Community Calendar

The Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University presents an exhibition in celebration of its 40th anniversary. Curated by Dr. Kirk Nickel, Marc and Lillian Rojtman Curator of European Art, the show comprises a two-part installation of the exhibition galleries, in fall 2024 and spring 2025, and features well over 100 works of art from the museum’s collections.

Ranging widely within time periods, geographies, and artists’ careers, the exhibition highlights major works in the Haggerty’s collection, organized into six curated galleries each semester. These distinct but conceptually linked spaces reflect the museum's enduring commitment to the work of modern and contemporary artists, while also featuring a select group of Renaissance and Baroque artworks. The exhibition draws particular attention to the ideas and impulses that have fueled artists through the recent century, including novel approaches to modern materials + processes, political satire, kinetic and op art, migration, photography's relationship to truth, mail art, and the challenge of representing life after war. Artworks by Mark Bradford, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Enrique Chagoya, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jeffrey Gibson, Sam Gilliam, Philip Guston, Keith Haring, Wifredo Lam, Elizabeth Murray, Diego Rivera, and Richard Serra will appear in the opening installation. Many of the works on view have benefitted from new research and conservation efforts, shedding additional light on their fabrication and display histories, and in some cases, the identity of their maker.

At its opening in 1984, the Haggerty Museum of Art was envisioned both as a repository for Marquette’s collection of fine art and as a center for learning through the visual arts in a way that emphasized necessary connections to other disciplines in the humanities and sciences. Four decades later, the museum reaffirms that commitment to interdisciplinary connection. The Haggerty’s broad and varied collection is the product of passionate art collectors and supporters in the Milwaukee area and beyond, to whom we are exceedingly grateful. Their gifts to the museum allow us to present the brilliant and inspiring work of artists who speak boldly to their time and place, and to generations to come.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum will host a slate of curator-led gallery talks and a lecture series with invited specialists to address works on view in the exhibition.

Support for this exhibition is generously provided by the Emmett J. Doerr Endowment Fund and in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Image: Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), "Second Study for Amerika - The Stoker, South Bronx", 1992, Mixed media and collage, Gift of Allen and Vicki Samson, 2004.15.7, Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University

Parallel Play was created as an integral component of Marquette’s Biology class, Creative Problem Solving. This cross-disciplinary course teaches STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) students to embrace divergent thinking as a path to innovative problem solving. Through art-based activities and small group interactions with artists and STEM faculty, the class emphasizes the similarities between the creative processes of scientists and artists. The class is team-taught by Dr. Deanna Arble, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences and Lynne Shumow, Curator for Academic Engagement, Haggerty Museum of Art.

Featuring work from the Haggerty’s permanent collection, Parallel Play is divided into four sections that coincide with the scientific method—clarify, ideate, develop and implement. Through the exhibited art pieces, connections have been made between the work of artists and scientists with a special emphasis on the essential elements of scientific research—rejection, revision and the formulation of new ideas. Parallel Play aims to demystify the process of innovation across disciplines and to illuminate the multiple routes of discovery and interpretation that art has to offer.

Support for this exhibition is generously provided by the Stackner Family Endowment Fund.

Milwaukee-based artist, writer, and curator Michelle Grabner pays homage to custodial labor through this installation of household sinks and replicated everyday objects. Largely unseen janitorial work is instead foregrounded through the presence of commonplace objects used to keep institutional spaces sanitary. In the traditionally orderly gallery space, rests a silver leafed garbage can, cast bronze broom, and cast porcelain buckets, caddies, wash brushes, toilet paper rolls, washcloths, "wet floor" signs, and cleaning supplies.

The majority of the work in Grabner's exhibition is produced in the Kohler MakerSpace, an invitational project space for artists and designers based in Kohler's Pottery. In addition, the display includes work from Kohler Co.’s commercial production line including single basin wall-mounted sinks.

Grabner’s display celebrates the labor of sanitation, highlights the design of those objects, and creates a conceptual link to Cleaning Woman, a photograph by August Sander in the Museum’s adjacent collection display.

In Partnership with Kohler Company

For more than fifty years, Ellie Lee Weems (1901-1983) trained his lens on the African American residents of Jacksonville, Florida. Weems imaged entertainers, newlyweds, and beauty queens in his photography studio. In addition, his camera accompanied him throughout his vibrant community as he documented life events as ceremonial as graduations and as quotidian as backyard gatherings. His yearslong practice resulted in a copious archive that continues to expand visual and historical accounts of the American South and beyond.

Born in McDonough, Georgia, Weems studied photography at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) and later lived briefly in Atlanta before settling in Jacksonville, where he worked until 1981. His images trace the advancement of photographic techniques, as well as document a community’s commitment to sustaining and nurturing itself throughout major shifts across the twentieth century. The exhibition presents a glimpse into the photographer’s work and offers a gateway for reflection on the power, practice, and preservation of African American photography, situating Weems among a host of image makers who have contributed to the rich visual repository of African American life and culture. 

Visual Legacies is organized by guest curator Dr. Rikki Byrd, in collaboration with Weems’s family members Dr. Saundra Murray Nettles and Kali Murray, Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School.

