Field Trip - Milwaukee Art Museum Herzfeld Center

Milwaukee Art Museum
Herzfeld Center

by: Kylee Diedrich

On Wednesday, March 1st my photography class visited the Herzfeld Center at the Milwaukee Art Museum to view contemporary photography in an informal setting. The majority of the images were without frames or glass, directly from the storage files. We were able to be inches away from the museum's worthy collection. Our instructor and the Collections Manager chose images that were either historically important or cutting edge. Not often do students or the public get the chance to view work in such an intimate way.

The trip exposed us all to contemporary photographs and photographers who are working with new techniques or old techniques in a new manner.  We saw twenty-five images close up.  Some that I found most interesting were Robert Heinecken's A Case Study in Finding an Appropriate TV Newswoman, 1984 (Top Left); Marco Breuer's Untitled (C-784), 2008 (Top Right) ; and Christopher Russell's Explosion #26, 2014 (Bottom).

                                

                

Overall, the field trip to the Herzfeld Center to be a great way to expose us to the new ideas revolving around contemporary photography and the ways artists are developing the medium of photography, what it means, and what it can be in the future.  

Event Review - James Nares

In Conversation: James Nares

Saturday, January 28^th at the Milwaukee Art Museum

By: Mandy Litwin

Seeing James Nares talk at the Milwaukee Art Museum this past weekend was very enjoyable. He is a multi-media visual artist who especially focuses on film-making. I had gone into the talk not knowing too much about his art. Though it was initially a bit slow getting into it, the way James Nares discussed his work – in sort of a chronological order – ended up making each piece make sense. He seems to have a big fascination with change over time, as well is sort of the human presence in those changes.

The talk was very informative and light hearted as he went through various videos and art works and explained their backgrounds. One of my pieces was Street in which he uses a high speed camera to capture people going about their everyday lives in the streets of New York. Besides being generally visually stimulating, it was interesting to see the tiniest details of the people; facial expressions, motions, and more. Due to the fact that the videos are shown at such a slow speed, you are given the ability to study the figures and make implications about each person.

Another example of his work that shows a sense of change over time are his paintings in which he creates a set of moving lines on a surface that moves continuously on a rotating cylinder. He creates brushes that push paint through them onto the surface as he desires. The motion of the cylinder creates the effect of continuous and winding lines on the piece.

James Nares work is quiet and subtle, but opens a world of fascination and deeper thinking when closely looked at.