Sculpture Milwaukee 2021 begins installing outdoor artworks in May
Sculpture Milwaukee will begin installation of its fifth season of outdoor public art this month, adding new works to 15 holdovers from the 2020 exhibit along Wisconsin Avenue and in the Historic Third Ward.
Guest curators Theaster Gates and Michelle Grabner are introducing a titled exhibit for the first time in this project, there is this We, drawn from a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. In a statement from Sculpture Milwaukee, Grabner said the title reflects works that honor belief in social change through the provocations of the artistic imagination.
Planned new sculptures include:
A work by Betty Gold to be installed permanently on the Milwaukee Art Museum campus.
Bill Cain s play 9 Circles explores in dramatic confrontations the questions also raised in Pete Seeger s song Last Train to Nuremberg and Bob Dylan s Clean Cut Kid.
Yes, the accused committed horrible crimes. But, to use Seeger s questions, Who gave the orders? Who planned the campaign to lay waste the land?
Directed by Michael Cotey and videoed by Timothy Moder, Next Act Theatre s fully staged production can be viewed online by ticketholders through May 16.
in 9 Circles, Reeves (Casey Hoekstra), an American soldier, is first honorably discharged from the Army, then arrested, interrogated and prosecuted for the rape and murder of Iraqi civilians. The playwright has Dante s Inferno in mind, but don t look for the parallels to be too literal; in his script notes, Cain likens Reeves scene with a psychiatrist to the Purgatorio, where fire cleanses sinners rather than punishing them forever.
They came from San Diego, Orlando and Albuquerque for a winter of COVID-19 isolation in Milwaukee.
But Florentine Opera performers Emily Michiko Jensen, Taylor-Alexis DuPont and Nathaniel Catasca were concerned less about the weather and more about how much they would get to sing.
In a normal year, the early-career vocalists who spend a year here as Baumgartner Studio Artists keep their larynxes busy with performing roles in mainstage productions, touring with the Florentine s school show for children and singing gigs at coffeeshops and festivals.
During this pandemic year, they ve sung mostly for video cameras, as the Florentine recorded its school show and other performances for online viewing.