Kenwood don’t use
Milwaukee Art Museum’s latest major exhibit showcases Rembrandt, Gainsborough, and Van Dyck.
World War I on Tour
Partnering with the National World War I Museum, financial planning firm Waddell and Reed will bring its traveling World War I exhibit to Milwaukee on Friday, July 20, to be held in front of the Harley-Davison Museum. Admission is free and visitors will get to experience what life was like in the trenches with 66 rare artifacts from the Great War. The exhibit will also include the flight gear of Chauncey Waddell, a World War I veteran and a founder of Waddell and Reed. Waddell and Reed hope to raise funds as well as awareness for the preservation of the…
At Home with Frank Lloyd Wright
On June 2 The SC Johnson Gallery: At Home with Frank Lloyd Wright, an annually rotating exhibit at the SC Johnson Gallery in Racine, will open to the public and offer an intimate look at the legendary architect’s prairie-style homes and designs. Co-curated by Milwaukee Art Museum’s Chief Curator Brady Roberts and Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, the director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, the exhibit will rotate installations yearly to include the Wright’s various styles. Pfeiffer, who apprenticed with Wright in 1949, narrates part of the audio tour with the help of archival audio recordings of the architect himself. The…
No Place Like Home
Last fall’s Milwaukee Repertory Theater production of State of the Union featured something local audiences take for granted but is nationally unique: a stage full of actors in their 40s, 50s and 60s, almost all members of the Rep’s resident company. “It was a remarkable cross-section of mature actors, full of Broadway- or West-End-caliber artists,” says the play’s director, Michael Halberstam, who is the artistic director of Chicago’s Writers’ Theatre. Halberstam is not alone offering such praise. Directors from around the country – in fact, around the world – routinely laud the Rep’s ensemble. As longtime company member Jim Pickering…
Big Bang Theory
“Sensory Overload” is audacious. It’s more an installation than an exhibition and sprawls over 10,000 square feet in the east lake level galleries at the Milwaukee Art Museum. It’s up for two years, compared to the usual run of several months, and declares a goal of covering “Light, motion, sound and the optical in art since 1945.” Most of the work is from the museum’s permanent collection. Chief curator Joe Ketner has reshuffled the museum’s collection, creating not just an exhibition, but what will stand as the museum’s basic presentation of contemporary art for two years. That’s an eternity considering…
Michelangelo in Milwaukee
One of Michelangelo’s first major works was his Pietà. He finished it in 1500 when he was 23 years old. His colleagues in Rome greeted the new sculpture with disbelief that such a young and relatively unknown artist could create such a remarkable work. Michelangelo’s reaction was to return to the piece and chisel his name broadly down the sash that runs between Mary’s breasts. “Michelangelo Buonarroti made this,” he wrote, a quattrocento version of “screw you.” It was the only work he ever signed. This sculpture is considered a masterpiece, but had never grabbed me in any particular way.…
Breathing Lessons
Longtime rock musician Joe Turano was taking a break from his busy career when he dropped into Elm Grove’s jazz mecca, The Grove, for dinner. Visiting home-town relatives, the singer-saxophonist was fresh from his work as a backup musician and arranger for singer and fellow ex-Milwaukeean Al Jarreau. Just inside The Grove’s front door, Turano heard two notes from the world-class clarinetist in residence, and knew immediately who it was. “Wow, that’s got to be Chuck Hedges,” he told his companion. “He’s one of my all-time favorites. I’ve just got to play with him.” Turano’s saxophone was in Waukesha, and…