Wisconsin Center CEO and President Marty Brooks has paused the removal of a cherished literary art installation after facing criticism from board members and others.
Local authors and Milwaukee officials were surprised to learn that Brooks planned to decommission the artwork without public notice or discussion among board members.
The exhibit, called "Portals and Writings Celebrating Wisconsin Authors," showcases the works of 48 writers. Short passages and poems are displayed on the center’s walls using raised or impressed lettering.
The art was initially decommissioned as part of the Wisconsin Center's $456 million expansion, which is slated to open in May 2024.
On April 13, Brooks wrote a letter to board members in response to their concerns and said the Wisconsin Center District "has since fielded public responses calling for status quo."
"Appreciating the need to absorb conflicting perspectives, I have spent many hours contemplating the right path forward and I appreciate the support and guidance so many of you have given," Brooks wrote. "My first action was to direct the construction team to continue on south building work, but to pause any decommissioning of the prose. As of this memo it is all still in-tact, allowing me time to reflect and respond to the voices commenting on the work which we own."
Before the art removal was paused, Alderman Robert Bauman, a board member, said removing the artwork is very sad.
"The expansion project is important for Milwaukee — I just saw no need for moving these art pieces in the first place," he said. "There's a lot of people in the arts community who are very upset about this, and I sympathize with them. I wish we, the board, had some way of stopping it, but I don't think we do."
Kimberly Blaeser, an author and retired professor at UW-Milwaukee, helped curate the installation in the 1990s. She said the works that were displayed from famous Wisconsin poets, like Lorine Neidecker, would be greatly missed in the space.
"No one will be able to do this now, but if you could go in that building and see, there was a massive installation of her work across a large space because that's the way that her work is," Blaeser said. "If you look at it on the page, the visual reality is as important as the language because that's part of how she communicated the meaning."
On April 4, Brooks wrote in a letter to concerned board members that some of the art in the south building was decommissioned to achieve visual cohesion between the north and south buildings and to mitigate any sense of one building being old and the other new.
Brooks’ letter said in January, the center notified writers whose works were featured in the exhibit that it would be removed. Last month, the Wisconsin Center reached an agreement with Woodland Pattern Book Center for a photographer to memorialize the decommissioned works in a photo book. The Wisconsin Center District agreed to contribute $20,000 toward the project.
Blaeser said the co-founders of Woodland Pattern, Karl Gartung and Anne Kingsbury, were instrumental in getting the installation approved. She said the absence of the installation is erasing a visual representation of Wisconsin’s history and art.
"It’s sort of like being in a visual library," Blaeser said. "Also, at the same time, feeling that immensity of art, because it's large before you and it's here for our Wisconsin citizens. But honestly, many people have been through this building over the 25 years."
Some of those people include the children of Guadalupe Solis Jr., who was Blaeser’s former student and whose work was featured in the exhibit. Blaeser recalled her recent and final visit to the installation where she was approached by Solis’ kids.
"[Solis] has since passed away, but his four children drove to come down and look at their dad's work on the wall of the convention center one last time," she said. "His work — it's a beautiful passage. It talks about boarded up houses and being forgotten. These are the passages that I think people are afraid of that say, hey, take a look at this, don't forget us, remember this, this is our history too."
Ald. Bauman said he’s concerned about how a public space in the Wisconsin Center is being operated.
"What's most troubling is there seems to be this sense that Mr. Brooks runs this like some private corporation," said Bauman. "But the reality is the Wisconsin Center District is a public entity. It receives and spends over $40 million in tax money. When you get that amount of tax money, you better be transparent and you better hold yourself accountable to the public."
In his most recent letter, Brooks said his objective is to explore collaborative options while moving forward with the expansion project.
"Art is subjective and personal, yet status quo for the south building is unacceptable," he wrote. "As one of Woodland Pattern’s board members said to me today, there is no fast answer."
