Sajet became the Donna and Donald Baumgartner Director of the Milwaukee Art Museum late last year and has since become an active member of Milwaukee’s art scene. Before her move to Milwaukee, Sajet previously served as director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery for 12 years. Sajet holds a BA and an MBA from Melbourne University, an MA in Art History from Bryn Mawr College, and a doctorate in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University.

In her lecture, Sajet will address the relevance of art history and two key questions: If art history is fundamentally the study of visual communication, why has it struggled to communicate its own purpose? What is art history for?

Sajet suggests that the answer lies not in defending old hierarchies or rehearsing inherited canons, but in reimagining the purpose of studying art itself — as a way of creating community and advancing a shared sense of global humanity.

The lecture is free and open to the public; more details can be found here.

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The exhibitions will be on view through Thursday, May 14, 2026. The Mathis Gallery is open Monday-Thursday, 10:30am-2:30pm (except during University breaks and unscheduled closures).

What Is A Print?

Prints – images made through a process of transferring ink from one surface to another – have for two millennia been rich sources of expressive exploration and crucial to the global circulation of images. Until the late-twentieth century, most people experienced visual art primarily through prints.��What Is A Print?��surveys some of the major print processes represented in the 51���� Art Collection, including seminal printmakers like Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco Goya, and Pablo Picasso. By illuminating some of the complex technical details of printmaking, the exhibition will enable viewers to consider the creative, technical, financial, and social contexts that have shaped its history.

The One-Off Print: Monotypes from the 51���� Art Collection

The monotype is a hybrid printmaking process in which ink is transferred from a flat matrix or printing plate onto a sheet of paper. In other words, the monotype is a print form without a permanent matrix: it can only be printed once. The One-Off Print, curated by Art History MA student Emma Erickson, features monotypes from the 51���� Art Collection produced by postwar American artists, a time when experimental printmaking was on the rise. The exhibition highlights the versatility of the monotype, a medium that bridges the disciplines of painting, drawing, and printmaking.

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Emile H. Mathis Gallery

Opening Reception: November 20, 5:00–7:00pm

Learn more about Rebellious Strips and American Icons.

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Max Arthur Cohn (1903-1998) came of age as an artist during a period of crisis and reform in American industry. Among the aims of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were reinvigorating industrial production and giving artists stable work. Cohn was one of thousands of artists employed under the New Deal, and industrial subjects pervade this period of his career. He became a pioneering figure in silkscreen printing (a medium associated with commercial production), co-authoring an influential technical manual and running a successful graphic art business in New York City. Although Cohn’s oeuvre encompasses a variety of subjects and stylistic approaches, the intersection of art and American industry wends its way throughout his work in both subtle and overt ways.

Max Arthur Cohn: Industrial Subjects��draws from the 51���� Art Collection – the largest repository of Cohn’s art – and explores his engagement with industry in paint, drawing, and print. It focuses particularly on the 1930s – as Americans grappled with the effects of the Depression – and the 1990s, when Cohn returned to and reconceived many of his New Deal-era compositions. As the exhibition demonstrates, Cohn’s works not only represent industry and labor, but also encourage the viewer to more deeply consider artistic production itself as a form of labor.

Exhibition runs through October 23, 2025

Gallery and events are free and open to the public.

Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery
3203 N. Downer Ave.
Mitchell Hall, 1^st��floor
Milwaukee, WI 53211

Hours: Monday – Thursday, 10:30am – 2:30pm

/arthistory/gallery/

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By Sarah C. Schaefer

The post Gustave Doré and Hélidore Pisan’s��Newgate—Exercise Yard, 1872. Professor Sarah Schaefer article in March 2025 Art Forum appeared first on Art History.

Artistic Lunar Depictions, April 30 at 7:00 – 8:00pm, 51���� Planetarium, Free

The program is open to the public and will include an indoor stargazing session of the night sky followed by the opportunity to ask questions. Not recommended for children under 4.

/planetarium/event/artistic-lunar-depictions/

51���� Manfred Olson Planetarium

planetarium@uwm.edu

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Demoted opens in the Mathis Art Gallery, first floor Mitchell Hall, Thursday, March 13th with an opening reception from 5 until 7pm featuring remarks from undergraduate co-curators at 5:30pm. Exhibition runs through May 1, 2025.

The gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 10:30am until 2:30pm.

Gallery and events are free and open to the public.

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Selected by Juror and 51���� Head of Special Collections, Max Yela, the show features 60 contemporary relief engravings that showcase the creative innovation and technical craftsmanship of an international group of artists.����

This exhibition is free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday, 10:30am until 2:30pm (closed for break March 17 through 27th). Mathis Art Gallery is on the first floor of Mitchell Hall, 3203 N Downer Avenue.��

The post Wood Engravers’ Network’s 5th Triennial Exhibition appeared first on Art History.

51���� Underground: The Art of Denis Kitchen��takes a broad look at Denis Kitchen (b. 1946) the cartoonist and seminal figure in American comics. We follow him from his undergraduate days here at UW-Milwaukee as a budding illustrator through struggles and triumphs at independent newspapers in Wisconsin. Denis and the daring artists he supported weathered upheaval in an industry increasingly dominated by mainstream, capitalist interests. Through decades of change, Denis remained a force to be reckoned with as an editor and publisher centered around Kitchen Sink Press. But underneath his business acumen and razor-sharp provocations lies an enduring artistic commitment to the surreal and its strange wisdom.

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