MIAD Galleries

Mission: The mission of MIAD Galleries is to support learning, cultivate conversation with the community, and demonstrate the cultural value of art and design. Through excellence and diversity in our changing exhibitions and educational programming,  MIAD Galleries reflect contemporary and historical trends in fine art and design. With a focus on diverse, innovative and interdisciplinary practices across art and design, we present a dynamic exhibition program featuring work by regional, national and international professional practitioners. Our exhibits are complemented by public and educational events.

Impact Statement: We make an impact through:

• The support of learning and pedagogy through programming reflecting contemporary and historical trends in fine art and design.
• Emphasizing diversity and engaging the college and community in issues of cultural construction and meaning.
• Expanding school curriculum and teaching by supporting new work and the curation of subjects and creative endeavors less commonly found in school or the larger community.
• Fostering connections with creative professionals and institutions in the region for mutual support of programming and audience cultivation.

MIAD’s Director of Galleries prepares professional shows in both the fine arts and design galleries, and also assists groups of students in organizing shows throughout the campus.

MIAD welcomes proposals for exhibitions on an ongoing basis. For questions, please contact Monica Miller, Director of Galleries & Community Engagement, monicamiller@miad.edu.

MIAD operates two main galleries: the Brooks Stevens Gallery and the Frederick Layton Gallery. MIAD’s galleries are open to the public Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission to the galleries is free. Both galleries are located on the college’s lower level, the River Level.

FREDERICK LAYTON GALLERY

This gallery is named after Frederick Layton, the founder of the first art gallery in the city of Milwaukee. This early art venue was also the site where MIAD’s predecessor institution, the Layton School of Art was founded. Four to five exhibits are on view in this space each year, based on the college’s academic calendar. It has no exterior windows, about 320 linear feet of wall space and has about 3,600 square feet of open space. It is accessible to by a freight elevator, and can exhibit very large or heavy artifacts. Download Frederick Layton Gallery floor plan PDF.

BROOKS STEVENS GALLERY

This gallery is named after Brooks Stevens, the famed Milwaukee-based industrial designer who was instrumental in developing the college’s Industrial Design program. During his long career, his design firm worked for hundreds of clients creating many influential, well-known products. This gallery focuses primarily on design exhibits, presenting two to three exhibits per year. The gallery features exterior windows to view Milwaukee’s River Walk. This space has about 4,000 square feet of open space with 220 feet of linear wall space, depending on the temporary wall partitions being used. Download Brooks Stevens Gallery floor plan PDF.

Dates: October 7 – November 21, 2024
Location: Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

“Of Our Time” celebrates 50 years of growth, innovation and creativity within the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design’s alumni community. This gallery-sized installation, resulting from an open call for submissions, showcases a diverse collection of work spanning five decades. From MIAD’s archives to contributions from graduates as far back as the 1980s to recent alumni, the exhibition offers a glimpse into our artistic evolution.

While the show highlights the past, it was conceived with our current students at the forefront of our minds. It invites them to see themselves as part of MIAD’s unfolding story, encouraging them to shape the future of our creative legacy. This exhibition offers a snapshot of the path they’ve stepped onto, bridging the past, present and future.

Curated by Kayle Karbowski.

Reception
Friday, October 18
Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Dates: August 19 – October 5, 2024
Location: Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

Kelly Alexander, “Tall Grass and Flowers.”

ARTservancy began in September 2018 and has grown to include five partnerships: The Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, The River Revitalization Foundation, The Lake Michigan Bird Observatory, Tall Pines Conservancy and The Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy. ARTservancy encourages collaborations with community partners to highlight access and create work in natural spaces, breaking down the gates of a metaphorical Walled Garden.

“Viewpoints on ARTservancy” is a curated retrospective highlighting several artists and their work from their residencies. Intention was given to choose ARTservancy artists who work across all disciplines and media. The work shown is as rich, varied and essential as our lands are to us.

Curated by Kelly Alexander-Wendorf, Leslie Fedorchuk, Mark Lawson, and kathryn e. martin.

We acknowledge that we live on the traditional land of the Forest County Potawatomi in Muskego, where the Tribal Nations of Lac du Flambeau Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa, the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin St. Croix Chippewa, Sokaogon Chippewa and Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa remain present in what is now Wisconsin.

Reception
Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 | 6 – 8 p.m.
Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

MARN Panel Discussion
Thursday, Sept. 12, 6 – 8 p.m.
MARN, 191 N Broadway Suite 102, Milwaukee, WI 53202

MIAD Panel Discussion
Thursday, Sept. 26, 6 – 8 p.m.
Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Dates: August 25 – September 19, 2024
Location: 160 Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

MIAD, 1993. Courtesy of Brooks Stevens Design.

