Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940–1959
January 30, 2010–April 25, 2010

Abstract Expressionism, film noir, Beat poetry, and the New Journalism are all widely recognized aftershocks of World War II, representing a broad aesthetic revolution that championed spontaneity and subjective interpretation as the guiding principles of creative practice. Postwar photographers in many ways set the rhythm and tenor of this new approach, not least because the hand-held camera was naturally suited to chance discoveries and impulsive gestures.

Andy Warhol: The Last Decade
September 26, 2009–January 3, 2010

Andy Warhol: The Last Decade is the first U.S. museum survey exhibition to explore the work that this seminal American artist produced during the final years of his life. Warhol entered a period of renewed vigor and enthusiasm in the 1980s that resulted in what was arguably the most productive period of his career.

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.