The Milwaukee Art Museum, the largest visual art institution in Wisconsin and one of the oldest art museums in the nation, will reopen its Collection Galleries to the public November 24. The reopening is the culmination of a 6-year, $34 million project to transform the visitor experience through dramatically enhanced exhibition and public spaces and bright, flowing galleries.

“The new Milwaukee Art Museum is poised to set the standard for a twenty-first-century museum at the heart of a great city,” said Museum Director Daniel Keegan. “What began as a desire to preserve the space and Collection grew into a significant expansion that rejuvenates and sets the future course for the entire institution.”

Lewis Wickes Hine American, 1874?1940
A Carolina Spinner 1908 Gelatin silver print 
4 11/16 x 6 5/8 in. (11.91 x 16.83 cm)
Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of the Sheldon M. Barnett Family
M1973.83 Photo by John R. Glembin

Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts Makes Milwaukee Hub for Growing Art Field

As part of its November 24, 2015, grand reopening, the Milwaukee Art Museum will debut the new Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts, a 10,000-square-foot space devoted to a global array of photography, film, video installation, and media art. Unparalleled in size and scope for the region, the Center will present the Museum’s rarely seen photography collection of 3,800 works, and will host exhibitions by world-renowned artists working in photography, film, video and digital media. It is funded by a generous gift from long-time supporters, the Herzfeld Foundation.

As the Museum’s first dedicated space for light and media art, and signals both the growing importance of photography and media art as art forms and as a cornerstone of the Museum’s Collections.

“The Herzfeld Center makes Milwaukee the new destination for photography and media art audiences nationwide,” said Lisa Sutcliffe, curator of photography and media arts. “Milwaukee’s photography and film community is a vibrant part of the cultural landscape of the city, and the Museum now reflects these vital art forms.”

---

The Center’s inaugural exhibition, Light Borne in Darkness, presents highlights from the Museum’s Collection, shown together for the first time. Visitors can discover the history of the medium through its most important masters, including Edward Steichen, whose Pool, Milwaukee (ca. 1899), launched his career as a photographer; Alfred Stieglitz, considered the father of American photography; Wisconsin native and social reformer Lewis Hine; American masters Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, and Stephen Shore; iconic works by Walker Evans, Louis Faurer, Robert Frank, and William Klein; and landmark works by Uta Barth, Roni Horn, and Lorna Simpson.

“Light Borne in Darkness: Photography Highlights from the Permanent Collection“
November 24, 2015–April 10, 2016
Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts
Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee, WI

 

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

GALLERY FRAMES

Profile: 106
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple wood frame with black opaque finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame with matching splines
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

Sam Francis, Straight Line of the Sun, 1975. Milwaukee Art Museum, gift of the Sam Francis Foundation, California M2009.549. © Sam Francis Foundation, California / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by John R. Glembin.

Sam Francis, First Stone, 1960. Milwaukee Art Museum, gift of the Sam Francis Foundation, California M2009.173. © Sam Francis Foundation, California / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by John R. Glembin.

The Milwaukee Art Museum will present Sam Francis: Master Printmaker,  sponsored by Sendik’s Food Market, as the  inaugural exhibition in the Bradley Family Gallery, a new 4,000-square-foot changing exhibition space in  the Museum’s renovated and expanded Collection  Galleries. It will be on view November 24, 2015–  March 20, 2016.

Debuting as part of the Museum’s reopening celebration, Sam Francis: Master Printmaker honors the 2009 gift of more than five hundred prints from the Sam Francis Foundation that made the Milwaukee Art Museum the largest repository of the artist’s works on paper. It is the first time the works will be on view in Milwaukee.

“Sam Francis: Master Printmaker”
November 24, 2015–March 20, 2016
Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee, WI

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

GALLERY FRAMES

Standard Profile: 101
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple wood frame with clear lacquer finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Custom Frame Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

GALLERY FRAMES

Ultra Thin Profile: 114UT
Type: Ultra Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple wood frame with white opaque finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame with matching splines
Custom Wood Strainer: 1/2″ wood frame strainer
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864–1946) tirelessly promoted photography as a fine art. Through his own photographic work over the course of a half-century, the photographic journals he edited and published, and the New York galleries at which he organized exhibitions of photographs, paintings, and sculpture, Stieglitz showed photography to be an integral part of modern art in America. In a search for artistic ancestors, he looked intently at photography of the 19th century, most notably that of Julia Margaret Cameron and the Scottish duo David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. Their work resonated for Pictorialism, a movement that valued painterly, handcrafted images, and these earlier photographs were exhibited and reprinted for new audiences. Stieglitz’s fledgling interest to create a history of photography as an art form was also evidenced in his decision, later in his career, to revisit his own prior output, reprinting earlier images in a high modernist style.

The Stieglitz collection at the Art Institute includes several later Cameron and Hill and Adamson prints along with important works by Stieglitz himself, Edward Steichen, and other Pictorialist artists. Drawn entirely from the permanent collection, this exhibition examines how 19th-century photographs influenced Pictorialist practice. Fostering close looking at different photographic processes—from salt and albumen prints of the 19th century, to carbon prints and photogravures of turn-of-the-century reproduction, to crisp gelatin silver prints of the modernist period—it shows Stieglitz and his circle in the context of a changing photographic history.

Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O’Keeffe,1918. The Art Institute of Chicago. Alfred Stieglitz Collection.

Julia Margaret Cameron. Julia Jackson, 1867. The Art Institute of Chicago. Harriott A. Fox Endowment

Julia Margaret Cameron. Thomas Carlyle, 1867, printed 1875. The Art Institute of Chicago. Alfred Stieglitz Collection.

David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. Portrait of James Nasmyth,c. 1844. The Art Institute of Chicago. Alfred Stieglitz Collection.

Alfred Stieglitz. The Hand of Man,1902. The Art Institute of Chicago. Alfred Stieglitz Collection.

Alfred Stieglitz.The Steerage, 1907, printed 1920/39. The Art Institute of Chicago. Alfred Stieglitz Collection.

“Alfred Stieglitz and the 19th Century”
thru March 27, 2016
The Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Museum Profile: André Kertész
Type: Museum Frame Collection
Wood & Finish: cherry wood frame with charcoal finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

 

The Kertesz profile is a frame that was originally custom milled for the André Kertész exhibit February 6 – May 15, 2005 at the National Gallery of Art