The international phenom Cars & Coffee comes to MIAD and the Historic Third Ward on Sunday, August 25, 2024, 8 a.m. – noon, as part of a trifecta of 2024 anniversary celebrations: the 50th of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD); the 90th of Brooks Stevens Design; and the 60th of the Excalibur, designed by Brooks Stevens.

Car enthusiasts – and their cars – from throughout the world will celebrate the joy and art of well-designed cars on a specially closed Erie Street in front of MIAD’s academic building. The Sunday event also includes the opportunity to view a special exhibition of Brooks Stevens Design in MIAD’s first floor 160 Gallery.

View the car show and exhibition! Both are free and open to the public. Other ticketed events are happening throughout the weekend.

Brooks Stevens was a major contributor to the visual culture of the 20th century – designing products that helped shape and define the American post-World War II consumer culture.

He also was a leading educator in MIAD’s Industrial (Product) Design program, joining the faculty in the 1970s, and serving as one of the college’s donors and trustees until his death in 1995. Alums of MIAD’s Product Design program are design leaders at Trek, Milwaukee Tool, Generac, Harley-Davidson, General Motors, Delta Faucet, High Sierra and more.

Registration is open for the weekend events: https://brooksstevensshop.square.site/

Cars & Coffee MIAD Event
Sunday, August 25, 2024 | 8 a.m. – 12 p.m.
273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Dates: August 5 – September 21, 2024
Location: Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

Christopher T. Wood, “Vatnajökull,” 2024.

Lynden Sculpture Garden, with funding from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and Joy Engine, administers the Mary L. Nohl Suitcase Export Fund for Individual Artists. Created to help visual artists with the cost of exhibiting their work outside the four-county area (Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington), the Fund is designed to provide greater visibility for individual artists and their work as well as sending art from Milwaukee outside our region. To date, the Fund has supported a diverse group of 358 individual artists and 22 collectives for a total of 404 artists who have exhibited their work throughout North America, and in Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Asia. The awardees work in a variety of media, from film to ceramics. They include well-established artists as well as those at the start of their careers.

The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design is proud to present a special iteration of its biennial Suitcase Fund exhibition. This year’s showcase features not only awardees from the current cycle, but also those recognized in the previous cycle due to the pandemic’s pause on the exhibition in 2019. This expanded exhibition offers a unique survey of visual artists from the region, and it highlights the diversity and depth of talent creating new work in the Milwaukee area.

Curated by Monica Miller.

Reception
Thursday, September 19 | 6 – 8 p.m. with special performance of Dada’s Daughter by Sara Sowell at 7 p.m.
Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Out of the Picture: Film Screening
Saturday, August 31 | 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
MIAD 160 Gallery, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI
Registration required

Dates: June 17 – August 3, 2024
Location: Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

Lois Ehlert, “Circus.”

Wisconsin artist and designer Lois Ehlert is well known for her illustration work and, in some cases, authorship of 60 primarily children’s books. These include “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom,” “Growing Vegetable Soup” and “Planting a Rainbow.” This comprehensive exhibit features artwork from many of these books, plus many other creative projects from posters, wall hangings and even her own Christmas cards. Additionally, the exhibition delves into the processes behind this vast life-long creative output.

A 1957 graduate of MIAD’s predecessor college, the Layton School of Art, Lois Ehlert was granted an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Ms. Ehlert was honored with many awards, including the Caldecott Honor Book award, a Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award and an Original Art Lifetime Achievement award from the Society of Illustrators. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the James Watrous Gallery. This exhibition at MIAD is the first to examine the depth and diversity of her many-decades-long career.

Reception
Friday, June 14 | 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Summer Youth Tours
MIAD invites youth arts groups, children’s library reading groups and other summer youth programs to visit the Lois Ehlert exhibition on special days this summer:

• June 25
• June 26
• July 2
• July 11
• July 12

In addition to a guided tour, art activities and read-alouds may be available. Spaces are limited. Schedule your tour here. Questions about youth engagement opportunities can be directed to Monica Miller, Director of Galleries & Community Engagement.

Dates: June 3 – July 20, 2024
Location: Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

The exhibit showcases junior student work from MIAD’s six majors: Communication Design, Illustration, Interior Architecture and Design, Fine Art + New Studio Practice, Product Design and Fashion and Apparel Design.

The featured work covers 2D, 3D and 4D projects from core and elective courses, including collaborations with community partners on sponsored client projects.

