For people who love to experience art wherever they go – not just within the four walls of a museum or gallery – Sculpture Milwaukee is hoping its 7th season will engage, enliven and unite.
Following a series of opening week celebrations, the first sculptures that will make up the nonprofit’s 2023-24 season, Actual Fractals, Act I, were installed over the last two weeks and are ready for viewing.
The new exhibition features artwork from seven artists: Katy Cowan, Lars Fisk, Pao Houa Her, Nicole Miller, Mary Miss, Isamu Noguchi and Erika Verzutti, but viewers can also view sculptures from the 2022-23 season, “Dear Nature,” and “Nature Doesn’t Know About Us,” which will remain on exhibit through October, as well as legacy and extended viewing artwork that hasbeen on display for a number of seasons.
Sculptures installed as part of “Actual Fractals, Act 1” will remain on display through October 2024.
‘What we share’
For Milwaukee-based artist John Riepenhoff, who curated the 2023-24 season, “Actual Fractals, Act I” brings together the work of seven distinguished artists from diverse backgrounds whose “sculptures touch on concerns, pastimes, and pleasures that shape contemporary life, here in Milwaukee, and in the world beyond.”
“There are many Milwaukees within this single city. While our parts can appear, and be, disjointed, there are also patterns that play out in our experiences across communities, generations, and public and private spaces, connecting us intricately,” Riepenhoff said. “The exhibition features artworks in a range of mediums that can rescale our expectations of contemporary sculpture. They also help us to see what we share, by existing in the same time, and place, and to see each other with delight and renewed empathy.”
Holding a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Riepenhoff owns The Green Gallery in Milwaukee. His exhibitions and curatorial projects have been presented at numerous museums and galleries throughout the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the Tate Modern in London and Misako & Rosen in Tokyo.
Having a “world-class artist” from the Milwaukee community curate this latest season highlights Milwaukee as an artistic center of excellence, Brian Schupper, executive director of Sculpture Milwaukee noted.
“The exhibition John has curated invites residents, workers and visitors to use the lens of extraordinary public sculpture to reconsider our downtown urban environment and the many communities that call it home,” Schupper said.
Take a stroll
Although most of the 2023-24 sculptures are now on display and able to be accessed by foot, bicycle or even just a drive through the city by car or mass transit. Some of the “Nature Doesn’t Know Us” sculptures, like famed Vietnam Memorial designer Maya Lin’s Courtyard Sea, which is installed in a spacious garden lot at 411 E. Wisconsin Ave., can only be seen on foot. Lois Weinberger’s Mobile Garden, installed at Red Arrow Park on the balcony next to MGIC building is also best seen by foot.
Three of the “Actual Fractals, Act 1” are still waiting to be installed, those include two pieces by Pao Houa Her, which are slated to be installed this week, and one piece by Mary Miss, which will be installed sometime in August.
First envisioned in 2007 by Steve Marcus, chairman of the Marcus Corp., as a way to revitalize West Wisconsin Avenue with public art, Sculpture Milwaukee launched its first exhibition in 2017, under the support and guidance of Milwaukee Downtown and the City of Milwaukee.
Today the nonprofit remains privately funded and open at no cost to visitors to make sculpture accessible for everyone to enjoy.
A look at some of the sculptures on display:
