American Originals
June 6, 2009–August 23, 2009

See two groundbreaking exhibitions on artists who are deemed true “American originals”: The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs, featuring forty of the American designer’s finest furniture and decorative art pieces, begins its five-venue national tour at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Eight and American Modernisms brings together for the first time more than fifty paintings and approximately thirty works on paper by the group of American artists dubbed The Eight—artists now emerging as the first generation of early American modernists.

Jan Lievens
February 7, 2009–April 26, 2009

Daring and innovative as a painter, draughtsman, and printmaker, Dutch artist Jan Lievens (1607-1674) created a number of memorable character studies, genre scenes, landscapes, formal portraits, and religious and allegorical images. This exhibition will, for the first time, present an overview of the full range of Lievens’ career, with about 45 of his finest paintings and a select group of his drawings and prints.

Act/React Interactive Art
October 4, 2008–January 11, 2009

This first-of-its-kind exhibition presents installation artwork dependent upon and subject to the intuitive and nontechnical physical actions of the visitor. Among the works featured are talking tables, virtual snowstorms, and glowing pools of organic patterns by artists Janet Cardiff, Brian Knep, Liz Phillips, Daniel Rozin, Scott Snibbe, and Camille Utterback.

Gilbert & George
June 14, 2008–September 1, 2008

Gilbert and George, two sculptors who met in college, have been creating work for the last forty years that, according to TimeOut London, "tap into public opinion at just the right time." Confronting the punk anger and racial tensions of the '70s to consumer capitalism in the '80s to the terrorism fears of today, the artists' brightly colored photomontages are raw examinations of human experience.

Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918–1945
February 7, 2008–May 4, 2008

In the 1920s and 1930s, photography became an immense phenomenon across Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, and Poland. It fired the imagination of hundreds of progressive artists, provided a creative outlet for thousands of devoted amateurs, and became a symbol of modernity for millions through its use in magazines, newspapers, advertising, and books.

Martín Ramírez
September 9, 2007–January 13, 2008

Martín Ramírez (1895–1963) left his native Mexico in 1925 with the aim of finding work in the United States and supporting his wife and children back home in Jalisco. Unable to communicate in English and apparently confused, he was soon picked up by the police and committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he would eventually be diagnosed as a catatonic schizophrenic. Ramírez spent the second half of his life in a succession of mental institutions in California.

Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape
June 9, 2007–October 9, 2007

This exhibition will explore the remarkable transformation of Camille Pissarro's landscape paintings over the course of an important decade in his career, from 1864 to 1874. During this time, he moved from being a student of the Barbizon school to becoming one of the leaders of the emerging Impressionist movement. This critical period of his evolution as an artist laid the groundwork for an entire generation of painters, many of whom were influenced by his experimental techniques and vision.

Francis Bacon: Paintings from the 1950s
January 27, 2007–April 15, 2007

Francis Bacon: Paintings from the 1950s is the first exhibition to look in detail at this extraordinarily fertile decade in Bacon's life and affords the viewer unprecedented insight into the artist's imaginative powers as well as his constantly evolving sources and techniques. Although the most fruitful years in Bacon's career, they were also the most tumultuous and tortured in the artist's unsettled existence; Bacon was regularly without a fixed address, borrowing rooms and changing studios with bewildering frequency.

Biedermeier: The Invention of Simplicity
November 16, 2006–January 1, 2007

This touring international loan exhibition focuses on the Biedermeier period in Central Europe from 1815 to 1830. It brings together for the first time almost 300 outstanding examples of German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian paintings, furniture, related decorative arts and works on paper that document in depth the innovative character of the period and demonstrate how it is a precursor to modernism. This is the first exhibition on the subject in North America and will offer a fresh exploration for European audiences.

