July 9, 2026—The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay is pleased to announce that submissions are being accepted for the 51st Juried Annual, one of Wisconsin’s longest-running juried visual art exhibitions. Now in its 51st year, the exhibition continues the Museum’s longstanding commitment to celebrating the breadth, vitality, and depth of contemporary artistic practice from across the state. Submissions will be accepted through Friday, August 21, 2026, at 5:00 pm. Applications are accepted online through ArtCall.org via the Museum’s website at millerartmuseum.org.
Each year, the exhibition presents a dynamic survey of contemporary artistic practice from across the state. Selected through a competitive juried process, the exhibition brings together works spanning diverse two-dimensional media, approaches, and perspectives. Collectively, these artists reflect both individual vision and shared cultural inquiry, offering insight into the concerns, materials, and methods shaping art today. The Juried Annual continues the Museum’s longstanding commitment to artistic excellence, fostering a shared space for visual dialogue.
The opportunity is open to artists at all career levels—from emerging to established—who are 18 years of age or older and reside in the State of Wisconsin. Eligible work includes original two-dimensional artwork created within the past two years in any medium. Artwork dimensions must not exceed 48” L x 48” H x 5” D, including framing. Diptychs, triptychs, and work previously exhibited in Door County are not eligible. Artists may submit up to two (2) original works for a $30.00 non-refundable entry fee.
Miller Art Museum Presents 'Linda Marcus | 12×12 Project,' the Artist's First Solo Museum Exhibition
July 3, 2026 - The Miller Art Museum is pleased to present Linda Marcus | 12 x 12 Project, on view July 1 - 31, 2026. Marcus is the second artist featured in the museum's newly launched invitation-only 12 x 12 Project. Twelve artists over twelve months. The project highlights 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 bringing artists of regional influence and broader contemporary relevance into conversation within Door County.
The Linda Marcus | 12x12 Project exhibit presents a multidisciplinary body of work spanning ceramics, fiber, painting, printmaking, and sculpture that explores memory, domesticity, care, and the physical and emotional traces left by everyday life. Rather than depicting these experiences
directly, the work allows materials themselves to embody them, inviting sustained observation and quiet reflection. Working intuitively across media, the artist approaches each material as a collaborator rather than a passive vehicle for expression. Clay yields to gravity, textiles absorb pressure, and surfaces retain the evidence of touch and time. Informed by tailoring, stitching, layering, and material responsiveness, her practice privileges attentiveness over control, revealing resilience not through rigidity but through adaptation.
The domestic sphere is understood less as a place than as a rhythm composed of repeated gestures that quietly sustain daily life. Gathered folds, measured interventions, stitched relationships, and subtle acts of adjustment become visual metaphors for the ways memory and experience accumulate within both materials and ourselves. Throughout the exhibition, the boundaries between object and body begin to dissolve, suggesting that the most profound expressions of strength often emerge through vulnerability and the deeply human act of yielding.
An artist talk with Marcus is scheduled for Saturday, July 11, 2026, at 4 pm, followed by an opening reception. Light bites and refreshments will be served.
June 26, 2026 - The Miller Art Museum is pleased to announce Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera as its 2026 Dome House Al & Mickey Quinlan Artist in Residence. Rodríguez Rivera, a Detroit-based artist, designer, and educator originally from Cataño, Puerto Rico, will be in residence on the Door Peninsula this summer.
Now entering its sixth year, the Dome House Artist Residency Program honors the legacy of artist and Dome House visionary Al Quinlan and his wife Mickey. Designed as a creative retreat for working artists, the Museum’s program supports early- to mid-career visual artists from across the Midwest by offering time, space, and resources to pursue new work in an immersive and inspiring environment. Rodríguez Rivera was selected from a competitive pool of applicants by the museum’s Artist Selection Committee and will receive a $500 stipend as well as access to the 5,073-square-foot live/work Dome House. His residency will culminate in a public program and presentation of new work.
During his residency, Rodríguez Rivera plans to produce 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 will explore how the Peninsula’s freshwater ecology and seasonal conditions shape both process and outcome. His goal is to produce over 1,000 prints and bio-plastic forms over the course of the residency, creating what he describes as a “deconstructed garden” within the Dome House’s circular architecture.
June 12, 2026 – The Miller Art Museum will launch its summer exhibition season with two compelling solo exhibitions that celebrate wonder, whimsy, and the sublime. Opening June 27 and on view through September 12, 2026, Bee-cause, Why Knot? by Racine-based artist Bill Reid and Awakening Space by Door County artist Margaret Lockwood invite visitors to experience distinct artistic perspectives rooted in observation, imagination, and a deep connection to place. Together, the two exhibitions engage in a compelling visual conversation, exploring themes of transformation, interconnectedness, and the ways we experience and interpret the world around us. An opening reception with both artists will take place on Friday, June 26, 2026 at 5 pm. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served and music will be provided by Craig Schultz.
Bee-cause, Why Knot? Features the work of Bill Reid––artist-in-residence at The Prairie School in Racine––who is recognized internationally as “one of the leading fabulists in a fabulousy world.” He has been making painted steel sculpture for over 30 years. An attendee of the Tulsa Welding School in Tulsa, OK, Reid has his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, MO, and his MA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI. Reid’s lively and animated work has been featured on television programs, including Milwaukee Public Television’s The Arts Page, and in numerous group and solo exhibitions. His work is included in private and public collections such as the Cornell Institute of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, and the Racine Art Museum.
The exhibition is a career retrospective spanning nearly five decades of an artist who has spent a lifetime bending reality through playful delight. Reid writes, “My process of working is elemental; using only a few hand tools and the heat of an oxyacetylene torch, I build my creatures out of thin sheets of metal and steel rods. Even as a young boy, I was drawn to the siren call of fire. Like a detective, I turn on the heat until the steel talks. After construction, the painting process brings the work to life. Painting has become an increasingly important aspect of the work. My sculptures are built around stories and word-play.”
May 29, 2026 - The Miller Art Museum is pleased to present Adam Fulwiler | 12x12 Project, on view June 1 through June 30, 2026 in downtown Sturgeon Bay. Fulwiler is the first artist featured in the museum's newly launched 12x12 Project, 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. An artist talk with Fulwiler will take place on Saturday, June 13, 2026, at 4 pm, with a public reception to follow. The talk and reception are free and open to the public. No registration required.
The exhibition features recent paintings by Wisconsin artist Adam Fulwiler, whose work examines communication, perception, improvisation, and painting's capacity for transformation through abstraction. At the heart of his work is the relationship with his younger brother, who experiences the world through the heightened perception of autism. Rather than describing that experience directly, Fulwiler translates it through a personal language of color, shape, rhythm, and spatial tension—constructing paintings that honor the extraordinary sensitivity through which his brother perceives life. A road trip the two shared in 2019, during which his brother cataloged the passing landscape with meticulous, equal attention to every object and detail, became a defining moment within the work.