Pipes and Dreams

RN: Today we start our road trip tour of the Great Lakes, massive fresh-water bodies that define the geography of the northern-midwest. We visit the Milwaukee Art Museum, which is on the waterfront of Lake Michigan. The museum was formed in 1957 and located in the War Memorial Center. New buildings were added in 1975 and, notably in 2001 when the Quadracci Pavilion was added. The Quadracci Pavilion was designed by renown Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and is pure white, with soaring arches and huge windows that look out over the lake. Notably, it has a Burke briese soleil (fancy name for a sunshade) that looks like giant wings. During the day, the wings open up and, at night, they are closed. At noon, they close the flaps and open them again.

FE: We get to explore Milwaukee and decide to start with the Art Museum. It is so fantastic that we spend most of our time around or in it. First, the architecture: it is an evolving concept, successively designed by three architects…Rae told you more about that. For me the most recent addition, the large entrance hall with the soaring dream-wings was the most stunning, it almost looks like a large cruise ship has docked.

the interior of the hall soars over us little humans and looks out over Lake Michigan

Here, looking up through the spars you can see the wings from below

They really do flap, the video is sped up 8x

Inside, in mostly the older part of the museum there is so much space that the pieces of art can be displayed without cramping them, and we can explore the wide variety of artifacts presented in a meandering array of little galleries…here is some modern indigenous american art

The Dave Project explores the toils and contribution of Black ceramic artists before and after the Civil War

A focus on skyscraper inspired art includes this early radio

Surprise..Georgia O’Keefe is from Wisconsin, and the museum has a large collection of her paintings. Here is one of the foliage at Lake George, you New Englanders.