Celebrate Milwaukee

Milwaukee Art Museum

If you have been reading this blog since the beginning, you may have picked up on my love for the Milwaukee Art Museum. We have a membership and working only a few blocks away lets me get there often. Today I walked over there on my lunch hour and discovered some new treasures and enjoyed some favorites.

I first wandered into a room of mechanical Renaissance clocks that I had never noticed. The room included several beautiful master clocks, clocks made by clockmakers applying to be a Master Clockmaker.

Then I visited the gallery with the impressionist paintings I love.

Boating on the Yerres by Gustave Caillebotte

View of Bougival by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Sunset at Rouen by Camille Pissarro

Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect by Claude Monet

Theatre Foyer by Jean-Louis Forain

I then headed to the second floor and found myself in a room that I always wondered about.

As the room is lacking in labels, I never understood what it was all about. This time however, a card with a website caught my attention. It turns out this is Mrs. M._’s Cabinet. You can read all about it here.

Rainbow Bridge by Olafur Eliasson is a sculpture not to be missed on the second floor overlooking Lake Michigan. As you walk around the sculpture the colors change. It is one of those sculptures that begs to be interacted with.

As a former Spanish teacher, I usually try to walk past Joan Miro's The King's Jester.

And if you are going to check out Miro, you might as well check out Picasso's The Cock of Liberation.

See if you can find any addition in this pop artwork.

Finally, I love this sculpture by Dale Chihuly in the lobby titled, "Idola di San Giacomo in Palude Chandelier II."

This just touches the surface of the great art at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Every time I visit, I find something new.

Milwaukee Lakefront

I love that I work so close to the lakefront because it means that I can enjoy it during my lunch hour, taking a break from work. It is especially wonderful on a day like today where the temperature was in the upper 70s with little wind and no humidity and the sky was as blue as could be. I walked a little over 3.5 miles during lunch and enjoyed every minute of it.

University Community Orchestra

The University Community Orchestra from UW-Milwaukee invited signers from choirs around the area to sing with them at their latest concert on Sunday, April 22, 2018. Steven Joyal directed singers from about 20 different choirs sign two songs with the orchestra and the results were really great!

Listen in....

MAM After Dark Goes Silent Clubbing

Friday night, the Milwaukee Art Museum held its regular MAM After Dark event which is always a lot of fun. They open up the entire museum, have do it yourself art/crafts, scavenger hunts in the art galleries, trivia, a DJ (or two in this case) or live music, appetizers, and a cash bar.

The music on Friday night was two competing DJs (silent clubbing). Everyone wore headphones which allowed you to tune into the one you preferred (and switch back and forth between the two). The effect of a roomful of people dancing to more than one song at a time can be pretty amazing to watch and quite liberating!

Here are some photos and video:

The first hour wasn't too busy on the dance floor.

By 9:30 p.m. the dance floor was packed!

They opened the wings at 7:00 p.m. and I think they stayed open most, if not all, of the evening

Milwaukee Public Museum and Member Swap Day

We are members of the Milwaukee Art Museum which participates in Member Swap Day twice a year. This gets us into any of the following museums in the Milwaukee area for free on a specific Sunday in January (and I think the other day is in May):

So today we took advantage of today to visit the Milwaukee Public Museum which offered a free Planetarium show.

The Streets of Milwaukee is one of our favorite exhibits and it was all decked out for Christmas yet. (They have plans to take down all the decorations this Wednesday.) A year or two ago, they updated this exhibit and I love how the exhibit now starts. You get on a trolley car where the windows are replaced with screens showing you the buildings of Milwaukee in different time periods as if you are passing by them on a real trolley car. There is also a theater in this exhibit where there is a neat video that plays about the exhibit. We watched it last time we visited the museum and that is where we learned to look for the hidden cat in the exhibit.

When you next visit, see if you can find this cat which is hidden in the Streets of Old Milwaukee
(the flashlight on your phone is helpful).

Another great exhibit is the butterfly exhibit and being the first ones in the exhibit this morning, the butterflies were super active.

The jeeps (there is one in the rainforest exhibit and one in the lobby area near the butterflies) are a favorite of my husband's. Here is the one parked in the rainforest that has been part of that exhibit since I can ever remember.

My husband has also always loved the dinosaurs so that is a must-see exhibit whenever we visit.

Crossroads of Civilization, one of their newer permanent exhibits, is also a neat exhibit. Here are a few photos:

Here are some photos and videos of a few other neat exhibits:

We ended our trip to the Museum with the Wisconsin Stargazing planetarium program. We've seen this show before and it is just a neat chance to look at all the beautiful stars in the sky and be reminded of some of the constellations.