MILWAUKEE, WI.- Sculpture Milwaukee announced today that its 2021 exhibition will be co-curated by artists Theaster Gates and Michelle Grabner. The show will launch in June 2021 and run through autumn of 2022. Now in its fifth year, Sculpture Milwaukee is one of the largest annual outdoor exhibitions to focus on contemporary sculpture and public art practices.
The announcement of Gates and Grabner as co-curators continues the Guest Curator Program which began last year with Mary Jane Jacob, Professor and Director of the Institute for Curatorial Research and Practice, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Lisa Sutcliffe, the Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Their contributions expanded the structure of the exhibition by introducing a technoscape film by Leslie Hewitt and a video by Amy Yoes into the structure of the exhibition.
“We’re excited about the new ways in which Gates and Grabner will shape the exhibition,” said Sculpture Milwaukee's Board Chair, Wayne Morgan of Baker Tilly. Adding, “Theaster Gates, and Michelle Grabner are two influential artists and educators who make their home in the American Midwest where they have dedicated themselves to supporting artists and the artistic imagination in local, regional, and national cultural communities. They will bring their unwavering spirit towards building Sculpture Milwaukee's 2021 exhibition, sharing their vision and foregrounding artists and artwork from around the world."
Michelle Grabner, whose Untitled sculpture appeared in Sculpture Milwaukee’s inaugural exhibition in 2017 stated, "It is exhilarating to co-curate Sculpture Milwaukee with Theaster, knowing that the process will result in wholehearted and attentive conversations between two artists who are deeply invested in sculptural form, materiality, and the urgent political and aesthetic issues embedded in a large-scale public exhibition.”
The works selected by Gates and Grabner will be explored through programming and educational initiatives. Last year’s exhibition included various artist talks including a conversation between Courtney J. Martin, Director of the Yale’s Center for British Art and London-based artist Thomas J. Price, whose sculpture, Within the Folds, (Dialogue I), 2020 made its international debut in Milwaukee. This year, the organization will continue with virtual artist talks, and, if conditions improve around the ongoing pandemic, in-person programming may resume as well.
Free, public, and outdoors, Sculpture Milwaukee will continue to celebrate sculpture by knitting together an offering of artwork that imparts artistic perspectives, material imagination, and creative expressions within a city-landscape that foregrounds civic engagement and diverse cultural histories.
“Through pandemic-era cancelations and closures, Sculpture Milwaukee was a bright spot last year. A cultural respite and a true spark of joy in our downtown landscape,” remarked Milwaukee Downtown’s CEO, Beth Weirick. “We can’t wait to see what Sculpture Milwaukee brings this year!”
A complete list of artists and artworks will be released in Spring 2021.
