Sculpture Milwaukee’s ‘Nature Doesn’t Know About Us’

The current installment of Sculpture Milwaukee has been up since last fall, however, like the rest of us it’s been in low-metabolism-winter-survival mode for months, waiting for its chance to come out into the light again. Promenading through Downtown looking for hidden gems of site-specific sculpture seemed a fine way to shed the residue of winter. And I was very glad I did. 

The 2022-2023 program entitled “Nature Doesn’t Know About Us,” curated by conceptual artist and all-around art superstar Ugo Rondinone, features work by artists who “combine skeptical clarity and at times humor-tinged desire to locate the intersection of spiritual and physical presence in daily life.” I’m not exactly sure what this means at an objective level, but it does manage to capture an impression of the competing and somewhat contradictory delights that are conceptual art and urban geography. Art is usually a private act that becomes a public one on reception, and urban landscapes are public until they are absorbed into the private reveries of its inhabitants. At its best Sculpture Milwaukee, and this iteration in particular, capitalizes on the potential of those divergent functions.

Slightly Scattered

“Nature Doesn’t Know About Us” is slightly more scattered than past versions of the program, where most of the work was nestled fairly politely into crannies and plazas along Milwaukee Avenue. This one takes a little more map and leg work but is worth the effort. Perhaps the most impressive moments in this season’s repertoire is Maya Lin’s Courtyard Sea. The title describes the work well: a sea of regularly spaced waves of pea gravel in a sunken courtyard behind the Wisconsin Athletic Club. This particular environment bears the familiar combination of human culture and natural patterning we’ve come to associate with her work. Without any superficial similarities, the mix of cosmic vastness and frozen singularities in Courtyard Sea somehow ties it to the profoundly moving Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. for which she is most associated. Like the city itself, the work is a perfect way to feel big and small all at once. 

A little further east in the plaza above the Milwaukee Museum of Art, Geoffrey Hendricks flips the natural world upside down in his own way. Sky/Stairs #2 (Milwaukee) mirrors the blue sky and clouds onto a staircase and brings a little nature into the concrete-paved landscape at our feet. Hendricks was a Fluxus pioneer also known for art-as-life performances in which he stood on his head, a fitting metaphor for the juxtapositions Rondinone set out to create in the exhibition. In the Baumgartner Terrace on the south side of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Rashid Johnson’s bright yellow construction The Crisis strikes an impressive silhouette against Lake Michigan. Part jungle-gym, part ode to minimalism—possibly the Mark Di Suvero 500 feet away—and part support structure for personally inflected artifacts, the piece is fine example of Johnson’s omnivorous art making sensibilities, as well as a crisp terminus for a walking tour dedicated to artwork.

As Sculpture Milwaukee matures with each year, more and more sculpture take permanent residence in our downtown. Roxy Paine’s brilliant Cleft and Tony Cragg’s Mixed Feelings, to name only two, have quickly become valued visual accessories to our daily routines. Slowly but surely all these idiosyncratic treasures will vine out and fill the plazas with artistic counterpoints to the practical and the architectural. It’s worth an afternoon stumbling upon them as they continue to propagate and develop. You’ll definitely see some great art if you do, and you just might stumble upon your city at the same time.

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Openings

Museum of Wisconsin Art-St. John’s on the Lake location in conjunction with Portrait Society Gallery

• Jerry Jordan, “Expressions for a New Renaissance” June 1 to Aug. 27
• 1840 North Prospect Avenue, 
• Reception with Artist Talk: 5-7 p.m. Thursday, June 1 (free)

Haggerty Museum of Art

• 1234 W. Tory Hill St.
• Exhibition Honoring 2022 Nohl Fellows opens at Haggerty Museum of Art
• Opening Reception: Thursday, June 1, 6-8 p.m.

The Alice Wilds 

• “Be Gay. Do Crime: The Male Nude, 1945 to the Present”
• June 2-June 24
• Opening Reception: Friday June 2, 5-7 PM

Milwaukee Art Museum

Group Therapy (Men): Black Space at MAM

In Person Free to the Public (Reservation Required)

Wednesday, June 7, 5:30–7 p.m.

Warehouse Art Museum

Noon Hour Curator's Tour with Melanie Herzog: Guided tour of Objects of Substance

Wednesday, June 7, at 12 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Gallery Talk: “Scandinavian Design in the United States,”

In Person

Thursday, June 8, 12-1 p.m.

Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum

“A Different Kind of Garden,” a solo exhibition of evocative and imaginative works inspired by Cat Gilbert's residency

Thursday, June 8 from 5–7 p.m.

(registration is free on WAM’s website)

The following institutions will be participating in QKE which begins on June 9:

Cedarburg Art Museum

Relationships: Everything Under the Sun, Sculpture by Paul Bobrowitz

May 25 through October 8

Opening Reception:  Friday, June 9 from 5–6:30 p.m.

Aquae Nguvu, Green Gallery, Hawthorn Contemporary, MARN, MIAD, Moody Zine, Lilliput Records, MAM, MOWA, MKE LGBT Community Center, Portrait Society, Real Tinsel, Sarah Ball Allis Art Museum, The Alice Wilds, Underscore, VAR Gallery, Tory Folliard Gallery and Woodland Pattern

Hawthorn Contemporary

“GRASPING TENDERNESS: EXPLORATIONS OF QUEER JOY & FREEDOM, IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING”

Opening Reception: Friday, June 9, 6–9 p.m.

Gallery Talk: 7 p.m. at the Opening Reception

MARN (Milwaukee Artists Resource Network)

QKE event

Zine and publication vending: The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP),

selected works from Lion’s Tooth, Pity

Interactive zine making experience

Friday, June 9, 5–9 p.m.

Real Tinsel

“A Long Slant of Light: Mo Costello and Ian Lewandowski”

June 9th through June 25

Opening Reception: Friday June 9 from 5–7 p.m.

Sarah Ball Allis Museum

Drag Bingo Night with Special MC Princess Janelza

Friday, June 9, 6–8 p.m.

Underscore

Sally Lawton, new works in video, photography, and writing

Reception: June 9, 6–8 p.m.

MARN (Milwaukee Artists Resource Network)

QKE event

Live music by Lilliput Records

Zine and publication vending: The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP)

selected works from Lion’s Tooth, Pity Milk Press, Braided Magazine, Moody

Interactive zine making experience

Saturday, June 10 from 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Drop-in Art Making

In Person

June 10, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

Story Time in the Galleries

In Person

June 10, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum  

Slow Art Saturday

In Person

June 10, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum  

Drop-in Tour: Architecture and Collection

In Person

June 10, 2-3 p.m.

PHYLLIS BRAMSON: “Relationships: Anywhere They Take Me”

June 10 through August 5, 2023

Gallery Talk: 7 p.m. at the Opening Reception

Opening Reception: 3–5 p.m., Saturday, June 10

VIRGINIA AHRENS: “Too Much Love / Trop d’amour, The drawings of Virginia Ahrens”

June 10 through August 5 (part of QKE)

In conjunction with Phyllis Bramson exhibition

Opening Reception: 3–5 p.m., Saturday, June 10