Racine Art Museum

Last updated
Racine Art Museum
Racine Art Museum and RAM's Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts
Racine October 2023 044 (Racine Art Museum).jpg
Racine Art Museum
EstablishedNovember 16, 1941
Location Racine, Wisconsin
TypeContemporary craft
Visitors60,000 per year (2017) [1]
Director Bruce W. Pepich (2018)
CuratorLena Vigna (2018)
Public transit access Bus-logo.svg Ryde Racine
Website www.ramart.org

The Racine Art Museum (RAM) and RAM's Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts are located in Racine, Wisconsin, U.S. The museum holds the largest and most significant contemporary craft collection in North America, with more than 9,500 objects from nationally and internationally recognized artists. The Racine Art Museum's mission is to exhibit, collect, preserve, and educate in the contemporary visual arts. Its goal is to elevate the stature of craft to fine arts by presenting contemporary crafts alongside paintings and sculptures.

Contents

History

Jennie E. Wustum, widow of Charles A. Wustum, died on December 3, 1938, and left their house, property and a small trust fund to the City of Racine, Wisconsin, for the creation of a public art museum and park. The 12-acre (0.049 km2) property was on the edge of town, across the street from the J & W Horlicks malted milk factory. The Italianate mansion was of brick construction with a cupola on top. [2] [3]

A city ordinance creating the Wustum Museum and Park Commission was passed in 1940, [4] and in 1941, the property became the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts. The museum's grand opening was on November 16, 1941, and Sylvester Jerry was named the first director. [5] [6] The first exhibit was 96 paintings by Wisconsin artists, followed by a collection of contemporary lithographs from the Redfern Gallery in London, and watercolors by Midwestern artists. [7]

The museum's permanent collection began with a donation of 294 Works Progress Administration (WPA) artworks including textiles from the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, and paintings, photographs, and block prints from Wisconsin- and New York-based artists. Jerry, who was a supervisor for the WPA Art Program before joining the museum, arranged a 99-year lease for the collection which contained works by artists such as lithographer Mabel Dwight, painter Rufino Tamayo, and photographers Brett Weston and Bernice Abbott. [8] [9] The WPA works continue to be shown in occasional exhibitions, the latest in 2017. [10]

In the 1980s, the museum began to focus on crafts by American artists. Karen Johnson Boyd was a major benefactor to the museum donating over 1750 items including 200 objects in 1991 that included works by Wendell Castle, [11] Dale Chihuly, [12] Lia Cook, Albert Paley, and Toshiko Takaezu. [13] The high quality of these items encouraged donations from others collectors creating the largest collection of contemporary craft in North America. [1]

Racine Art Museum

In 2000, the museum expanded into downtown Racine by moving into an historic building donated by the M&I Bank of Racine. The renovation of the 1874 bank building, which was designed by Brininstool & Lynch of Chicago, involved the installation of a translucent acrylic shell around the upper two floors of the existing limestone building. The acrylic panels were 18 inches off the surface of the building; they allowed the colors of the limestone to show through during the day and were illuminated at night. The new building increased the museum's space from 15,500 to 40,000 sq ft (1,440 to 3,720 m2) and included a sculpture garden, an art library, and large storefront windows used for displays. [14] [15] The interior of the building was gutted to create exhibition space including a double-height gallery for larger objects. [16]

The $6.5 million funding for the renovation included a gift of $2.7 million from S.C. Johnson of Racine. Additional funds were used to upgrade the original museum which was retained for educational purposes and regional art displays. [16]

Collection

RAM's permanent collection features more than 9,500 artworks from internationally recognized artists such as Wendell Castle, Dale Chihuly, Lia Cook, Arline Fisch, Joel Philip Myers, Albert Paley, Toshiko Takaezu, and Claire Zeisler.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dale Chihuly</span> American glass sculptor and entrepreneur

Dale Chihuly is an American glass artist and entrepreneur. He is well known in the field of blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racine, Wisconsin</span> City in Wisconsin, United States

