaukee community and region, as well as a cultural center of national importance. On May 4, visitors will have their first opportunity to view the Museum's new exhibition galleries - located in a portion of the new building designed by Calatrava - and the extensive, renovated permanent collection galleries located in the existing buildings designed by Eero Saarinen and David Kahler. The opening of these galleries will be marked by a day of festivities and free admission to the O'Keeffe exhibition. Other portions of the Quadracci Pavilion will open September 14.

MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM

700 N. Art Museum Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53202 

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