Saint Kate - The Arts Hotel Opens (Grandly)

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Lon Michels, Down Town Ladies, Acrylis on fiberglass mannequins, acrylis on umbrellas and acrylic on shoes, acrylic on wood base, 14'-20' high, base: 48" x 36", 2019

In late May, shortly before Saint Kate - The Arts Hotel opened for business and while it was still very much a construction site, I talked with performing arts director John Price and visual arts curator Maureen Ragalie about their visions for the Marcus Corporation’s new hotel and arts center on the corner of Water Street and Kilbourn Avenue, on the site where the Intercontinental Hotel once welcomed visitors. What sounded too good to be true back then is now, a month later, an inspiring reality with an official grand opening scheduled for Friday, July 12.

The beautifully designed galleries, restaurants and bars are proving popular, and the rooms are filled to 90% capacity. I felt entirely at home at a fine performance by the brand-new resident theater company ARCo of two short plays from Jean-Claude van Itallie’s seminal 1965 experimental trilogy America Hurrah. They were presented in a perfectly workable, comfortably intimate theatre called the ARC, built in a former conference room, all under the guidance of artistic director Nancy Kresin.

Saint Kate’s first and second floors are virtually an art museum; you can spend hours looking, and the quality of the work deserves that. The tiny “Closet at St. Kate” on the second floor alone is worth a visit. As he used to do in his own home, Milwaukee artist and curator John Riepenhoff has fixed a group of small paintings and sculptures by Yoohee Chang into a bottomless box hung near the room’s ceiling. You climb a step-ladder, stick your whole head into the box and enjoy 360 degrees of artworks inches from your eyes. And there’s whole wall of work by Dale Chihuly just outside the Closet. Kiki Smith is there, too, along with several wonderful pieces by Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg. Jason Yi installed a gigantic organism of caulking foam and wood that crawls above you as you take the staircase. There’s a beautiful installation by New York artist Lisa Beck in the ground floor’s “Gallery at St. Kate,” right beside the Museum of Wisconsin Art—Downtown’s debut exhibition of works by 10 Milwaukee artist-photographers. A wild bouquet of multicolored, spotted, headless humans inhabits the “Space at St. Kate,” on view through the big window in the Milwaukee Center’s east hallway.

That’s just for starters. Ragalie, a Milwaukee native with a background in museum studies, spent the last several years in New York City working for small galleries and for the international David Zwirner mega-gallery, one of the biggest on earth. Then, she worked for artspace.com as a liaison between emerging artists and a broad range of mid-sized galleries. “When I decided to move back to Milwaukee,” she says, “I realized I had this very interesting weird skillset that didn’t translate well here. There’s not a mega-gallery scene or an e-commerce scene. It made me rethink my relationship to the art world and what my role in it should be.”

International and Local

Ragalie’s work at Saint Kate’s is twofold: building a “seed collection” for long-term housing there and curating changing shows by international, national and regional artists in the galleries “because I think it’s really important to have a cross-pollination of ideas between the major art centers and what’s happening in Milwaukee.” To that end, she’ll bring artists to town for talks and other events. Saint Kate’s is not facilitating sales, although artists can sell their works if they like.

As I wandered the lobby’s central bar and lounge, the hotel concierge, Bernard Runo, played Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” so sweetly on his violin. Later, Opera on Tap would perform, and then jazz guitar genius Jack Grassel would close that day’s musical shows. Music of many genres is scheduled almost daily from 5 p.m. until midnight or later. Everything I encountered, including the ARCo performance, was authentic, personal and radically non-commercial.

How did this happen? We have to thank art lovers Greg and Linda Marcus, of course, who believed in the premise of a visual art hotel, of which there are several successful international models. As John Price tells it, “It’s been proven that people will visit a visual arts hotel. But then, you get this other notion: what if we also did performing arts? There’s no model for that, which means that it’s wide open in terms of possibilities and approaches. A hotel is a center of profit, but the voices and movements of artists are more about prophecy; so, it becomes a land where prophecy and profit take up residence together in an appropriate way. I have to believe it’s possible because I’m the one responsible for carrying it off.”

Price is a leading Milwaukee jazz bass player. He’s been a band member, friend and musical mentor to Greg Marcus, a jazz pianist, for many years. The performing arts role at St. Kate is his idea. “The Marcus family is providing the room—kind of like a chalice,” Price says. “They give freely to fine arts organizations every single year, so of course they would do this naturally. It’s good for the whole city, a place where everybody wins because there’s a chance for everyone to showcase themselves. The entire city can showcase itself.”

In fact, he wants every artist with ideas for St. Kate’s to contact him. “Their ideas live here,” he says. “I would be crazy to limit the scope of what can happen just to my own ideas. Life doesn’t work that way. What I am is a good midwife.” I’m proud to say I performed with Price many times at the legendary Café Melange, an arts nightclub in the former Wisconsin Hotel downtown that is also part of Price’s inspiration for Saint Kate’s.

Artists-in-Residence

Price is married to Kresin. Together, they founded the Tamarack Waldorf School in town. Kresin is a professional actress and director who’s worked in ensembles and independently with companies in Milwaukee and Chicago. She has a doctorate in transformative studies. She treasures the work of the experimental theaters of the ’60s and ’70s.

ARCo, she writes in a vision statement, “is a multi-skilled group of writers, actors, singers, musicians, dancers, designers and creatives who are interested in: investing in a transformative group process; deconstructing the old; birthing the new; performing cutting edge pieces. […] Works by other transformative theater-makers will be produced alongside original works created by ARCo. […] It promises to be an artistic home for those with interest in physical theatre and experimentation outside the norms of traditional living-room drama. [...] Core members will sometimes be joined by other talented Milwaukee collaborators.”

ARCo’s nine ensemble members are paid regular salaries as performing artists-in-residence. “They are the vanguard and an iconic symbol of what the hotel is doing in the case of the performing arts,” Price says. Hired from an audition process, they are young, trained, talented, multi-skilled and have resumes that variously include The Rep, Renaissance Theaterworks, Next Act, Cooperative Performance, the Constructivists, Outskirts, Voices Found Repertory, Bard and Bourbon, Theatre Nervosa and the Milwaukee Fringe Festival.

Danceworks will debut its new performance company at the ARC in November. According to Price, the Milwaukee Ballet will also have a relationship with the space. And that’s for starters, too. “My biggest hope,” he says, “is that it’s a space that artists, collectors and art lovers can think of as their own and know they have access to, a space where something can happen that doesn’t normally happen.” And Ragalie adds: “I’m hoping we can become a hub and draw attention to what’s happening in Milwaukee—not just at Saint Kate’s, but to direct people to other actions in the neighborhood that you should look at while you’re here; let them know that these are artists you should pay attention to.”

Saint Kate - The Arts Hotel is located at 139 E. Kilbourn Ave. Galleries are open daily, pop-up and scheduled performances almost daily. Performances of America Hurrah start at 8 p.m. July 19-20, 31 and August 1, 7-8, 16-17 and 23-24. Visit saintkatearts.com for information.