September 25, 2026 - The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay presents the paintings of Jean Roberts-Guequierre for the month of October as part of its contemporary invitational series, the 12x12 Project, on view October 1 through 31. The public is invited to an Artist Talk facilitated by Curator Suzanne Rose, with a reception following, on Saturday, October 3, at 4 pm. The event is free and open to the public.
Jean Roberts-Guequierre draws on the visual language of medieval and Renaissance painting, particularly the narrative worlds of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch, to tell stories that feel unmistakably present tense. In her paintings, women stand naked and assume poses with an authority historically afforded to men. Their bodies are at home in their skin, revealing an absence of vanity. By shifting the gender of familiar iconic roles, Roberts-Guequierre does not insert women into history as an artificial correction. She reframes the historically male gaze and places women in positions of agency, living easily alongside their male counterparts.
"The worlds she paints may appear fantastical, but their foundations are deeply grounded in the land that formed her, the art that taught her, and the conviction to trust what she paints. Past and present, flesh and imagination, woman, man, and icon all coexist without apology...Her figures do not ask history for permission to enter," says Rose. "They were there all along, in the heart and imagination of the artist.”
Although her imagery reaches back centuries, Roberts-Guequierre describes herself as "very regional." Her paintings return again and again to Midwestern terrain. Great Lakes shorelines and remembered landscapes mingle with invented plants and creatures, alongside garments, architecture, and details of daily life that seem to belong to another century. "We are still part of that time," she says, "and that time is still part of who we are now."
ABOUT JEAN ROBERTS-GUEQUIERRE
Roberts-Guequierre's connection to historical art began at age five, when she discovered the medieval collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where she later interned during college. At Kalamazoo College, after the art program was cut midway through her studies, she taught herself woodcut printmaking and then oil painting from books. Largely self-taught, she found her mentors in the Flemish Primitives and Northern Renaissance masters, adapting their technique of building paintings through transparent glazes over drawn underpaintings. Her work explores themes of midlife rebirth and reimagines women within traditionally male-oriented imagery, all carried with empathy, humor, and wry wit.
ABOUT THE 12X12 PROJECT
The 12 x 12 Project is an invitational exhibition series highlighting contemporary artists working across disciplines throughout Wisconsin and the greater Midwest. Conceived as an intimate platform for focused presentations of new work shaping the evolving regional art landscape, the series reflects the museum's ongoing commitment to contemporary practice while expanding access to the larger art dialogue taking place throughout the Midwest.
The exhibition will be on display in downtown Sturgeon Bay through October 31, 2026.
September 25, 2026 - The Miller Art Museum is pleased to announce the award winners of its 51st Juried Annual. Awards were presented at the opening reception on Friday, September 18, 2026, and the exhibition remains on view in downtown Sturgeon Bay through November 7, 2026.
Established in 1975, the Miller Art Museum’s Juried Annual has grown from a local exhibition of Northeast Wisconsin artists into a statewide platform celebrating visual arts excellence. This year, the museum received 317 submissions from 177 artists across the state. From that field, 64 works by 61 artists were selected, creating a vibrant conversation across media, approaches, and points of view.
"It's a privilege to bring this work together in an exhibition that celebrates the extraordinary breadth of vision, practice, and creative life found throughout Wisconsin," says Suzanne Rose, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections. "The exhibition speaks so strongly to the range and vitality of Wisconsin artists, and it's an honor to share it with our community and the many visitors who come to Door County."
Eight artists were recognized with a total of $1,950 in cash awards:
Gerhard Miller Award of Excellence ($500)
Rebecca Jabs (Manitiwoc), Yellow-billed Cuckoo
September 17, 2026 - The Miller Art Museum will host its final public program for the 2026 Al & Mickey Quinlan Artist Residency, celebrating the conclusion of resident artist Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera's residency and his artistic output in Door County. The event will take place on Friday, September 25 from 4:30 – 6:30pm at the Dome House in Sturgeon Bay.
Rodríguez Rivera, a Detroit-based artist, designer, and educator originally from Cataño, Puerto Rico, spent his residency producing an extensive series of natural prints using pigments extracted from locally sourced flowers and plant materials gathered from the grounds of the Dome House and the surrounding Door County area. Working with fragmented petals, handmade paper, and small batches of bio-plastics made from Lake Michigan water, he set out to explore how the Peninsula's freshwater ecology and seasonal conditions would shape both process and outcome—with a goal of producing over 1,000 prints and bio-plastic forms over the course of his residency, forming what he described as a "deconstructed garden" within the Dome House's circular architecture. The works developed during his residency will be incorporated into Becoming Post-Tropical, his ongoing installation project imagining a present shaped by absence, in which nature has ceased to exist yet persists as memory, residue, and fiction.
September 11, 2026 - The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay will will soon unveil two new exhibitions: the 51st Juried Annual, one of Wisconsin's longest-running juried visual art exhibitions, 
and Emmett Johns | Transcending Time, a solo exhibition of new abstract paintings and drawings. Both exhibitions open with a free public reception on Friday, September 18, 2026, from 5–7 pm, with remarks and awards at 6 pm. Light refreshments will be served and music will be provided by Craig Schultz. The 51st Juried Annual continues the Museum's longstanding tradition of surveying contemporary artistic practice from across the state. This year's exhibition was selected from 317 statewide submissions by a three-person jury panel consisting of Debra Brehmer, director of Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee and a longtime writer and curator; Cristian Andersson, curator of the Lawton Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and a practicing painter and performance artist; and Kimberly Burnett, a self-taught, Milwaukee-based realist painter. A total of $1,950 in cash awards will be presented at the opening reception, including three Special Merit Awards of $250 each, three Juror's Choice Awards of $200 each, the Gerhard Miller Award of Excellence ($500), and the Bonnie Hartmann Award for Outstanding Creativity ($100).
September 4, 2026 - The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay invites the community to gather at the Dome House for an intimate evening of fire, conversation, and shared creativity with 2026 Al & Mickey Quinlan Artist-in-Residence Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera. From Bloom to Ash: Fire as Material Process will take place Saturday, September 19, from 7 to 9 pm at the Dome House in Sturgeon Bay. Space is limited and registration is required.
Guests are invited to enjoy s'mores, hot cider, and casual conversation around the fire as Rodríguez Rivera discusses why flowers and fire have become central to his art-making practice during his residency. Attendees are encouraged to bring dried flowers to add to the burn, along with a poem, story, or piece of writing they'd like to share by the firelight—transforming the evening into a collective, ephemeral work shaped by event attendees.
Rodríguez Rivera is a Detroit-based artist, designer, and educator whose work explores Puerto Rican identity, ecological vulnerability, and community-rooted storytelling through site-specific installation and design. Shaped by his roots in Cataño, Puerto Rico, his practice uses nature not only as inspiration but as material—incorporating pigments extracted from locally sourced flowers and plant matter, handmade paper, and bioplastics made from Lake Michigan water. During his residency at the Dome House, he has been developing new work as part of his ongoing project Becoming Post-Tropical, drawing on elements from the Door Peninsula landscape for material experimentation.