July 19, 2024—The Miller Art Museum is accepting submissions for the institution’s 49th Juried Annual, which will be on view in downtown Sturgeon Bay from Saturday, September 28 through Monday, November 9, 2024. Each year, the exhibit spotlights the work of regional contemporary artists from across the state of Wisconsin. 
Applications are being accepted online through ArtCall.org and are due by 4:59 pm on Friday, August 23, 2024. Artists selected for inclusion will be notified Tuesday, September 3, 2024.
The exhibition is open to artists at all career levels and invites a range of media and artistic practices from traditional to abstract. Artists over the age of 18 who live and work in Wisconsin are eligible to apply. Artists can register and submit work via the ArtCall platform through the Museum’s website. Artists may enter up to two (2) original works for a $30 non-refundable entry fee.
Eight artists will be recognized at the opening reception on Friday, September 27 with a total of $1,950.00 presented in cash awards; three Special Merit Awards ($250 each), three Juror’s Choice Awards ($200 each), the Gerhard Miller Award of Excellence ($500), and the Bonnie Hartmann Award for Outstanding Creativity ($100). Submission information, including the prospectus and link to the online submission portal, is available here.
July 5, 2024 – The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay announced today preparations for the organization’s annual Art & Treasures Fundraiser, now in its 19th year, and scheduled to open to the public on Saturday, August 3, 2024. The Museum is seeking tax-deductible donations of new and gently used items from the community to support its fundraising efforts. In particular, the museum is looking for objets d’ art––fine art, sculpture, prints, jewelry, books, collectibles, craft and art supplies, home décor, unique oddities, and more. 
The Art & Treasures Fundraiser presents a fun and eclectic collection of items from year to year, with proceeds benefitting the museum’s operations and programming. This year’s fundraiser will again be held at M3, the museum’s satellite education space located at 142 S. 3rd Avenue in downtown Sturgeon Bay.
June 28, 2024—The Miller Art Museum will debut two new exhibitions opening on Sat., July 13, 2024: (ha)kirinąk / to return home featured in the Museum’s first floor main galleries and Stand Together! on the Ruth Morton Miller Mezzanine. The exhibitions feature a collection of 35 artworks by Henry Payer, a Ho Chunk artist enrolled in the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska currently residing in Sioux City, Iowa, and Camille Billie, Weeya Calif, Pat Kruse, and Christopher Sweet––four regional Woodland artists.
There will be a free public reception on Friday, July 12 from 5:30 – 7 pm. Light refreshments will be served. The exhibitions will remain on view through September 21, 2024.
(ha)kirinąk / to return home is Payer’s debut solo exhibition in his ancestral state of Wisconsin. The artist views the exhibit as an opportunity to bring his collection back home; the title of the exhibit uses the Ho Chunk language expression (ha)kirinąk, meaning one who has been far away and has returned.
“My work generally has to do with the culture that I come from, and my background as a Ho Chunk, the Indigenous people of Wisconsin...” says Payer. “I’m trying to get people to question and learn more about not only their cultural perspective but about history. This is not just my history that I'm talking about. It's American history. It's regional history. It's state history. It's local history. Indigenous history.”
May 31, 2024—The Miller Art Museum is pleased to announce Jessica Harvey as its 2024 Dome House Al & Mickey Quinlan Artist in Residence. Harvey will be in residence in Door County from August 4 – September 29, 2024.
The residency, entering its fourth year in 2024, is administered jointly with the Quinlan/Wagner family and carries on the original intent of the Dome House, as visioned by Al Quinlan, to serve as a creative haven for living artists. The program advances the museum’s mission to expand its role in education and to shape and influence the artistic development and growth of artists in the area. The Milwaukee-based artist Jessica Harvey was selected from a pool of 38 applicants from 13 states across the Midwest by the program’s Artist Selection Committee. In addition to being awarded an unrestricted stipend, she will receive access to time, space, and resources to advance her work at the iconic Door County structure.
“A residency at the Dome House is truly a dream come true, and I am thrilled for the chance to be a part of the Door County arts community this summer,” Harvey says.
“At the start of the pandemic, I began a project titled ‘daybreak,’ where I made field recordings each morning at dawn as a grounding ritual in a time of uncertainty. People can call a phone number to hear the recordings each day. I have continued this practice and will continue to explore this during my time in residence. I will lead a series of deep listening experiments and work to turn this project into an immersive installation with multi-layered image projections, and a sound installation of the field recordings culminating in an immersive exhibition in the studio. My time at the Dome House will be crucial to developing the next stages of this body of work.”
Jessica Harvey is an artist and writer whose work explores the fractures of bodies, place, and history. Digging through public and private archives, she conducts long-term investigations of ruptures within natural, historical, and personal events, paying close attention to the interpretation of facts, which often changes based on the narrator. Using photography, video, sound, and archival resources, the images and installations she makes act as a catalyst for the exploration of the psychology that one attaches to memory and place, putting a particular emphasis on time and the labor of care. She often makes work using intimate aspects of physical bodies without revealing the actual human form in its entirety. Bone fragments, human hair, heartbeats, and the sounds of daybreak act as inspiration to illustrate the stories and rituals tied to death and living.
May 7, 2024—The Miller Art Museum is pleased to present two new exhibitions opening on Sat., May 25, 2024: Expressions of Place featured in the Museum’s first floor main galleries and Wisconsin Visual Artists NE Chapter Show 2024 on the Ruth Morton Miller Mezzanine. Expressions of Place features the work of Hector Acuna (Grafton), Marc Anderson (Sturgeon Bay), Shelby Keefe (Milwaukee), Stephanie Lord (Sturgeon Bay), and Brian Sindler (Chicago), along with 38 member artists of the WVA. The exhibits open to the public at 10 am on Saturday, May 25, 2024; a free artist reception will be held on Friday evening, May 24 from 4 – 6 pm with remarks by WVA Juror Craig Blietz at 5 pm on the Ruth Morton Miller Mezzanine. Light refreshments will be served and music will be provided by Craig Schultz and Mike Miller. The exhibitions will remain on view through July 6, 2024.
Expressions of Place, an invitational, highlights plein air painting in celebration of the rich history of the practice on the Door Peninsula. Works by artists Brian Sindler (Chicago, IL.), Shelby Keefe (Milwaukee), Marc Anderson (Sturgeon Bay), Stephanie Lord (Sturgeon Bay, WI) and Hector Acuna (Grafton, WI) will be featured and complimented by a selection of plein air works curated from the permanent collection.
“There was a time in Door County before art galleries, but, there was never a time that people couldn’t appreciate the beauty of the Peninsula. When the snow melted from the fields and the pink and white blossoms popped on the trees, the temptation was there to record it on paper or canvas,” said Lorraine Mengert (Door County’s Art History, 1996, p. 5).