Established in 1961 by the Pick Family, The West Bend Gallery of Fine Arts was founded
to collect and exhibit the work of their illustrious relation Carl von Marr. The
Milwaukee-born, Munich-trained artist Marr (1858-1936) has a stellar career mainly
in Europe, but with considerable success in the United States. Having assembled
the best single collection of Marr’s work, including his 1889 magnum opus The Flagellants,
the museum began collecting Wisconsin regional art. This decision was based upon
the fact that quality Marr works were becoming increasingly difficult to acquire
and that no other institution was assembling a comprehensive survey collection of
Wisconsin art.
After ten years of judicious, quiet and determined collecting, in 1998 the West
Bend Art Museum (WBAM) unveiled the Early Wisconsin Collection covering the years
1800 to 1950. Over the subsequent years, the WBAM has developed and grown this collection
both in terms of quality and quantity to the point where it now joins more than
twenty other similar state or regionally focused American museums. Currently, the
WBAM is the de facto Museum of Wisconsin Art, a status acknowledged by our peer
institutions through loans and referrals. The collections are complemented by a
temporary exhibition schedule that heavily features contemporary Wisconsin artists.
Over the last twenty years, the WBAM has also worked diligently in creating, building
and maintaining the Wisconsin Art Archive. From very humble beginnings, this archive
has become the premier single-site research and educational resource for state art
and artists and currently contains over 6000 files on art and artists in addition
to hundreds of other audio, visual and literary source material.