Member Magazine Summer 2021 Contents
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AMERICANS IN SPAIN PAGE 4 AMERICAN MEMORY PAGE 6 MEMBER MONTH PAGE 8 Member Magazine Summer 2021 Contents Letter from Admission the Director 3 Admission tickets are timed. Please Americans reserve your tickets in advance 4 in Spain at mam.org/visit; as Members, you receive priority access. American Memory Hours 6 Fri–Sun, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Membership Office Collection Feature 7 414-224-3284 Mon–Fri, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Member Extras 8 Thank you 2020 Museum Visionaries Staff Profile Donna and Donald Baumgartner 10 John and Murph Burke Sheldon and Marianne Lubar Joel and Caran Quadracci Museum Store Sue and Bud Selig 12 Jeff Yabuki and the Yabuki Family Foundation 13 My Museum Premier Partner 14 Save the Dates on the cover Childe Hassam, Church Procession, Spain, ca. 1883 (detail). Private collection. right Photo by Front Room Studios. 2 Letter from the Director the Museum Store, and exploring the art in the second-floor galleries. While we continue to take it slow, deciding, for example, not to hold Art in Bloom and Lakefront Festival of Art on-site for one more year, there are an increasing number of ways for you to engage with each other and art both Dear Members, at the Museum and online. Included Spring, even amid a pandemic, still among our many online experiences holds the promise of new beginnings— for the months ahead are Kohl’s and more vitamin D. Having longer Family Sundays, summer art camps, daylight hours to get outside makes and virtual lectures and discussions. this time of year especially enjoyable. I hope you are as excited as I am to see And I am so happy to see many more exhibitions opening again, and I look of you venturing out, with the Museum forward to enjoying with you not only as your destination. The response to the exhibitions on-site but also the our reopening was inspiring, and we many discussions and activities online! look forward to the months ahead with measured excitement. Warmly yours, In June, we open the highly anticipated Americans in Spain exhibition in the Baker/Rowland Galleries. By July, you can expect visits more like those Marcelle Polednik, PhD you enjoyed before the pandemic: Donna and Donald Baumgartner relaxing outdoors with refreshments Director from the café, shopping for gifts in 3 Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel, 1820–1920 June 11–Oct 3, 2021 | Baker/Rowland Galleries Americans in Spain: Painting and gardens, and landscapes; Spain’s Travel, 1820–1920 is the first major Islamic history; and the critical and exhibition to focus on the influence of popular responses to American Spanish art and culture on American artists’ work. Among the exhibition’s painting. It explores a pivotal moment highlights are John Singer Sargent’s when artists flocked to the Iberian famous Carmencita (1890) from the Peninsula to capture its scenic charms Musée d’Orsay; a newly discovered and seemingly exotic architecture painting by Mary Cassatt from a Madrid and customs. While many artists from private collection never before shown the United States sought training in the United States; and Spanish in the art capitals of London or Paris, old masters on loan from the Prado by the late nineteenth century, Museum that American painters they increasingly added Spain to copied. their European tours to study the An app created for the exhibition masterworks in the Prado Museum includes bilingual audio commentaries and engage with the country’s and additional information on thirty- people and traditions. six of the featured works on paper. The exhibition’s more than one The interactive Artist-Travelers Project hundred paintings, photographs, and website allows you to see passages prints are presented chronologically from the guidebooks the artists used, and organized to emphasize migration, letters they wrote, works they created, tourism, and travel in nineteenth- routes they took, and more. You can century Spain. Additional themes find these on the Museum’s website include the romance and the reality at mam.org/americans-in-spain. of Spain; Spanish old masters and American copyists at the Prado Museum; Spanish architecture, 4 Made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. National Presenting Sponsor: Supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Supporting Sponsors: Wyeth Foundation for American Art Milwaukee Art Museum’s American Arts Society Tourist Office of Spain in Chicago Contributing Sponsors: Christie’s The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation A generous gift from the Terra Foundation for American Art helped support curatorial staff at the Milwaukee Art Museum and Americans in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic. William Merritt Chase, Carmencita, 1890. