MILWAUKEE, WI.- The Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University announced the Spring season of its 40th anniversary celebrations. Among the four new exhibitions is The Big 4-0 Vol. 2: New Views of the Collection, the second installment of an exhibition with collection highlights. All four exhibitions will run from January 17 through May 24, 2025.

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.

This spring installation includes the work of more than 40 artists, including Georg Baselitz, Ray Johnson, Ellsworth Kelly, Nam June Paik, Sigmar Polke, Andy Warhol, and May Wilson, as well as important early works by Louise Nevelson and Man Ray that have been newly conserved for this 40th-anniversary exhibition. In addition, many of the works in the spring show have also benefited from new research, shedding additional light on their creation, their display histories, and their importance to the course of contemporary art. Of particular importance is the recent discovery that Louise Nevelson's sculpture Distant Land was included in the artist's 1956 solo show, the first occasion when Nevelson painted all of her scavenged wood pieces uniformly black.

The Spring season of the Haggerty’s year-long 40th Anniversary celebration begins with a 1980s-themed opening reception on Thursday, January 16 in honor of its 1984 founding. Additional free public programs continue with a slate of Lunchtime Talks with Dr. Kirk Nickel, the exhibition curator of The Big 4-0 Vol. 2. This milestone year will culminate with the presentation of the Haggerty Awards Dinner on May 22, 2025, when all past recipients of the Patricia B. Apple and Kairos Awards will be recognized for their service and support of the Museum. All events, festivities, and educational programs are listed with details and registration information on the Museum's Events page.

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.

Three additional shows plus a full slate of curator-led gallery tours and talks round out the season’s offerings:

"We are thrilled to continue the Haggerty Museum of Art's 40th Anniversary year with a new round of exceptional exhibitions and programs that reflect the museum's role as an arts and culture laboratory for the Marquette campus and greater Milwaukee area." explains Director John McKinnon.

Michelle Grabner: Under the Sink

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 Kohler Co.'s MakerSpace, an invitational studio based in Kohler's Pottery Division for slip-casting. In addition, the display includes work from Kohler Co.’s 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.

Michelle Grabner, based in Chicago and Wisconsin, has explored domestic themes for over 30 years. Her artwork memorializes household patterns or everyday objects through a variety of media such as burlap, bronze, crochet, spider webs, and gingham.

Grabner is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught since 1996. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2018 National Academician in the National Academy of Design, and a 2024 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters Fellow. Major museum exhibitions curated by Grabner include the 2014 Whitney Biennial and the inaugural 2018 FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. In 2021 she co-curated Sculpture Milwaukee with Theaster Gates. In 2024 she curated 50 Paintings, a survey of contemporary international painting at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Grabner, along with artist Brad Killam runs the artist-run project spaces, The Suburban, Milwaukee, WI (est. 1999) and The Poor Farm, Little Wolf, WI (est. 2008).

Visual Legacies: Photographs by Ellie Lee Weems

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.

Parallel Play: The Art of Science & the Science of Art 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.