The exhibition features selected photographs from the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta. Photographs and materials from the Ellie Lee Weems Family Collection held by Dr. Murray Nettles will also be on view.

Support for this exhibition is generously provided by the Marquette University Women’s Council Endowment Fund and in part by a grant from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation.

The Big 4-0, Vol. 2: New Views of the Collection reimagines the Haggerty Museum of Art’s six lower galleries for the spring semester, presenting an entirely new installation of outstanding works from the Museum’s own holdings. The exhibition expands on collection favorites such as Keith Haring and Salvador Dalí paintings with rarely seen works on paper brought out for the special anniversary. The show of modern and contemporary art contains distinct themes within each gallery such as artistic composition through chance, the role of personal biography, artistic use of commercial printing, and artistic creation following wartime.

The Big 4-0 Vol. 2 is the second of a two-part installation of the exhibition galleries. Vol. 2 features a completely new display to demonstrate the breadth and depth of the Museum’s collection. In combination, the Fall and Spring anniversary exhibitions feature more than 100 works of art. Both installations are curated by Dr. Kirk Nickel, Marc and Lillian Rojtman Curator of European Art.

Support for this exhibition is generously provided by the Emmett J. Doerr Endowment Fund and in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Friends of Milwaukee Public Library’s annual Spring Literary Luncheon is an event we all look forward to every year. Gathering with so many like-minded individuals who love all things literary is a special annual treat each spring. The luncheon is sponsored by the Friends of the Milwaukee Public Library, the Wisconsin Club, and Boswell Book Company and will include a book signing and raffle. Over the years, the Spring Literary Luncheon has attracted sell-out crowds and award-winning authors including Elizabeth Strout, David Maraniss, Madeline Miller, Mary Higgins Clark, Ruth Reichl, Sue Monk Kidd, Sara Gruen, and Louise Erdrich, among many others.

Nancy Johnson is the featured author at the 2025 Friends of Milwaukee Public Library’s Spring Literary Luncheon. A native of Chicago’s South Side, Johnson worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates in markets nationwide. Her debut novel, The Kindest Lie, has been reviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and is featured on Entertainment Weekly’s Must List.

Deepen your engagement with "The Brilliance of the Spanish World" in a lecture by Rebecca J. Long, the Art Institute of Chicago’s Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Curator of Painting and Sculpture of Europe. Since El Greco’s death, writers, critics, and other observers have struggled with how and where to situate him. Was he a Byzantine icon painter transformed by the artistic revolution of the Italian Renaissance? A social climber desperately seeking noble patronage? Was he Greek, Italian, or Spanish? This lecture looks to his works themselves for answers, providing new insights into El Greco’s legacy and including artworks featured in the exhibition "The Brilliance of the Spanish World."

Winner of the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Proof is the story of Catherine, a troubled young woman who has spent years caring for her brilliant but unstable father, a famous mathematician. Now, following his death and on the eve of her 25th birthday, she must deal with her own volatile emotions, the arrival of her estranged sister Claire, and the attentions of Hal, a former student of her father’s who hopes to find valuable work in the 103 notebooks that her father left behind.

Over the long weekend that follows, a burgeoning romance and the discovery of a mysterious notebook draw Catherine into the most difficult problem of all: How much of her father’s madness — or genius — will she inherit?

Mainstage Drama
Rating: PG-13+
Audience advisory: Play covers heavy emotional topics dealing with mental illness, grief, and the pressure of academic achievement.

Runtime: 150 minutes. 15 Minute Intermission
Admission: $26.00 + Fees

Performances:
Friday, May 9, 2025, 7:30pm
Saturday, May 10, 2025, 7:30pm
Sunday, May 11, 2025, 2:00pm
Thursday, May 15, 2025, 7:30pm
Friday, May 16, 2025, 7:30pm
Saturday, May 17, 2025, 7:30pm
Sunday, May 18, 2025, 2:00pm
Thursday, May 22, 2025, 7:30pm
Friday, May 23, 2025, 7:30pm

Cast:
ROBERT - Michael Chobanoff
CATHERINE - Anna Gumberg
HAL - Keenan Ellis
CLAIRE - Ariel Korducki

Production Team:
Directed by: Naomi Tiefel
Stage Manager: Angie Rodenkirch
Production Manager: Breanne Brennan
Costume Design: Beck Men

PROOF is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, servicing the Dramatists Play Service collection. (dramatists.com)

Breaking And Entering is proud to present Milwaukee’s premier beat battle tournament, Big Beat MKE. Sixteen producers will compete in a head-to-head battle tournament over the course of eight weeks. One lucky producer will be taking home a huge prize pack, as well as the honor of being dubbed the winner of the Big Beat MKE Tournament.

During a battle, two producers will go head to head for three one minute rounds, alternating beats for the judges and the crowd to hear. If the crowd demands it, one optional overtime round will be contested. Judges will pick the winner based on style, overall sound quality, and crowd reaction.

This event is free to everyone 21+! Each night will also feature performances from two Milwaukee hip hop acts.