Racine is a city in and the county seat of Racine County, Wisconsin, United States. It is located on the shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Root River, situated 22 miles (35 km) south of Milwaukee and 60 miles (97 km) north of Chicago. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 77,816, making it the fifth-most populous city in Wisconsin. It is the principal city of the Racine metropolitan statistical area. The Racine metropolitan area is, in turn, counted as part of the greater Milwaukee combined statistical area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Art Project</span> New Deal relief program to fund the visual arts

The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the largest of the New Deal art projects. It was created not as a cultural activity, but as a relief measure to employ artists and artisans to create murals, easel paintings, sculpture, graphic art, posters, photography, theatre scenic design, and arts and crafts. The WPA Federal Art Project established more than 100 community art centers throughout the country, researched and documented American design, commissioned a significant body of public art without restriction to content or subject matter, and sustained some 10,000 artists and craft workers during the Great Depression. According to American Heritage, “Something like 400,000 easel paintings, murals, prints, posters, and renderings were produced by WPA artists during the eight years of the project’s existence, virtually free of government pressure to control subject matter, interpretation, or style.”

Toshiko Takaezu was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, and educator whose oeuvre spanned a wide range of mediums, including ceramics, weavings, bronzes, and paintings. She is noted for her pioneering work in ceramics and has played an important role in the international revival of interest in the ceramic arts. Takaezu was known for her rounded, closed ceramic forms which broke from traditions of clay as a medium for functional objects. Instead she explored clay's potential for aesthetic expression, taking on Abstract Expressionist concepts in a manner that places her work in the realm of postwar abstractionism. She is of Japanese descent and from Pepeeko, Hawaii.

Charles Cowles is an American art dealer and a collector of contemporary art. Cowles was also a curator of Fine Art at the Seattle Art Museum from 1975 until 1979.

The Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House, formerly The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, was integrated into the Honolulu Museum of Art under this name. It was the only museum in the state of Hawaii devoted exclusively to contemporary art. The Contemporary Museum had two venues: in residential Honolulu at the historic Spalding House, and downtown Honolulu at First Hawaiian Center. All venues continue to be open to the public.

The Museum of Contemporary Craft (1937-2016) in Portland, Oregon was the oldest continuously-running craft institution on the west coast of the United States until its closure in 2016. The museum's mission was "to enliven and expand the understanding of craft and the museum experience." It was known as one of the few centers in the United States to focus on the relationships between art and craft, programming robust shows exploring a wide variety of artists, materials and techniques.

Boris Bally is an American artist and metal smith in Providence, Rhode Island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leza McVey</span> American artist

Leza Marie McVey (1907–1984) was an American ceramist and weaver. She is known for her large hand-built organic forms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Dailey (glass artist)</span> American artist (born 1947)

Dan Owen Dailey is an American artist and educator, known for his sculpture. With the support of a team of artists and crafts people, he creates sculptures and functional objects in glass and metal. He has taught at many glass programs and is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he founded the glass program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maija Grotell</span> American ceramic artist (1899–1973)

Maija (Majlis) Grotell was an influential Finnish-American ceramic artist and educator. She is often described as the "Mother of American Ceramics."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lee Weiss</span> American painter (1928–2018)

Lee Weiss was an American painter known for her watercolors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arizona State University Art Museum</span> Art museum in Tempe, Arizona

The Arizona State University Art Museum is an art museum operated by Arizona State University, located on its main campus in Tempe, Arizona. The Art Museum has some 12,000 objects in its permanent collection and describes its primary focuses as contemporary art, including new media and "innovative methods of presentation"; crafts, with an emphasis on American ceramics; historic and contemporary prints; art from Arizona and the Southwestern United States, with an emphasis on Latino artists, and art of the Americas, with one historic American pieces and modernist and contemporary Latin American works.

