Friday and Saturday, Jan. 22-23, is 2016’s inaugural Gallery Night and Day. The 35 participating venues around the Downtown area are setting the bar high with exhibitions of local and general interest. To name but three:
Carol Summers (b. 1925) is regarded as one of the 20th century’s most important printmakers. In the early ’60s, Summers pioneered “monumental” woodcuts that liberated the medium from the size restrictions of small hand presses. Summers’ prints are notable not merely for their size, but also their watercolor-like quality resulting from the artist’s innovative method of spraying mineral spirits on the printed woodcut with a straw. For Gallery Night and Day the David Barnett Gallery (1024 E. State St.) is hosting a two-day opening reception for “Carol Summer Woodcuts” from 5-9 p.m. on Friday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. on Saturday.
MSOE’s Grohmann Museum (1000 N. Broadway) is promoted as “the world’s most comprehensive collection of art dedicated to the evolution of human work.” The Grohmann is hosting a special Gallery Night event that features art inspired by the North Shore Line, the railway that connected Chicago and Milwaukee from 1916 through 1963. The line set the standard for electric interurban transit and a celebrated poster campaign set the standard for advertising such transit. Guest curators John Gruber and J.J. Sedelmaier assembled the exhibition from the Milwaukee Public Library’s collection and will give a presentation at 7 p.m. on Jan. 22. The Grohmann Museum is offering free admission on Friday, Jan. 22, from 5-9 p.m. and Saturday, Jan. 23, from 12-6 p.m.
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“A Person is a Noun: Contemporary Portrait Photography” is too much exhibition for one gallery, so Portrait Society Gallery (207 E. Buffalo St., fifth floor) and Dean Jensen Gallery (759 N. Water St.) have joined forces to mount a cooperative retrospective of the state of the contemporary portrait photography. Among the local and national photographers featured is former photography curator of the Milwaukee Art Museum Tom Bamberger. The photos were taken in the ’80s and find the artist working with Laser Recording Film that yields a resolution far superior to any commercial film, giving the photos, in Bamberger’s words, a surface “like marble.” Selections from Sally Mann’s “Family Pictures” series will also be shown. Mann’s intimate documents of her young children growing up in rural Virginia met with controversy upon publication and drew accusations of child pornography. Others regard it as one of the greatest contemporary photography books. You can decide at the opening reception, held at both venues, from 6-9 p.m. on Jan. 22.
