Milwaukee Art Museum

Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM), museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with a wide-ranging collection of ancient and contemporary art. The MAM collection is of international standing.

(Read Sister Wendy’s Britannica essay on art appreciation.)

The history of the Milwaukee Art Museum dates to the 1880s, although the museum officially originated when the Milwaukee Art Association and the Layton Art Gallery merged their collections in the late 1950s, becoming the Milwaukee Art Center; it changed its name to the Milwaukee Art Museum in 1980. Located on the shores of Lake Michigan, MAM is a structural landmark both on the shoreline and in the city. It comprises three buildings, each designed in the postmodern tradition by a well-known architect: the War Memorial Center (1957) by Eero Saarinen, the Kahler building (1975) by David Kahler, and the Quadracci Pavilion (2001) by Santiago Calatrava. The latter features a moveable brise soleil, or sunscreen, with a 217-foot (66-metre) span. In 2015 the museum completed a total renovation of its buildings.

(Read Glenn Lowry’s Britannica essay on "Art Museums & Their Digital Future.")

The museum’s holdings are displayed chronologically according to period: ancient, early European, 19th-century European, American to 1900, modern, and contemporary. It includes more than 20,000 individual works. Its collections of American decorative art, German Expressionism, folk art, and Haitian art are considered among the best in the country. Noteworthy artists whose work is on display include, among many others, Winslow Homer, Gabriele Münter, Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Georgia O’Keeffe, Milton Avery, László Moholy-Nagy, Cindy Sherman, Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, Andy Warhol, and Duane Hanson.