Milwaukee Art Museum

February 9, 2026

The Milwaukee Art Museum is a cathedral to beauty and wonderment in a seemingly unlikely place. If Chicago is the city of big shoulders, then Milwaukee is a town of strong backs. The city is in the middle of a growth spurt and the sight of cranes rising up along the horizon tells you that Milwaukee is at work and they’re not letting anything, not the weird political landscape of a purple state, not a rollercoaster economy and definitely not the arctic temperatures, stand in the way.

She’s a Midwestern city now, but she still says good morning to you like she’s a town. She’s a meat and potatoes girl, with a six-pack of Miller to wash it all down. She’s a blue collar girl and she punches in early because she needs the overtime. She’s got no time to waste on frills.

It would be easy to pass Milwaukee over when in search of cultural significance, but you would be missing out on the fairytale whimsy and exuberant, almost boisterous potpourri of art that is showcased at the MAM.

Here, the building itself is art. The delicate snowflake lace of the calatrava appears to be ridiculously flimsy against the backdrop of the flinty, winter sky. Lake Michigan, frozen and somber, appears to be unmoved by her elegance. Like one good puff of wind, and she might fly off to someplace more apt to embrace her, maybe somewhere tropical where her gossamer butterfly wings wouldn’t need to stand up to forty below temperatures.

She is far too delicate and feminine to be here. And yet, like so many other beautiful ladies, it’s what’s inside that makes her a marvel. Inside, she is science fiction, she’s the deck of a spaceship, she’s a marble tomb silently holding a Pharoah’s prize possessions for the after life. She’s a work of art herself.

The light plays in a thousand, carefully contrived angles and shapes and you would have to go every day to see them all. A cathedral is the correct word, she is a sacred space, a bridge to commune with the gods of art and aesthetic.

This is the time in the adventure that I remind you that I’m high and for this excursion, I had taken a 100 mg gummy from URB in Knock Out Punch Indica. They’re delicious and it’s a long, slow high that feels like a spiritual journey. It’s not a lazy high, it’s a ponderous high. If you want to get into the nuances of a piece of music, a movie or some art, I’d highly suggest it.

One of the things that I always pay attention to is the lushness of the human body. You can tell when you look at the luminous glow of a woman’s skin, her plump, pink little toes, the blush on her cheeks or the smile in her eyes that the artist loved, if not her, then the artistry of a woman’s body. I love seeing that and I wish that as women, we all held that for ourselves.

The religious artwork is almost always terrifying. At the MAM, they have a frightening monk picture hung in a prominent place and he is more Sith Lord than anyone you would pray with.

See the Haitian art. The colors are alive and the scenes are reminiscent of Mardi Gras with maybe a little first season of True Detective thrown in.

The best display at the museum right now is the high school kid’s art that is on display. The emotions in these pieces are raw and right on the surface, just the way our teenage emotions always are. Whimsical. Terrifying. Ordinary beauty spilled out in uncommon ways. Everyday psychedelic. Brutally wise before their time. Smartly funny. Ethnically and sexually more diverse than the crowd was that day. It was a kaleidoscope of images that shouted for attention, whispered secret truths and showed that these kids are paying attention to the world around them. If this is a picture of the future, we’re in good hands.