Sculpture Milwaukee’s fifth annual public exhibition in Downtown Milwaukee has doubled in size this summer. Since pandemic-related challenges delayed last summer’s installation, and drastically curtailed most Downtown activity, the board and participating artists chose to leave the 2020 show in place through the winter. Fifteen of those works will remain until autumn, joined by this year’s new arrivals, most of which are now installed. It’s a total, by my count, of 31 timely, thought-provoking, entertaining artworks. The new works will be here until autumn of 2022.
Most of the pieces are placed along Wisconsin Avenue from the Milwaukee Art Museum to the Central Library. A few speak their minds in the Third Ward. The site and positioning of each piece is determined in collaboration with its artist-maker and for maximum impact. The works change the environment. The settings add meaning. Sometimes the works seem to play off each other. They draw you on. You look for the next one. Sometimes you want to go back. You can, of course. There’s no hours or charge.
This year’s works were chosen by guest curators Michelle Grabner and Theaster Gates. Both are artists with remarkable resumes. Oshkosh born and Milwaukee based, Grabner is a well-known nationally. Her work was part of the inaugural Sculpture Milwaukee exhibition in 2017.That piece now lives on the Riverwalk south of Wisconsin Avenue. She’s served on the board of the organization and in various committees. Although she’s curated major national exhibitions, this is her first for Sculpture Milwaukee. She brought in Gates as her creative partner. Chicago born and based, and a member of the University of Chicago’s visual arts faculty, he’s won international renown as a social practice installation artist. That means his assemblages are meant to foster understanding and inspire needed change.
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Moments of Connection
For the first time, the exhibition has a title: “there is this We.” The words are taken from a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks (2017-2000), who in 1950 became the first Black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. The poem, “An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire,” describes our too-brief moments of complete connection with another human being. It can perhaps apply as well to the connection of an artwork and its viewer; and more idealistically, to a city and its art.
In Grabner’s words, the title “honors a belief in social change through the provocations of the artistic imagination.” Current board chair Wayne Morgan offers this: “Theaster and Michelle are inviting us to consider some incredibly challenging questions and give thought to how we intend to move forward as a community and as a country.”
A plaque near each work gives viewers helpful information and good thoughts about that piece. Guided walking tours and open-air bus tours are available with a Sculpture Milwaukee membership, as are audio tours in which you’ll hear directly from the artist on your cell phone. Visit sculpturemilwaukee.com for information.
Something for Everyone
Or just enjoy your own thoughts, as Meg Strobel, the organization’s new marketing and community engagement director, emphasizes: “I think what’s great about our exhibition is we offer something for everyone, whether you’re an art aficionado or just want to get out and explore the city in a new way. Art always reflects the moment in which it was created, and we’ve just come through a pretty serious moment. And artists are able to get to the crux of some of these issues and explore them in really unique ways.”
In a digital tour of the exhibition (I’ve since visited in person), Strobel points as an example to Alison Janae Hamilton’s 16’ tall stacks of hand painted tambourines. They stand in the small park overlooking the Calatrava at the east end of Wisconsin Avenue, where Mark di Suvero’s orange metal star still stands. Inspired by a Florida hurricane that proved disastrous for immigrant workers, the title of Hamilton’s sculpture is The peo-ple cried mer-cy in the storm. The rattling of the work’s 400+ tambourines during strong windstorms is a cry for attention to climate change.
The same little park includes Richard Wood’s humble Holiday House, on hold from the 2020 exhibition. It faces the grand Northwest Mutual plaza where another hold over, Roxy Paine’s haunting, twisting, leafless silver tree dominates a grove of real trees.
Nearby, the large, classically crafted head of the artist Jim Dine watches all this and more. Sculpted tree branches become bars around his aged face, trapping him, holding his gaze. If that’s too sobering, look across the street to the west. Julian Opie’s Natalie Walking is there at the stop light; a tall LED sign of a woman walking in a looped cycle. The lines are simple but perfect. It’s unexpected and completely charming.
A bit further west, you’ll find Geometric Plateau by Thaddeus Mosley, a 90-year-old sculptor from Pittsburgh. It has three intricately chiseled, nicely balanced shapes for you to read as you will. Then, on an elevated section of the corner building, a beautifully sculpted young Black man stands in casual dress with a hoodie and sneakers. The artist is Thomas J. Price, a young Black sculptor from London. This is the first time his work has appeared in America. It’s called Within the Folds (Dialogue 1). It matters.
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And that’s just for starters. This is the best summer ever for public art in a city increasingly famous for it.
