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.