FEATURE EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW IN BAKER/ROWLAND EXHIBITION GALLERY
The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City
June 11, 2011–September 11, 2011
 
Manet to Van Gogh:  Impressionism on Paper 
October 15, 2011–January 1, 2012
 
Self-Taught and Outsider Art: The Anthony Petullo Collection
February 18, 2012–May 6, 2012
 
ON VIEW IN THE KOSS GALLERY
Emerald Mountains: Modern Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chi-tsing Li Collection
June 11, 2011–August 28, 2011
 
Taryn Simon: Photographs and Texts
September 22, 2011–January 1, 2012

ON VIEW IN THE DECORATIVE ARTS GALLERY
Way of the Dragon: The Chinoiserie Style, 1710-1830
June 30, 2011–November 6, 2011
 
The Tool at Hand
December 12, 2011–April 1, 2012
 
ON VIEW IN BAUMGARTNER GALLERIA
Warriors, Beasts, and Spirits: Early Chinese Art from the James Conley Collection
June 11, 2011–September 11, 2011
 
ON VIEW IN SCHROEDER GALLERIA
Building a Masterpiece: Santiago Calatrava and the Milwaukee Art Museum
September 8, 2011–January 1, 2012
 
ON VIEW IN WINDHOVER HALL
On Site: Zhan Wang
June 11, 2011–September 11, 2011

FEATURE EXHIBITIONS
The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City
June 11, 2011–September 11, 2011
 
This summer, the Milwaukee Art Museum will host an ambitious schedule of five concurrent exhibitions on Chinese art, planning three thousand years of history. Anchored by the feature exhibition The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City, the Museum’s Summer of CHINA will be a breathtaking journey into a land of majesty and mystery.
 
In anticipation of his retirement, the Qianlong Emperor designed and built the Tranquility and Longevity Palace Garden, also known as the Qianlong Garden, between 1771 and 1776. He commissioned and collected some of the finest known paintings, bronzes, jades, furniture, and other objects to appoint the private environment. This walled, two-acre complex of 27 luxurious buildings, rockeries, and plantings was tucked away deep within the walls of the Forbidden City, and in 1924, the last emperor of China withdrew from the Forbidden City and the garden complex was shuttered; its many treasures left to decline and gather dust.
 
In 2001, the Palace Museum, Beijing, and the World Monuments Fund, New York, established an historic partnership dedicated to conserving the Garden, which has been described as the jewel of the Forbidden City. The World Monuments Fund and the Palace Museum have entered into an agreement to organize a traveling exhibition that unveils the Garden’s treasures and the emperor’s private, elaborate world to an international public for the first time – years in advance of the Garden’s official opening in China. Once that event occurs in 2017, the masterworks featured in the exhibition are not likely to leave China again. The Milwaukee Art Museum is one of only three museums to display this featured exhibition.
 
The exhibition focuses on revealing one man’s ambitious, passionate, and visionary appreciation for extraordinary works of art. The show’s thematic organization explores the Qianlong Emperor’s fascination with creating worlds within worlds, and the exhibition emphasizes evoking the real, imaginary, and poetic, rather than recreating or reproducing the Garden itself.
 
The exhibition features art objects that convey the emperor’s ultimate integration of art, culture, and nature–art objects which celebrate his achievements as a connoisseur, scholar, and Buddhist devotee. Almost all of the 90 works–murals, paintings, wall coverings, furniture, architectural elements, jades and cloisonné – have never been seen publicly before. Through the use of design and diverse media, including still and film footage of the Garden, music, and other aural features such as water, wind, and birdsong, the installation will provide an evocative setting for visitors.
 
The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City is curated by Dr. Nancy Berliner, curator of Chinese Art at Peabody Essex Museum, and organized at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Laurie Winters, director of exhibitions.
 
Manet to Van Gogh: Impressionism on Paper
October 15, 2011–January 1, 2012
 
Impressionism on Paper will present approximately 110 drawings, watercolors and pastels by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Active in France during the second half of the nineteenth century and closely associated with avant- garde movements, artists such as Manet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Seurat, Gauguin, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Toulouse- Lautrec created works on paper that may be less well-known than their paintings but which are just as significant.  This is the first international exhibition devoted exclusively to drawings by these artists and will considerably extend our current knowledge of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
 
It is not widely known that a large proportion of all the artwork shown in the eight Impressionist exhibitions held in Paris between 1874 and 1886 were works on paper.  Many of these can be identified and will be shown in Impressionism on Paper.  Overall, the exhibition will provide an overview of the artists’ drawing skills at this critical stage in the development of a widely appreciated moment in the development of French art.  The examples chosen will demonstrate the types and purposes of drawing used by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.
 
Impressionism on Paper will show that the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists chose to emphasize drawing, thereby ceasing to recognize the traditional distinction between drawing and painting.  They elevated the status of drawing to the level of painting itself. The result was that the traditional hierarchy separating painting from drawing established during the Renaissance stopped with the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. This, in turn, had considerable consequences for the development of modern art; the fusion of line and color resulting from a series of multiple gestural acts characterize the best examples of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist drawings and paved the way for such artists as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, and Bridget Riley.
 