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Sir William Van Horne, 1906 (06.969). © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY 5 American Memory: Commemoration, Nostalgia, and Revision Chapter 1: People and Identity | Mid-July Chapter 2: Activism and Terrorism | Mid-July Chapter 3: Responses and Revisions | Late September The narratives about the history of our young nation are often told from a single perspective. The experiences of women, people of color, and LGBTQI+ individuals (to use the current term) were rarely considered in the course of documenting historical events, and the incidents that impacted them most were frequently ignored, skewed, or outright erased. American Memory: Commemoration, Nostalgia, and twenty prints, drawings, paintings, Revision exposes this selective editing and photographs in American Memory of history as it seeks to relate the true are from the nineteenth and twentieth price of pursuing the American dream. centuries and contemporary times and reveal a more complicated view of past The exhibition is divided into three events. The works are drawn from the chapters, across three galleries: Museum’s collection, directing a lens “People and Identity” explores the on the history of how certain works nature of portraiture; “Activism and came to be at the Museum. Terrorism” studies the normalization of racist, violent imagery; and top Kerry James Marshall, Memento, 1996–97. Gift in memory of Robert D. and Eleanore A. Hesselbrock by their children, “Responses and Revisions” shows M2000.5. Photo by John R. Glembin. © Kerry James Marshall how a single image can shape our right Max Pietschmann, Study of a Model, 1885. Purchase, with funds from Avis Martin Heller in honor of the Fine Arts perception of history. The more than Society, M2020.39. Photo courtesy Jack Kilgore & Co. 6 Collection Feature: New Acquisition Tanya Paul, Isabel and Alfred Bader Curator of European Art The Museum acquired this portrait colonies in Africa—an event that study by the Dresden painter Max caused a significant influx of visitors to Pietschmann (1865–1952) this past Germany from Africa. fall. Although we do not as yet know Study of a Model is a particularly the model’s identity, we believe that he significant acquisition because may have been an African performer individuals of color are almost entirely from a circus that passed through unrepresented within the Museum’s Dresden around the time Pietschmann European collection, or their presence completed the painting. The portrait is is implied only through association; dated 1885, which coincides with the this is despite a long European history year that Germany established formal of colonialism, global exploration, and trade. The purchase of this painting is one step toward correcting that omission and provides us with opportunities to discuss the complexities of Germany’s broader history. Moreover, Pietschmann painted a portrait of a Black man that foregrounds his dignity and self- possession at a time when such portrayals were not necessarily the norm in German art. You will be able to see Study of a Model when the second-floor galleries open to the public. Learn more about this painting in a video of Tanya Paul’s Curated Conversation, in the Member Programs playlist on our YouTube channel. 7 Member Extras May Is Member Member Double Month Discount at the Museum Store: Though This year, Member the Museum Store is Month has special closed for in-person significance: your shopping in May, you support is helping the receive double your Museum community discount (20%) when and organization you shop online. weather the challenges of the pandemic. We Phone ordering and are grateful for your curbside pickup (by support and that we Member Scavenger appointment) are also can again welcome Hunt: Reengage with available. Leave a you inside. Museum hallmarks and message at 414-224- the art in the galleries. 4210, and a store Member Month Pick up a copy when associate will call Offerings you visit during the you by the next Free Guest Admission: month of May. business day. Bring an extra guest Free Gift with On-site Free to the Museum for free Renewal: Renew your Gift! (beyond your usual membership on-site allotment) all month and receive a Member long. Reserve your exclusive tote bag tickets at mam.org/visit. featuring a playful “wings”-inspired design of the Burke top Photo by Matt Haas. Brise Soleil. right Photo by Adam Ryan Morris. 8 Aug 25: Robert Henri’s El Matador (Felix Asiego) with Amy Kirschke, Director of Adult, Docent, and School Programs Curated Conversations Donor ($400)+ levels Select Thursdays, 6 p.m.: Go behind the scenes and hear from Virtual Member Member Art Break curatorial leadership about some of their Events Open to all Members latest projects in virtual Watch for event details Select Wednesdays, conversations led by in the Member Insights noon: Take a lunch Margaret Andera, email newsletter, and break and enjoy an interim chief curator visit mam.org/member- art-filled presentation and curator of resources anytime to from a member of contemporary art.