Hidden in plain sight within Milwaukee’s neighborhoods are pockets of public art – blocks packed with murals and sculptures that many people give only a fleeting glance. Art advocates Brad Anthony Bernard and Erik Eide want folks to take a closer look.
A year ago, the duo launched Art Tours MKE, a small business giving year-round guided tours of art-filled corridors, some well-known (the Third Ward) and others overlooked (West Vliet Street and Bronzeville). Leading groups on foot and via rideshare or bus, Bernard and Eide share stories about the artists and their work, such as the restoration of Ammar Nsoroma’s The Patchwork, a painted-brick tapestry in Bronzeville of influential Black Milwaukeeans. Sometimes the artists themselves show up for Q&As. “Public art itself is a unifier,” Bernard says. “It’s hard to be negative while engaging in something colorful.”
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The pair complement each other in the operation. As an arts educator and a practicing artist himself, Bernard breaks down the creative process during tours and finds ways for featured artists to be involved and compensated. Eide, armed with art history and years in the service industry, brings curatorial skills and an attention to detail to the overall experience. Both draw on their enthusiasm for and extensive connection to the local arts. “We’ve got our fingers on the pulse of the art scene, and we’re always exploring the city,” Eide says.
Given their backgrounds, it’s surprising Bernard and Eide hadn’t teamed up sooner. Both men worked in arts advocacy in the Near West Side for years before meeting each other. After a colleague introduced them, “it was like lightning in a bottle,” Eide says. Three weeks later, they pitched Art Tours MKE in the entrepreneur competition Rev-Up MKE and won second place.
A big part of that winning proposal was making the tours feel like an introduction to the neighborhood, not just its art. Take the Bronzeville tour, which starts at local tea shop HoneyBee Sage and includes stops at community spaces ThriveOn King and Gallery 507. “To me, it’s a no-brainer that we should be able to showcase what Milwaukee has to offer to people who are otherwise clueless,” Bernard says, adding that even longtime residents are often surprised by what’s in their backyard.
But the tours are also meant for tourists. Art Tours MKE partnered with Visit Milwaukee to reach convention guests and cruisegoers, bring them into real neighborhoods and give them a deeper impression of the city’s creative scene. They can even help beautify the area they visited through hands-on artmaking, such as a project beginning this fall which will display art made by tourgoers and residents on vacant buildings near Concordia 27.
“Streets become urban galleries in themselves,” Bernard says. “I think when people are part of that, it gives them a sense of belonging, and then it’s something that they can point to years later and say they were part of.”
