(WEST BEND, WISCONSIN) – Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) is proud to announce the permanent installation of Untitled (Blue) (2024), a monumental outdoor sculpture by internationally renowned artist Michelle Grabner. Located on MOWA’s flagship campus in West Bend, the work transforms a humble, traditionally figured bookend into an engaging visual and conceptual experience that invites visitors to see both art and the everyday world anew.
Grabner is one of the most influential figures in contemporary American art, skillfully balancing roles as artist, educator, writer, and curator. A faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University, her practice spans painting, printmaking, and sculpture, drawing equally from her extensive knowledge of art history and close observation of ordinary objects and experiences.
Blue is one of three colossal steel sculptures created in the primary colors—blue, red, and yellow. The work takes the form of a traditionally configured bookend, among the most humble and familiar of unassuming objects. By dramatically enlarging its scale and relocating it from the bookshelf to the landscape, Grabner endows this simple form with an entirely new life and meaning.
“The sculpture’s vivid blue form offers a window onto the landscape while simultaneously serving as an invitation into the museum itself,” says Laurie Winters, MOWA’s James and Karen Hyde Executive Director. “We are delighted to further animate the MOWA gardens, which are home to 1,200 hydrangeas currently in bloom, meandering pathways, and more than 750 aspen trees. Grabner’s Blue invites us to enjoy our natural environment through an unexpected portal.”
Like artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Jeff Koons before her, Grabner elevates the overlooked object, prompting reflection on the material world and revealing unexpected significance in everyday forms.
This summer, discover Blue at MOWA and experience how art can transform the spaces between architecture, landscape, and community.
Image Credit: Michelle Grabner, Untitled (Blue), 2024