Bruce W. Pepich is an expert in American and international craft, and executive director and curator of collections at the Racine Art Museum (RAM) and Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts (Wustum) in Racine, Wisconsin. In Pepich's time at RAM, the contemporary craft collection has increased in size from 253 pieces to almost 10,000 pieces in 2018, one of the largest collections in the United States. Pepich is an Honorary Fellow of the American Craft Council (ACC), in recognition of his contributions to the field of contemporary American crafts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Nessler Hayden</span> American artist

Martha Nessler Hayden is an American artist, known for Modernist landscape painting and artist books. Hayden lives and works in Sharon, Wisconsin, in a historic Victorian home.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hunterdon Art Museum</span> Museum in Clinton, New Jersey

The Hunterdon Art Museum, previously known as the Hunterdon Art Center and the Hunterdon Museum of Art, is located in a historic stone mill at 7 Lower Center Street in Clinton, New Jersey. It was founded in 1952 when it purchased Dunham's Mill, the Stone Mill, for use as an art museum. The museum emphasizes that it is a "center for art, craft & design" and presents exhibitions featuring both local and national artists. The stone mill was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 for its significance in commerce and industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin B. Knutesen</span> American painter (1901–1961)

Edwin Bassett Knutesen was an American painter born in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Theodore "Ted" Czebotar was an American Regionalist painter active in Wisconsin and New York in the mid-20th century.

References

  1. 1 2 Sutton, Rebecca (June 9, 2017). "Building a Sense of Community". NEA. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
  2. "Public museum and park is gift to city from late Jennie Wustun". Journal Times. Racine, Wisconsin. December 19, 1938. p. 1. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018 via Newspapers.com. Lock-green.svg
  3. "Racine given $150,000 estate in Wustum will". Wisconsin State Journal. December 20, 1938. p. 6. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018 via Newspapers.com. Lock-green.svg
  4. "Common Council: official proceedings". Journal Times. Racine, Wisconsin. April 12, 1940. p. 13. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018 via Newspapers.com. Lock-green.svg
  5. "WPA official likely to get museum post". Lansing State Journal. July 15, 1941. p. 5. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018 via Newspapers.com. Lock-green.svg
  6. Tancill, Karen. "Wustum Museum's first director dies". Journal Times. Archived from the original on May 2, 2018. Retrieved May 5, 2018.
  7. "Wustum Museum of Arts to open to public Sunday". Journal Times. November 14, 1941. p. 6. Retrieved May 19, 2018 via Newspapers.com. Lock-green.svg
  8. Kneiszel, Jim (January 29, 1996). "From the depths of the Depression to the walls of the Wustum Museum". Journal Times. p. 13 Archived 2018-05-20 at the Wayback Machine and p. 14 Archived 2018-05-20 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved May 19, 2018 - via Newspapers.com. Lock-green.svg
  9. "Illustrations, graphics are exhibited at museum". Journal Times. March 5, 1943. p. 11. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018 via Newspapers.com. Lock-green.svg
  10. Larsen, J. Carlisle (March 30, 2017). "Racine Art Museum provides glimpse into the Great Depression". Wisconsin Public Radio. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
  11. "Three exhibitions focus on collecting". Journal Times. September 11, 1997. p. 35. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018 via Newspapers.com. Lock-green.svg
  12. Kilian, Michael (August 7, 2003). "Chihuly glasswork showcased in Racine, Wis". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018.
  13. "Made for clay: Racine Art Museum: Victor M. Cassidy relates the history and future of a Midwest US art museum". Ceramics Technical. November 1, 2009. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018.
  14. Lynch, Kevin (June 7, 2000). "Racine Combines Old and New in Museum Project Bank's Facade to Be Enclosed". Capital Times. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
  15. Buttweiler, Joe (June 15, 2000). "Video screen prominent in plan for new Wustum home". Journal Times. p. 23. Retrieved May 19, 2018 via Newspapers.com. Lock-green.svg
  16. 1 2 Paul, Donna (August 1, 2003). "A museum comes of age: founded in a Wisconsisn farmhouse, the Racine Art Museum is ready for big time--and a building by Brininstool + Lynch". Interior Design Magazine. Archived from the original on May 20, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2018.
  17. "Teapots on exhibit at Racine Art Museum". Journal Times. February 1, 2017. Retrieved May 19, 2018. Lock-green.svg

42°43′42″N87°46′58″W / 42.728282°N 87.782640°W / 42.728282; -87.782640