Grohmann Museum is ‘Working on the Railroad’

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Image via The Grohmann Museum

Gil Reid railroad painting

Railroad painting by Gil Reid

Gil Reid (1918-2007) was a man who loved his work. From 1956 through 1978 he was employed by Milwaukee’s Kalmbach Publishing as illustrator and assistant art director—specifically for a related pair of magazines, Trains and Model Railroader. Reid was also responsible for the annual Amtrak calendar from the ‘70s through the ‘90s. He is the focal point of the new exhibition at the Grohmann Museum, “Gil Reid and Friends: Working on the Railroad.” If he ever drew, photographed or painted anything aside from trains, that work isn’t evident in the exhibit.

The Grohmann’s director James Kieselburg speaks of Reid’s “affinity for the railroad and points to one of the unusual items displayed, a 1937 college essay booklet (Topic: A Short History of Pullman Cars) illustrated in accomplished cartoon style. The instructor drew a red line through one of Reid’s captions—a grammatical error—and gave no comment on the illustrations.

The Grohmann’s mission is to house and display the art of work and industry of which railroads are a facet. “Retired railroad executive Chris Burger and his wife Rita have made annual gifts to the museum of much of Gil’s calendar work for Amtrak, along with other illustration work,” Kieselburg says. One of Reid’s paints depicts Chris Burger at the throttle of a locomotive. The exhibit is “a natural for us,” Kieselburg continues, given Milwaukee’s historic ties to the rail industry and the area’s many trainspotters and model railroad enthusiasts.

Much of the exhibit is dedicated to groupings of Reid’s Amtrak calendar preparations, including his photographs and detailed drawings of trains and railyards, juxtaposed with the end product, the yearly illustrated calendars.

But occasionally, as Kieselburg puts it, Reid’s focus “was elsewhere,” even if trains were present on the canvas. Two his paintings in the exhibit are textural and atmospheric plays of light and hard surfaces. In one, the train occupies a horizontal line nearly midway between a brown field of earth and a sky suffused with black locomotive smoke. 

The exhibit is called “Gil Reid and Friends” because it also includes outstanding black and white photographs by O. Winston Link and David Plowden from the 1950s, stark images of men and machines from the final days of steam, as well as more recent photos in black and white and color by Chris Burger. “Gil Reid and Friends: Working on the Railroad” occupies a portion of the museum’s second floor dedicated to the transportation industry. It will be up through December 22.