April 4, 2024—The Miller Art Museum celebrates 50 years in 2024 of honoring Door Peninsula student artists with its beloved annual student art exhibition, the 50th Annual Salon of Door County High School Art opening to the public on Saturday, April 13. In celebration, the museum will host an opening reception and awards celebration on Monday, April 15 from 7 - 8:30 pm. The event is open to all—students, families, guests, and the general public. Awards will be presented at 7:30 pm; Certificates of Participation will be presented to all student artists by their respective art teachers following the presentation of all other awards by the Miller Art Museum.
The annual exhibition, a now 50-year tradition, features the work of more than 100 young artists from schools on the Door Peninsula. Working with their art teachers, the students demonstrate creativity, enthusiasm, and technical ability across diverse media, ranging from painting to sculpture, drawing, and photography. This year’s show will feature 174 imaginative works from students attending Gibraltar, Sevastopol, Southern Door, Sturgeon Bay, and Washington Island High Schools, along with representation by Door County home school students.
“The Salon is always an exciting exhibition,” says Helen del Guidice, Miller Art Museum curator. “It’s an opportunity for the community to be able to come together and celebrate the artistic growth and achievements of our youth and it means so much. It also gives us the honor of acknowledging the hard work and indelible contributions of our teacher partners Kari Brandt, Nicole Herbst, Melanie Jones, Klayton Kindt, Billie Moore, and Emily Salm.”
The Miller Art Museum has partnered with the Artists Guild, LLC and Blue Moon Framery in Sturgeon Bay, as well as the Peninsula School of Art in Fish Creek to offer award certificates for art supplies, instruction, and framing to further the students’ artistic endeavors. $100 cash awards will also be presented to each high school art department and one student from Sevastopol High School will be awarded the Mr. Rericha Legacy Award, also a $100 cash prize. Jim Rericha was a longtime beloved art teacher and theater director at Sevastopol High School who had a significant impact on the lives of those he taught and mentored; he passed away in September 2022 and an anonymous financial gift made the establishment of the award possible.
The exhibition and accompanying awards are made possible with support from the following exhibition sponsors and in-kind partners: Anonymous, Artists Guild, LLC, Blue Moon Framery, Kathy and John Campbell, Dennis and Bonnie Connolly, Chris Cramer, Huehns Family Charitable Trust, the Jacksonport Women’s Club, Barb & Mike Madden, MMG Foundation, Inc., Nicolet National Bank, the Ellsworth & Carla Peterson Foundation, Inc., and Ruth Scholz. Additional support has been provided, in part, by the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.
“Artistic achievement should be celebrated,” says Elizabeth Meissner-Gigstead, Miller Art Museum executive director. “Gerhard CF Miller, our founder, believed this deeply and the SoHSA remains, to this day, a core component of our exhibition program each and every year. This recognition is a single piece of a much broader picture that encourages continued development and exploration of their creativity, leading to more adaptable, more tolerant, and better-educated generations in the years to come. It’s an honor to present this exhibition and share the student work with our community.”
The 50th Annual Salon of Door County High School Art will be on display in both the first and second-floor galleries of the museum through May 18, 2024. The museum is fully accessible, equipped with ramps at the entry and an elevator to access the galleries on the second level Ruth Morton Miller Mezzanine.