Self-Taught and Outsider Art: The Anthony Petullo Collection
February 18, 2012–May 6, 2012
 
This exhibition celebrates the gift to the Milwaukee Art Museum of the Anthony Petullo Collection of Self-Taught and Outsider Art.   Comprising more than 250 works, the gift greatly enhances the Milwaukee Art Museum’s significant holdings of self-taught and outsider material.  Petullo, a retired Milwaukee businessman and current Museum Board of Trustees member, built his collection over a span of over 30 years.  The exhibition will feature works by many of the most important American and European artists in the genre including Bill Traylor, Martín Ramírez, Henry Darger, Minnie Evans, Alfred Wallis, Anna Zemankova, Adolf Wölfli, and Scottie Wilson.  With the gift of the Petullo Collection, the Milwaukee Art Museum has become one of the premier American collections of self-taught and outsider art.
 
ON VIEW IN THE KOSS GALLERY
Emerald Mountains: Modern Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chi-tsing Li Collection
June 11, 2011–August 28, 2011
 
Modern Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection will explore the development of Chinese ink painting during the second half of the twentieth century. Drawn from the Chu-tsing Li collection of modern Chinese paintings— the finest and most comprehensive of its kind in the West—these extraordinary paintings demonstrate the reinvigoration of classical techniques and materials by artists throughout Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and abroad working with distinctly contemporary perspectives.  
 
Milwaukee resident Chu-tsing Li is one of the pioneers in the study of modern Chinese ink paintings.  As an art historian well-trained in Eastern and Western art, a specialist in Chinese painting, and an acclaimed author, Li has painstakingly assembled a comprehensive collection of modern Chinese ink painting.
 
Taryn Simon: Photographs and Texts
September 22, 2011–January 1, 2012
 
Taryn Simon:  Photographs & Texts surveys the work of contemporary artist Taryn Simon through four major projects: The Innocents, portraits of men who served time for violent crimes but were subsequently acquitted through DNA evidence; An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, images of sites that are not publicly accessible yet have vital and often disturbing functions; Nonfiction, photographs of people and places in politically charges areas of the world; and Contraband, images of illicit items confiscated at JFK airport over a five-day period. By highlighting the precarious and often unreliable seam between photographic imagery and definitive knowledge, Simon’s art draws attention to the habits of inference that affect our understanding of the contemporary world.
 
ON VIEW IN THE DECORATIVE ARTS GALLERY
Way of the Dragon: The Chinoiserie Style, 1710-1830
June 30, 2011–November 6, 2011
 
As the Milwaukee Art Museum celebrates the Summer of CHINA, Way of the Dragon investigates and questions European perceptions of China, as reflected in its decorative arts. 
 
Chinoiserie objects represent Europe’s attempt to translate the arts and the ornament of China, Japan, and India, and was popular in all of Europe, but the English in particular were mesmerized by the allure of the exotic land and its people. Although travel narratives originally inspired these chinoiserie decorations, the objects became progressively more informed by imported goods such as porcelain and textiles. As the style progressed, it became increasingly fantastic in its depictions, no longer faithfully copying Chinese originals but, instead, developing into an aesthetic that alluded more to British sensibilities, and perceptions, than Chinese. Way of the Dragon examines this shift, questioning what these images tell us about England in the eighteenth century. 
 
The Tool at Hand
December 12, 2011–April 1, 2012
 
The Tool at Hand features new work by twenty artists from Britain and America, commissioned to craft a work of art with one tool alone.  The choice of tool and material is up to the artist.  The parameters of the commission have been left open-ended to allow for a range of interpretations.
 
For centuries, artists and artisans have felt a particularly intimate connection to their tools, which have been described as extensions of the body, and in certain cultures, they have been revered as sacred objects with lives of their own.  The artists in The Tool at Hand have been asked to explore the intimate connection they have with their tools, both through the work on view and in short, accompanying videos.
 
ON VIEW IN BAUMGARTNER GALLERIA
Warriors, Beasts, and Spirits: Early Chinese Art from the James Conley Collection
June 11, 2011–September 11, 2011
 
Warriors, Beasts, and Spirits highlights include Han vessels, sculptures as well as accouterments of exquisite carvings in jade, lacquer, wood, bronze, and large-scale architectural components from the Ming period. This large display of more than 40 works of art offers a rare opportunity to view remarkable objects drawn from nearly three thousand years of China’s creative inspiration.
 
ON VIEW IN SCHROEDER GALLERIA
Building a Masterpiece: Santiago Calatrava and the Milwaukee Art Museum
September 8, 2011–January 1, 2012
 
Designed by the world-famous architect, Santiago Calatrava, the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Quadracci Pavilion was the Spaniard’s first commission in the United States.  Now, as the visionary structure celebrates its tenth anniversary, the Museum presents Building a Masterpiece: Santiago Calatrava and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
 
The exhibition will highlight the construction of the entirely custom-made project, a testament to Milwaukee’s tradition of precision manufacturing and craftsmanship.  Watercolors, models, and photographs will be included to highlight the evolution of the design, including the architectural wonder of the Burke Brise Soleil, perched high above the Quadracci Pavilion. Museum visitors will also be invited to submit their personal photographs of the Calatrava-designed addition, demonstrating the amazing impact this building has had on the city.
 
ON VIEW IN WINDHOVER HALL
On Site: Zhan Wang
June 11, 2011–September 11, 2011
 
On Site: Zhan Wang will highlight the new world and the old world in a contemporary setting. Zhan Wang has become world famous for his stainless steel copies of "scholars' rocks" found in classical Chinese gardens. To him, both the original rock and his stainless copy are material forms created for people's spiritual needs; their different materiality suits different cultural environments at different times.