May 14, 2020 – The Miller Art Museum is pleased to partner with the Door County Medical Center, Jacksonport Women’s Club, The Townsend Foundation, John and Kathy Campbell, Dennis and Bonnie Connolly, Mike and Barb Madden, and Carl and Ruth Scholz in presenting the 47th Annual Salon of Door County High School Art (SoHSA) exhibition. This year’s exhibition features representation from 83 Peninsula high school students and nearly 100 works in a wide variety of media from the 2020-21 academic year from all five Peninsula schools: Gibraltar, Sevastopol, Southern Door, Sturgeon Bay and Washington Island High Schools. 
Due to the varying circumstances related to COVID-19 and impact on each participating school, the exhibition will be available to the public through the museum’s website where it will reside for viewing virtually. The museum invites all—students, families, guests and the general public—to visit at www.millerartmuseum.org. The annual exhibition celebrates the artistic accomplishments of Door Peninsula youth with representation from the Southernmost party of the County all the way north to Washington Island Each year a diverse range of ideas and concepts emerge from this collaborative exhibition. “We are both excited and honored to partner with our community and local art educators in this capacity to share the creative work of Door County’s talented young artists,” says Elizabeth Meissner-Gigstead, Miller Art Museum executive director.
April 29, 2021 — The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay is pleased to present, in collaboration with Jodi Rose Studio and participating partners, Home Grown. The 6-foot-wide public art project is featured alongside Mike & Schomer: Cows, Color and Camaraderie and is a grass roots response to the cancellation of much-needed summer youth programming during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. The piece is scheduled to be on display through Saturday, May 29, 2021. In conjunction with the public art display, the Museum’s Second Thursday Program on May 13 at 3pm will feature Jodi Rose Studio presenting Scribble Draw!, a virtual workshop focusing on fostering one’s inherent creativity.
Home Grown evolved from a consortium of mental health providers from Door County Health and Human Services and the United Way of Door County, including members of the Door County Mental Health Focus Group, STRIDE and STRIDE Creative. It simultaneously addressed questions such as What is our response to the pandemic? and Can we make a group-created artwork while social distancing? Further, participants were asked to consider How can the public interact with the completed piece? and Can we design and complete our piece in just a few weeks’ time?
April 15, 2021—The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay is set to unveil a new exhibition in its main galleries on Saturday, April 24, 2021. Mike + Schomer: Cows, Color and Camaraderie celebrates the friendship of Mike Judy and the regionally celebrated artist Schomer Lichtner (1974 – 2006) through their colorful and eccentric works. Featured in the exhibition are 45 works, comprised of 24 by Judy and 20 by Lichtner, with delightful surprises throughout from elegantly posed ballerinas to gritty jazz musicians and cigarette smoking fish to a cast of curious cows. In lieu of an opening reception, a May 13 program will feature Judy in conversation with Miller Art Museum Curator of Exhibitions Helen del Guidice; the program is set to broadcast live through the Museum’s Facebook at 6pm.
Del Guidice has taken a retrospective approach to the presentation of Judy’s body of work, which will also include a selection of new works—auto-biographical pastels on paper as portrayed in My Birth and The Church Song Nightmare, which are self-effacing and comical depictions of cornerstone moments in the artist’s life and portraits of jazz musicians, aquatic landscapes and his 2021 portrait of Lichtner, titled Schomer and Friends, that illustrates Lichtner’s signature ballerinas and cows.
Judy, a Door County artist, has distinguished himself from others working in a more traditional manner, stepping aside from the norm of landscapes, plein air and regional subjects in pursuit of intertwining his multi-disciplinary talents. Having studied both art and music, and participating as a musician in bands for most of his adult life, Judy continues to combine his two passions.
The Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay has announced the launch of the Dome House Al & Mickey Quinlan Artist Residency, open to artists residing in the Midwest states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The inaugural residency, open to two artists—one from the local community of Door County and one residing outside of Door County—is set to occur late summer/early fall 2021. The program is open to mid-career level visual artists working in the fine arts areas of painting, printmaking, and photography who wish to engage with each other and the Whitefish Bay, Sturgeon Bay and broader Door County communities. The residency is now accepting applications; the deadline to apply is May 31, 2021. The application can be found at https://www.domehouseart.org/apply.
The residency invites artists to Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula to reside for a 6-week period at the Dome House, a familiar structure for many locals. It is a twin-lobed (one side for a residence, the other for a studio) domed concrete structure built into sand dunes abutting Whitefish Dunes State Park situated on the shores of Lake Michigan. It sits on a large, heavily wooded plot of dunes and forest north of Sturgeon Bay in the small lakeside community of Whitefish Bay that provided solitude and inspiration for Albert Quinlan, advertising executive and accomplished artist, who designed and built the home during the energy crisis of the mid-1970s. The concept for this “earth” home was that, built into the earth, it would require minimal heating and cooling. The building was acquired by the Quinlan family after many years of neglect and changes in ownership and rehabbed, returning it to a comfortable sanctuary in 2018.
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March 12, 2021–Miller Art Museum is excited to announce the debut its silent auction, part of the organization’s upcoming virtual fundraiser, titled Hand to HeART: A Virtual Fundraiser Pairing Creativity + Comfort, on Friday, March 19 at 6pm. A highlight of the auction, debuting later in the week, is a cast glass sculpture by Door County artist Stephanie Trenchard titled Jessie Kalmbach Chase.
