Milwaukee Art Museum's 'Portrait of Milwaukee'

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Copy photo by John R. Glembin

Edward Rohlke Farber, Foreman’s Safety School - 9th Street Auditorium, Milwaukee Library, ca. 1940. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Janet and Marvin Fishman to the Edward Farber Memorial Collection, M1983.388.

What defines a city’s character? Its neighborhoods? The people who populate the city?

The Milwaukee Art Museum’s new exhibition, “Portrait of Milwaukee,” takes an in-depth look at the city from the 1920s through the late ’80s as seen through the lens of photojournalists and commercial photographers. Their cameras captured key moments in the birth and life of the city. Be it the civil rights movement or the punk and New Wave movements, “Portrait of Milwaukee” explores the main thoroughfares as well as nooks and crannies of the neighborhoods that define Milwaukee—and by extension, its inhabitants.

“This exhibit came out of wanting to create an exhibit that highlighted the museum’s permanent collection and our city,” says Ariel Pate, assistant curator of photography. “The last big ‘Milwaukee show’ we did of historic photographs was in 1996 [“City Stories,” curated by Tom Bamberger], and it seemed like it was time to look again at our city as subject matter, especially right now, as the city is experiencing so many exciting changes.”

Many of the exhibition’s 114 photos will be on public view on for the first time. These include images from the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) collection as well as from the Milwaukee Public Library’s Historic Photo Archives. In addition, the Harley-Davidson Museum contributed 17 photos, and still more have come from the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel. Given changes in the past quarter-century, it was time to revisit and update Milwaukee in the 21st century.

Historic Photos That Set the Stage for Our Current Moment

“This time period is not the distant past, and many of the subjects of the photographs are still with us today,” Pate explains. “When I read about contemporary events, I’m constantly thinking of photographs in this show: Today’s teen activists remind me of the peaceful housing marches led by the NAACP Youth Council in the 1960s; the Bucks recent hot streak and the city’s embrace of Giannis Antetokounmpo brought to mind a 1971 photograph in the show of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was named MVP that year.”

And in Milwaukee, what goes around comes back around again—literally and figuratively. Where once were the trolleys now comes The Hop. “You can see the tracks right down Wisconsin Avenue in a photo in the show from around 1923,” Pate says. “This time period stood out as ‘setting the stage’ for the current moment in Milwaukee.”

Many of the works are done on gelatin silver print and are stark reflections and timely reminders of the social turbulence of our not-too-distant past. A 1965 black-and-white print—Milwaukee Civil Rights Workers Charged with Disorderly Conduct after Protesting Construction of New Segregated School—is a simple yet direct head-on image of four workers of different races standing silently, yet their faces are full of emotion. Another shows Father James E. Groppi four years later being interviewed in a county jail office, the space surrounding him highlighting his isolation. And just a year later, we see Welfare March, Madison, with Father Groppi, surrounded by throngs in the bright sunlight.

The pictures range from sports highlights such as veteran newspaper photographer Dale M. Guldan’s Anticipating a Rebound, Julius Erving, Philadelphia Sixers, Looks Hoopward along with his Teammates and the Milwaukee Bucks’ Junior Bridgeman, from the early 1980s, the anticipation amazingly captured in a moment where all the players are looking in totally different directions. Fellow photographer Richard Brodzeller’s Lone Traveler (1973) features a topic many Wisconsinites are all too familiar with: the dreaded return of winter in all its snowy wrath. Brodzeller symmetrically shows two city snow plows tilted on each side of the photo with the lone traveler in the middle—the silence deafening; the determination of the traveler courageous.

And the subjects are as diverse and eclectic as the city itself: fireworks, city workers, Wisconsin Avenue, bus stops, politicians’ houses, parks, portraits, the Kinnickinnic River Basin. The images flow and merge and come together, much like Milwaukee today.

A major part of Milwaukee’s storied history is the city’s industries, from Miller Brewing—Lyle Oberwise’s Miller “High Life” Twirler (1954)—to Harley-Davidson with Pohlman Studios’ black-and-white prints with clear, distinct images of gas tanks, cam gears, tires and, yes, motorcycles.

The joint effort with Harley-Davidson and MAM began earlier this year with the first annual Milwaukee Museum Week according to Jim Fricke, curatorial director for the Harley-Davidson Museum, and in conjunction with the MAM exhibit, the motorcycle company is featuring its own exhibition, “Building a Milwaukee Icon: Harley-Davidson’s Juneau Avenue Factory,” featuring images from the 1920s—an important period of growth for the company.

“We elected to focus on the decade during which the existing factory buildings were constructed,” Fricke explains. “It was a period of unprecedented activity in technological and industrial growth, locally, nationally and globally. Among other things, it was literally electrifying—the first buildings were constructed to maximize natural light and ventilation prior to the addition of electric lights.”

In many ways, “Portrait of Milwaukee” is a remembrance of things past but also a reflection of many of the same sights, places and feelings that exist in the city today. “If you look at photographs of the city from 1900 or earlier, they seem like they were taken in a totally different city: There are commercial shipping schooners downtown on the river, Victorian ladies in hoop skirts and horse-drawn carriages,” explains Pate, adding, “By contrast, the photographs that I chose for this exhibit show a Milwaukee that doesn’t feel that far away from our contemporary moment. These are Milwaukeeans living in the same neighborhoods we are living in today, working in many of the same jobs and with the same values and challenges.”

Through March 1, 2020 at the Milwaukee Art Museum. For more information, visit mam.org.