Since 2017, Sculpture Milwaukee has lined up the vanguard of the contemporary art world along Wisconsin Avenue and beyond.
For executive director John Riepenhoff, public art is the easiest way to bring fine art into the lives of everyday people. “If you bump into a sculpture, you can access the art sector,” he says.
The works featured in Sculpture Milwaukee’s latest season, “Actual Fractals, Act III,” make moments out of those random encounters. “Experiential” is how Riepenhoff describes them, meaning they use interactivity and immersion to make viewing the artwork an experience.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Take Erin Shirreff’s Dusk Form (2024), a large assemblage of aluminum panes at Museum Center Park. The sculpture acts like an optical illusion, taking on different shapes depending on the viewing angle. “This piece confounds me,” Riepenhoff says. “It’s constantly inverting and reverting itself.”
Anish Kapoor’s Moon Twist (2017) similarly plays with perception but on a smaller scale. The artist’s hallmark stainless steel – polished to the highest level – reflects and contorts the surrounding Milwaukee River and Marcus Performing Arts Center, much like his famed Cloud Gate (aka The Bean) in Chicago. For this installation, Kapoor raised the platform Moon Twist sits on, allowing the reflection to capture more of the overhead trees and sky. “Because it’s so polished, the sculpture is as much about what’s around it,” Riepenhoff says.
On the other hand, Roy Staab’s Whirling Tennure (2025) was created from what’s around it – reeds, goldenrods and saplings that the Milwaukee-born artist found along freeways, at Lynden Sculpture Garden and in his own backyard. Constructed on a lawn outside Marquette University’s Haggerty Museum of Art, the sculpture invites viewers to step inside its circular structure and notice the shadows it casts. Like nature, the piece is ephemeral – it closes Aug. 23.
Both the Staab and Shirreff pieces coincide with ongoing exhibitions – the Nohl Fund Fellowship show at the Haggerty and “Permanent Drafts” at the Milwaukee Art Museum, respectively. Riepenhoff says drawing attention to Milwaukee’s other art institutions is another goal of Sculpture Milwaukee. “Almost everything we do is collaboration.”
Still, reimagining Milwaukee’s public spaces stays at the forefront. “Untitled” (The New Plan) (1991) by influential conceptual artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres places abstract images on billboards, including a rotating one currently on a building between Water Street and Broadway. It turns Milwaukee itself into a gallery.
Not New but Still on View
Meg Webster’s Glass Spiral (1990/2024) is surrounded by budding native plants. It was revived a few years ago after its first installation at MAM in the ’90s.
The strange, expressive figure on Izumi Kato’s Untitled (2024), commissioned by Sculpture Milwaukee, looks like it’s painted straight on the stone, but it’s actually cast in aluminum.
Sit inside the concrete culvert of Sarah Braman’s Stay (2024) and stare through the colorful glass. On the opposite side, others can look at you transformed by color.