The exhibit features the talent and vision of a new generation of emerging artists and designers and reflects how, through a broad range of experiences, MIAD’s 3rd year curriculum prepares students for careers in their respective fields.

The junior year is a transformative year in which students hone their unique individual voices and set a direction for their professional focus in their senior year.

Gallery Night and Day
Friday, July 19 & Saturday, July 20
Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Dates: April 19 – May 11, 2024
Location: All MIAD Galleries, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

MIAD Senior Exhibition 2024.

Empathy, heritage and fashion drive MIAD’s annual Senior Exhibition, which returns April 19 – May 11, 2024! Over 200 seniors will represent all of the college’s Bachelor of Fine Arts majors and minors. Always insightful, innovative and driven by empathy, this year’s projects elevate cultural heritages, including Milwaukee’s; feminine power; and the inherent human need to be seen and to thrive despite emotional, physical and societal challenges.

Visit miad.edu/seniorexhibition for more information.

Gallery Night
April 19, 2024 | 5 – 9 p.m.
All MIAD Galleries,, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Dates: January 16 – March 9, 2024
Location: Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

Rick Griffith

The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin houses an enormous collection of vintage prints, wood type, and machinery going back to the founding of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company in 1880. It is a working museum that prints with its collections and continues to create new wood type using the original tools and machines from the factory. The museum holds the world’s largest collection of wood type, with over 1.5 million pieces. This exhibition showcases original prints, type, printing blocks, and new works created from the collections at the museum. This display is a unique and rare view of American advertising art and the contemporary state of letterpress printing.

Reception
Thursday, January 25, 2024 | 5 – 8 p.m.
Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI
Make and Take Printing begins at 6 p.m. MIAD students will assist you in setting wood type and creating a unique letterpress print that you can take home with you. No cost to participate.

Dates: January 8 – March 2, 2024
Location: Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

Meredith Watts, “Embodied Research.”

Growing Resistance: Untold Stories of Milwaukee’s Community Guardians showcases everyday voices of resistance and resilience around environmental injustice from some of Milwaukee’s most historically underrepresented neighborhoods. The community guardians are residents/citizens, block leaders, elders, organizations, grassroots groups and sometimes youth. This work is drawn from over 10 years of partnership between university and community experts to co-create more representative histories of these neighborhoods. These stories include accounts of urban growing, food, housing and green space from the North and Northwest Side of Milwaukee. How might sharing these stories through a variety of artistic forms expand what is heard? Growing Resistance foregrounds local community voices through dance, photography, sculpture, environmental sound, painting, interviews, poetry, video, architectural models and much more, while asking how we might better disseminate these stories and grassroots actions of resilience – voices that are often erased in the archives or ignored in the media.

Growing Resistance is co-curated by MSOE and UWM. Growing Resistance is made possible in part by grants from the Wisconsin Arts Board and Wisconsin Humanities. Public pop-up programming is funded in part by a grant from Wisconsin Humanities, with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Wisconsin Humanities strengthens our democracy through educational and cultural programs that build connections and understanding among people of all backgrounds and beliefs throughout the state.

Reception
Thursday, January 18, 2024 | 6 – 8 p.m.
Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

MIAD Student-Guided Tours
Fridays, January 12 – March 8, 11:15 a.m.
Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Book Club
Thursday, January 25, 2024 | 6 p.m.
Online via Zoom | Register Here
America’s Black Holocaust Museum Book Club, MIAD & Milwaukee County Historical Society present “All That She Carried” by Tiya Miles 

Growing Resistance Gallery Tour & Zine-Making
Saturday, February 17, 2024 | 10 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. | Register Here
Bus departs at 10 a.m. from America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM), 401 W North Ave, Milwaukee, for Growing Resistance Gallery Tour at MIAD; Bus departs from MIAD at 12 p.m. for zine-making workshop at ABHM.
Space is limited. Learn more and register: bit.ly/GRTZine

Peace Post Unveiling & Growing Resistance Gallery Tour
Thursday, February 22, 2024 | 5 – 7 p.m.
Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E Erie St, Milwaukee, WI
Peace Post unveiling and Growing Resistance Gallery Tour with Milwaukee Through Embodied Research dance interventions. No registration required.

What’s Next? A Community Story Circle
Saturday, March 2, 2024 | 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. | Register Here
Milwaukee Public Library, Washington Park Branch (Finney Community Room), 2121 N. Sherman Blvd, Milwaukee, WI
Light refreshments provided. Learn more and register: bit.ly/CSCircle