Photo courtesy of Museum of Wisconsin Art
Alexander Marquis, "Portrait of Emeline Ganson," 1855. Oil on canvas (with face covering for your protection)
So many of our daily regimens and routines have been disrupted during the current pandemic. It’s been a net loss for human continuity in general, for sure; however, certain aspects of life have benefited. The pandemic has led many of us to take personal inventory of our lives and reassess what’s most important. Gardening, baking, hiking all seem to have come out ahead so far in 2020. Art institutions too have been handed time to reevaluate their positions and missions. The Museum of Wisconsin Art (205 Veterans Ave, West Bend), for one, has reimagined the hanging of its permanent collection, currently open to the public providing you have a facemask and a willingness to social distance inside the galleries.
Due to health-based wayfinding measures the rehung collection will be viewed for the time being through the five galleries, from North to South, past to recent. This view of the collection provides a coherent evolution of the state’s history and cultural consciousness. And I can’t imagine a more opportune moment to be reminded of where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we might go. A lively, colorful portrait of Michael Jackson by African American artist Romano Johnson acts as a foil on the outside wall as one enters the galleries from the north stairwell; a bookending teaser for our visual journey. We begin this trip in the middle of the 19th century, where we’re greeted with aspirational portraits of Milwaukee’s early elites, all prim, proper, and white, securely in the European tradition, but with fairly clumsy execution. This isn’t a qualitative criticism of what’s on display as much as a statement about the cultural status and resources in the area at the time. The portrait of Henrietta Kilbourn by George J. Robertson tells us about the orthodoxies of art in the early days of settlement, and the desires of its patrons to reflect themselves accordingly.
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As we progress through years and galleries we witness the evolution of local art into naturalism, through realism, social realism and beyond, with increasing sophistication. The muscular paintings of Carl von Marr represent the pinnacle of academic virtuosity, and MOWA, the custodian of many of his finest works, has kept a gallery devoted to him largely in-tact. Von Marr practiced at a crossroads in the narrative of modern art, where academicism and modernism diverged, and the museum has left the glorious and mesmerizing installation of intricate glasswork by local sculptor Beth Lipman undisturbed in the center of the gallery. These two works provide starkly contrasting possibilities of compositional maximalism, past and present, and just a little more foreshadowing in the ongoing narrative.
Cultural Hotbed
MOWA’s rich collection of social realist work follows, representing the State’s maturation into a political and cultural hotbed. Robert von Neumann’s POV views into working-class activity stand out, taking us into the sooty milieu of Wisconsin’s progressive, pro-labor workshops. Von Neumann’s energetic paintings remind us of the prominence of social realism between the wars, before quickly falling into disfavor. Moving through bizarre, and wonderful examples of local surrealism by Norbert Kox, John Wilde and Theodor Czebotar, we arrive in the contemporary and most satisfying sections of the show. The wild diversity is refreshing and welcome, especially after a long viewing hiatus. We are greeted in the fourth gallery by familiar visionary landscapes by Tom Uttech, including “Dream Net,” his ghostly painting of a moose that stood sentinel at the top of the main stairs for years, as well as some welcome new additions.
One of these is a large work from his “Migration” series which is enswarmed on the wall by a textile-like arrangement of locusts and other insects by Jennifer Angus. The final gallery introduces us to new paintings by Rafael Salas that wouldn’t be out of place between von Neumann and Kox, a lively mixed media and text-based work by Sharon Kerry-Harlan, and a rollicking, nostalgic tribute to Fond du Lac by Tom Berenz. On the way out, we pass a Jason Yi polystyrene wall sculpture that contributes one more dimension to the contemporary multiverse on display, where individuality reigns over categorical orthodoxies and no material is off limits.
The rehung collection admirably reflects the formal, conceptual, and social diversity of art practice at the moment, in full color and formal idiosyncrasy, reminding us how far we’ve come since those staid portraits of Henrietta Kilbourn. The downside of today’s diversity is that it’s difficult to shorthand based on prescribed categories and tropes, which is a good thing in the end, but requires more work from viewers and writers. Yes, diversity and abundance demand greater effort and attention from us all, but the payoffs of variety and disrupted expectations are greater still.
To read more visual art reviews by Shane McAdams, click here.
