Sculpture Milwaukee Elevates the Landscape of Our City’s Downtown

by

Something remarkable has been happening around Milwaukee’s Downtown area the past five years. If you’ve been out and about you may have spotted outdoor art installations like Robert Indiana’s LOVE outside of the Milwaukee Art Museum or Radcliffe Bailey’s Pensive outside of City Hall depicting W.E.B. Du Bois in the same pose as Rodin’s famous The Thinker. Sculpture Milwaukee Board Member Cory Ampe believes it’s been a positive addition to Wisconsin Avenue where several pieces have been on display. Ampe says, “It makes art purely accessible. Out in the raw elements and the hustle and bustle of Downtown. It changes our environment and our whole cityscape for you whether you’re interested in art or not.”

What began as a vision of Stephan Marcus of the Marcus Corporation in the early 2000s to bring artwork, but specifically sculptures, to the streets of Downtown Milwaukee has grown into a non-profit organization called Sculpture Milwaukee. “It’s really grown into itself,” says Ampe. The group become big enough to shift to a guest curatorial model. Meaning, now they select people outside of the organization to choose the art, with only some guidance from the board of directors of Sculpture Milwaukee.

Pieces like Pensive and LOVE are part of the group’s legacy collection on permanent display. The group also hosts a new exhibition approximately every 16 months with a newly curated collection. “We used to only display from June to October, but the logistics of transporting sculpture, especially internationally, can be tricky in normal times,” says Ampe, “and because of the shipping challenges during COVID we kept some of the pieces up on Wisconsin Avenue longer than we had before.”

email newsletter iconStay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.

SIGN UP

Nature Doesn’t Know About Us

“There is this We,” the name of the current exhibition curated by artists Theaster Gates and Michelle Grabner, began in summer of 2021 and runs until autumn of 2022. This will overlap the new exhibit opening in June called “Nature Doesn’t Know About Us” which is curated by Swiss-born artist, Ugo Rondinone. “It’s unusual to have public art on display outdoors as long as this,” says Ampe. “But it's also great to have such easy access to works of art like these, especially during a time where some may not feel comfortable being too near to others indoors.”

Exhibiting two collections at the same time means that Sculpture Milwaukee’s footprint will continue to expand as they’ll need more spaces to display the works. Which means we’ll have more opportunities to interact with the art. Ampe sums up the goal of Sculpture Milwaukee saying, “Inadvertent or incidental interactivity with art is pretty cool—seeing these sculptures doesn’t require you to go to a gallery or buy a ticket expecting to be exposed to art. It’s just a part of our lives.”

Find a map of the current sculptures at sculpturemilwaukee.com. Printed maps with the newest exhibition locations will be available in June or July.