As the public waits for a new Milwaukee Public Museum to begin rising out of a 2.4-acre site at the corner of Sixth and McKinley Streets in the Haymarket neighborhood near downtown Milwaukee, museum officials say private fundraising for the project is on pace for the project to break ground by late June.
In the planning stages for the better part of seven years, the $240 million project, has been promised $45 million in public funding from Milwaukee County and another $40 million from the State of Wisconsin. MPM is responsible for raising the remaining $150 million. Another $5 million in federal grants are also being pursued, which would get the project to the $240 million mark, but that money has not yet been awarded.
Construction of the building itself is approximately $200 million. The remaining funds for the project will cover the costs to move the collections from the existing building, provide millions for the museum’s endowment – money that would essentially go towards running the new museum – and to pay for project management and the ongoing fundraising campaign.
In order to unlock the county funding, and have enough cash on hand to start construction, the museum must raise 90% of the construction budget, or about $185 million, museum officials said. With the state and county funding representing $85 million, museum officials say they are on track to raise the remaining $100 million by late spring.
Speaking to BizTimes Milwaukee this week, Ellen Censky, president and CEO of the natural history museum, said MPM has received many millions more in donations since the institution last updated members of the county’s Committee on Parks and Culture in December. At that time, MPM officials said they had raised $66 million in private donations.
Censky demurred when asked to give a more specific update on those private fundraising efforts this week, however, stating that she owed it to county officials to update them with the latest figures possible during the next scheduled briefing before County Board committees in mid-March.
“Every week we are bringing in money, and I want to give them the most up to date figure,” Censky said. “As the county has given us funding, we have an obligation to come before them to share where we are. I do want to be clear that this campaign is on track. We are raising millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars.”
Big asks
Censky emphasized that the Wisconsin Wonders campaign to fund the new museum project is a five-year fundraising effort, one that officially kicked off in July 2022 and will continue while the building is being constructed over the next three years.
Right now, the museum is still in the initial phase of the campaign, Censky said, courting donors capable of pledging $1 million or more to the project.
“When you’re in this phase you go to your largest potential donors first, and then with each phase you go, the gifts you’re seeking become smaller and smaller,” Censky explained. “Of course, we’re taking in gifts that are under that, but we’re in that $1 million and above phase. And you can imagine when you are talking to people who are potentially interested in giving you that much money, it takes time for them to make those decisions, because these are not insignificant amounts of money.”
“The fact that we’ve been able to do what we’ve done so far is really tremendous. And we’re just so grateful for the generosity of the communities who continue to step up and be excited about this project,” she added.
Censky noted that what would typically be part of a “quiet phase’ in any other major capital campaign, has had to be done out in the open, because of the museum’s relationship with the county and the public nature of the project.
“We’ve been in a very loud quiet phase,” she said. “But we’ve had 30 donors that have given gifts of a million or more. So that’s a phenomenal support for this campaign.”
The last publicly shared donation to the project was made in October, when MPM announced that the Culver family, owners of the Prairie du Sac-based Culver’s restaurant chain, were pledging $1 million for an exhibit exploring the state’s love for frozen custard.
News of the Culver family donation came just a few weeks after MPM announced a $10 million gift from the Kellogg Family Foundation for its Wisconsin Wonders campaign – the largest private donation to the museum project to date.
Building support
As it works to raise funds for the project within the Milwaukee area and across the state, the development team has been working hard to share the details of the project, especially with those would-be donors who are averse to change or concerned about the loss of beloved exhibits like the Streets of Old Milwaukee.
“When we sit down and talk about what our plans are for the new museum and can share in detail what we’re doing, they become very, very comfortable,” Censky said. “In fact, we do have a donor that was very attached to the Streets of Old Milwaukee, and we sat them down with our exhibit designer, so they understood where his concerns were … What they’re telling us as we dig deeper is they want this immersive experience where they can be transported somewhere else in time and that is what our new Milwaukee Revealed exhibit will do.”
Described as the “spiritual successor” to the Streets of Old Milwaukee, Milwaukee Revealed will highlight both the city’s past and present through a series of immersive commercial and neighborhood exhibits.
Current fans of MPM’s Streets of Old Milwaukee will find many familiar, nostalgic elements in Milwaukee Revealed, including collections items like the penny-farthing bicycle and the one-of-a-kind Schloemer automobile. Another call back to the Streets of Old Milwaukee, the Haymarket Candy Shop exhibit, will be a functioning store where visitors can purchase sweet treats.
MPM had a major donor who was initially adamant that he would not donate to the new museum project unless the Streets of Old Milwaukee were moved to the new building, Censky said, but now that donor has given to the project at the $1 million or more level and is even helping to fundraise for the project.
The museum has also had success attracting support from across the state, and not just the region, Censky said.
“We’ve been tapping into donors in the Fox Valley area, in Madison, and we’re working on some events up in the North Woods area. One of our development staff is actually focused on seeking donations from outside of the southeastern part of the state,” she said.
Museum officials also noted that leaders of the Kellogg Foundation don’t live in the Milwaukee area.
As potential donors learn more and more about the project, and see the exhibit designs, there is more of a desire to contribute, Censky said.
“I think in the beginning when we didn’t have visuals to show – where people didn’t know what it was going to be – it was harder. Now people are really excited, and we are getting people who are writing to us. In fact, based on one newspaper article, a woman sent us $250,000,” she said.
And once the construction begins, Censky expects that excitement will become even more contagious.
With the last of the buildings demolished on the Haymarket site last October, MPM recently pulled foundation and footing permits to prepare for the spring groundbreaking.
“We have some foundation walls and an alleyway that needs to be removed and then some sub-ground slabs that are going to be pulled as well,” said Katie Sanders, MPM’s chief planning officer this week. “But for the most part the site is fully ready.”