Masters of American Comics
April 29, 2006–August 13, 2006

Masters of American Comics is the first art museum exhibition to examine comic strips and books on this expansive scale. Each artist is represented by in-depth groupings presented as a series of individual retrospectives featuring a range of each artist's works from conceptual sketches and finished drawings to printer's proofs, tear sheets, printed newspapers, comic books and graphic novels.

Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light
January 28, 2006–April 9, 2006

Bruce Nauman deals with the big questions of life, in the words of his 1983 neon: Life, Death, Love, Hate, Pleasure, Pain. Nauman's work focuses on the essential elements of the human experience. Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light, premiering at the Milwaukee Art Museum January 28 – April 9, is Nauman's first solo exhibition in Wisconsin, the state in which he was raised. Bruce Nauman has been recognized since the early 1970s as one of America's most innovative and provocative contemporary artists.

Rembrandt and His Time: Masterworks from the Albertina, Vienna
October 8, 2005–January 8, 2006

This fall, the Milwaukee Art Museum and Wisconsin Energy Foundation present some of the greatest drawings and paintings ever produced by Netherlandish artists in the exhibition Rembrandt and His Time: Masterworks from the Albertina, Vienna. Including 115 drawings and prints from the Albertina and 15 related paintings, the exhibition explores the pivotal and influential role of Rembrandt as a draftsman in mid-seventeenth-century Holland.

CUT/Film as Found Object
June 25, 2005–September 11, 2005

UT/Film as Found Object is a fascinating installation consisting of 14 video works by some of today's most influential artists. CUT explores how contemporary artists use excerpts from pre-existing films and television to create new narratives, different emotional content and new musical scores. Artists featured include Christian Marclay, Pierre Huyghe and Douglas Gordon. The exhibition is organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum with the assistance of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami.

Degas Sculptures
February 19, 2005–June 5, 2005

Degas Sculptures presents a rare opportunity to view in a single exhibition all 73 bronze sculptures by the great French Impressionist master, Edgar Degas. The exhibition explores one of the most fascinating aspects of the work of this seminal painter and sculptor whose innovative compositions, skillful drawing and perceptive analysis of movement made him one of the late 19th-century masters of modern art.

Masterpieces of American Art, 1770 - 1920: From the Detroit Institute of Arts
October 23, 2004–January 30, 2005

This fall, visitors to the Milwaukee Art Museum have an unprecedented opportunity to celebrate America's best art and trace the country's early history and culture through a visually stunning exhibition of painting and sculpture from the period in which American art came into its own.

Magnetic North: The Landscapes of Tom Uttech
July 10, 2004–October 3, 2004

One of the most widely admired landscape painters in America, Tom Uttech merges 19th-century notions of the ideal landscape with aspects of surrealism and photo-realism to create his unique vision of the North Woods. The artist re-establishes the wilderness as a mystical and magical place where the animal kingdom reigns, the colors of nature flourish and the various forces of nature are played out.

American Fancy: Exuberance in the Arts, 1790-1840
April 10, 2004–June 20, 2004

Brilliant colors and wild patterns will be on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum April 3 - June 20, 2004. Organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum, American Fancy: Exuberance in the Arts, 1790-1840 features more than 200 of the most ornamental and emotionally engaging artifacts ever produced in this country.

Defiance Despair Desire: German Expressionist Prints from the Marcia and Granvil Specks Collection
January 17, 2004–March 14, 2004

The nearly 200 prints featured in the exhibition Defiance Despair Desire: German Expressionist Prints from the Marcia and Granvil Specks Collection are among the most dramatic artworks of the 20th century.

Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World
June 7, 2003–September 7, 2003

Milwaukee industrial designer Brooks Stevens and Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava were made for each other. The swooping, streamlined aesthetic that Stevens helped to pioneer in the 1930s is reflected in the lines of Calatrava's beautiful Quadracci pavilion at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Industrial Strength Design How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World will give visitors a chance to experience the museum's galleries in a new way: filled with custom cars and futuristic boats that bring home the excitement of one of America's greatest designers.