13 August 2024
MILWAUKEE – The Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a special two-part exhibition titled “The Big 4-0: New Views of the Collection,” which will showcase more than 100 works of art from the museum’s collection during the 2024-25 academic year.
Curated by Dr. Kirk Nickel, Marc and Lillian Rojtman, Curator of European Art, the installations will be on view in the exhibition galleries in fall 2024 and spring 2025, with six curated galleries each semester highlighting important works from the Haggerty collection. The year-long celebration begins with an opening reception on Thursday, September 12, at 6 p.m. at the Haggerty Museum of Art, 1234 W. Tory Hill St. Registration is available online.
“We are thrilled to kick off the Haggerty Museum of Art’s 40th anniversary with these exhibitions, which reflect the museum’s role as an arts and culture laboratory for the Marquette campus and the greater Milwaukee area,” said John McKinnon, who was named director of the Haggerty Museum of Art in May.
Spanning different time periods, geographic areas, and artists’ careers, these distinct but conceptually connected spaces reflect the museum’s ongoing commitment to the work of modern and contemporary artists while displaying a select group of artworks from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The exhibition draws particular attention to the ideas and impulses that have driven artists over the last century, including novel approaches to modern materials and processes, political satire, kinetic and op art, migration, photography’s relationship to truth, mail art, and the challenge of depicting life after war.
The inaugural installation, which runs from August 23 to December 22, 2024, features artworks by Mark Bradford, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Enrique Chagoya, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jeffrey Gibson, Sam Gilliam, Philip Guston, Keith Haring, Wifredo Lam, Elizabeth Murray, Diego Rivera, and Richard Serra. Many of the works on display have benefited from new research and conservation efforts that shed additional light on their production and exhibition history and, in some cases, the identity of their maker.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum is hosting a series of gallery talks led by the curator and a lecture series with invited specialists discussing the works featured in the exhibition.
This exhibition is generously supported 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.
When it opened in 1984, the Haggerty Museum of Art was envisioned as both a repository for Marquette’s art collection and a learning center for the fine arts, emphasizing necessary connections to other disciplines in the humanities and sciences. The Haggerty Museum’s broad and diverse collection is the product of passionate art collectors and supporters from the Milwaukee area and beyond, to whom we are extraordinarily grateful. Their gifts enable the Museum to present the brilliant and inspiring works of artists who speak boldly to their time and place and to generations to come.
About Marquette University
Marquette University is a Catholic Jesuit university near downtown Milwaukee that offers a comprehensive range of majors across 11 nationally and internationally recognized colleges and schools. By educating hearts and minds, Marquette prepares our 11,100 undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and professional students to lead, excel and serve as agents of positive change. And we deliver results. Marquette ranks in the top 20% of national universities and is recognized as the nation’s sixth-best university for job placement for its undergraduate teaching, innovation and career preparation. Our focus on student success and our comprehensive, personalized learning experiences encourage students to think critically and engage with the world around them. When students graduate with a degree from Marquette University, they are truly prepared and called to make a difference.
About Kevin Conway
Kevin is the Assistant Director of University Communications in the Office of University Relations. You can reach Kevin at (414) 288-4745 or [email protected].
