The roots of visual art among Wisconsin’s African Americans lie in a fugitive slave known only as Joe. Wisconsin was a popular stop for slaves fleeing the South via the Underground Railroad in the 1800s. Joe is the first known and documented person of African descent to paint a picture in Wisconsin. He tailored clothes and made toys for Rooney’s two children and demonstrated further artistic prowess when he painted a portrait of the children wearing the clothes he had hand-sewn with the girl holding a doll he had crafted.

Subsequent years saw a continual struggle for African American artists to receive the recognition they deserved because of established (and unofficial) policies and laws. Henry Ossawa Tanner and Romare Bearden were two whose work and reputation were given national recognition, but for most it was a struggle. Slowly, and really only in the last twenty years, have things changed for the better.

This exhibition features contemporary artists who have not only established themselves as artists in their own right, but have made a commitment to being artists here in Wisconsin, a state with a historically small African American community. Additionally, and just as significantly, they have reached positions of great influence to current and future generations through their roles as practicing artists and teachers in various universities, colleges and schools. Trenton Baylor (UW-Parkside), Brad Bernard (Mount Mary College), Larry Chatman (MIAD), Freida High W. Tesfagiorgis (UW-Madison) and George Williams (Beloit Collage) produce diverse bodies of work that deal with the personal, universal, political and cultural worlds both here in Wisconsin, nationally and internationally. In short, they may reside in Wisconsin, but they find inspiration far beyond their geographical boundaries.

Stonehouse’s new project, Blood Relatives, will take the form of a series of 21 intimately scaled fictional “family portraits” using the template of his own family to re-imagine an extended three generation fictional lineage. The work references the traditions of formal, historical portraiture “types” such as the “Military Portrait”, the “Baby Portrait”, the “Wedding Portrait” etc. and develops likenesses based on imagined characters. Fred Stonehouse is represented by Tory Folliard Gallery.

Wisconsin and beer often seem synonymous. Think Wisconsin beer and Miller will likely come to mind. This brewer, so long a part of Milwaukee and the state’s beer culture, also took a lesser-known pride in our artistic culture, quietly and judiciously assembling a quality art collection that featured many of the state’s finest artists. Mostly hung in corporate offices and buildings, the collection was virtually invisible to the general public. With Wisconsin roots that go back to Frederick Miller who settled in Milwaukee in 1855, many great Wisconsin artists were included in the MillerCoors collection. When the opportunity to find a new home for the collection came about, it was a logical choice for the company to call upon the Museum of Wisconsin Art to evaluate the works and provide a home to some of them. Consequently, MWA Executive Director Tom Lidtke viewed over 1300 works and used his deep experience and knowledge to select some of the best works for accession into the MWA’s permanent holdings. MillerCoors is proud to support and help build Wisconsin’s premier museum collection of Wisconsin art by donating the best work from their corporate collection to MWA.

As a result, the MWA received a gift of 24 works by 19 artists: Nancy Ekholm Burkert, Robert Burkert, Jean Crane, John Colt, Warrington Colescott, David Driesbach, John Earnest, Peggy Thurston Farrell, Earl Kittleson, Francisco X. Mora, Frances Myers, Robert von Neumann, Ida Ozonoff, Howard Schroeter, Marco Spalatin, Helmut Summ, Evelyn Patricia Terry, Arthur Thrall and Tom Uttech. Collectively and individually, these artists have made significant contributions to the artistic culture of the state. Some of the artists were already in our collection, others were new; this gift both expands and adds depth to our holdings. The MWA is delighted to accept them and equally grateful to MillerCoors for recognizing the museum as the logical and rightful home for the best of Wisconsin art.

Bound by the common task of working on the enormous panorama paintings, over a dozen German artists arrived in Milwaukee in the 1880s, creating some of the most impressive works of art ever painted in the US. This exhibition features work by Biberstein, Heine, Fery, Lorenz, Schneider and Schroeter, directly related to either the panoramas or their subsequent careers within Wisconsin and beyond.

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