An area of downtown Milwaukee has transformed into a streetside art installation as Sculpture Milwaukee gears up for its third annual season.
The outdoor urban sculpture exhibition this year features 22 artworks on display mainly along Wisconsin Avenue, from 5th Street to O’Donnell Park. It officially opens on Friday, June 7, but installation has been underway since early May. The collection will be on display through Oct. 27.
Twenty artists, both emerging and internationally acclaimed, contributed to this year’s collection. They include:
- Atlanta-based Radcliffe Bailey
- California-based John Baldessari
- Berlin-based Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset
- New York-based Roxy Paine
- American artist and resident of Italy, Beverly Pepper
- London-based Richard Woods
- New York-based B. Wurtz
- New York-based Red Grooms
- New York-based Tony Matelli
- The late Barry Flanagan of North Wales
- The late Max Ernst of Germany
- Los Angeles-based brothers Niki and Simon Hass
- Madison-based Gail Simpson
- Berlin-based British artist Angela Bulloch
- New York-based Arlene Shechet
- Chicago-based Puerto Rican-American artist Carlos Rolón
- Berlin-based American artist Sam Durant
- Chicago-based William O’Brien
- Ireland-born artist Sean Scully, based in both New York and Munich
More information about each artist and their featured work, along with a map of the exhibition, is available at Sculpture Milwaukee’s website.
Sculpture Milwaukee’s launch comes just days after the grand opening of Marcus Hotels & Resorts’ Saint Kate, an arts-themed boutique hotel located in the former InterContinental hotel building on North Water Street and East Kilbourn Avenue, just a couple blocks north of the exhibit’s Wisconsin Avenue footprint.
Sculpture Milwaukee first launched in 2017 as the longtime brainchild of Steve Marcus, chairman of the Marcus Corp. In March, it incorporated as its own nonprofit organization and named Brian Schupper as executive director.
This year’s exhibition will kick off on Friday with a public event and ceremonial ribbon cutting at the historic Gas Light Building, 626 E. Wisconsin Ave. It will include live music, an interactive art wall and free boxed lunches for the first 500 attendees.
