2026 EXHIBITION SCHEDULE
Patrick Farrell | Ever After
November 22, 2025 - March 28, 2026 | On view in the first-floor galleries and Ruth Morton Miller Mezzanine
The life and work of Patrick Farrell (1940–2016) is unveiled in the astonishing breadth of a self-taught virtuoso whose devotion to craft shaped a lifetime of mastery. The exhibition flows from the humble beginnings of early studies to the opulent precision of butterfly and still-life compositions, silver screen tributes, and trompe l’oeil works that celebrate nature contained in exquisite form, culminating in mythic portraits alive with theatrical gravitas. A maximalist orchestration of gilded imagination, the presentation celebrates Farrell’s ascension from regional prodigy to nationally recognized master. His canvases convey playful passion balanced with painterly discipline, inviting viewers into a world where creation becomes revelation in prolific abundance, and his legacy, luminous and enduring, lives on – ever after.
Daniel Anderson | Measured Light
November 22, 2025 - March 28, 2026 | On view in Gallery 3
The master photographer Daniel Anderson charts a lifelong arc from large-format analog craft to exquisite digital control with unwavering clarity. Focused on the American landscape, this exhibition presents selected works that honor the grandeur of natural space. Across more than fifty years of pursuit, Anderson has honed a vision of light and composition that resists casual translation. His black-and-white landscapes are austere yet resonant, each tonal shift deliberate, every highlight precisely tuned. Measured Light reveals the quiet authority of an artist whose impeccably crafted vision transforms light itself into both subject and substance, measured, enduring, and profound.
52nd Annual Salon of Door County High School Art
April 4 - May 23, 2026 | On view in Galleries 1 and 2
In celebration of creativity, discipline, and emerging voices, Door County's high school art departments present student artwork by freshman through seniors. The long-standing exhibition features a selection of work from across the county's schools, offering young artists the experience of presenting their work in a professional museum setting. The Salon honors both individual expression and the dedicated teaching that nurtures it, inviting the public to engage with the next generation of visual thinkers and makers.
Sharon Peterson | Carousel
April 4 - May 23, 2026 | On view in Ruth Morton Miller Mezzanine
A series of ten large-scale oil paintings draws on personal memory and the ritual of riding carousel animals to explore moments of lifted joy experienced in childhood and rediscovered through parenthood. Built through dramatic layers of rich color, expressive brushwork, palette knife application, stencils, and glass beads, each animal uniquely emerges as a still life poised between exuberance and restraint. While evoking the spectacle of a carnival, the works acknowledge captivity as a metaphor for the harness human spirit. Wings offer a counterpoint, symbolizing transcendence, resilience, and the enduring possibility of hope, while a patterned panel unifies the series and invites viewers to pause and step outside the forward pull of time.
Abe Cohn | Maker's Mark
April 4 - May 23, 2026 | On view in Gallery 3
Celebrating the artistic and educational legacy of the potter, Abe Cohn, a foundational figure in Door County’s ceramic community. This exhibition centers around a practiced shaped by discipline, teaching, and community. The exhibit is anchored by a large-scale portrait of Cohn at the potter’s wheel by Craig Blietz, a painting that captures the quiet authority of a master at work and situates his practice within a broader linage of mentorship the continues to shape the county’s creative culture.
Bill Reid | Bee-cause, Why Knot
June 27 - September 12, 2026 | On view in Galleries 1 and 2
A life dedicated to bending reality through playful delight, this career retrospective, spanning nearly five decades, introduces an artist who steps into the sublime and invites us to follow. Encompassing pinhole photography, in situ miniature dioramas documented in nature, narratively rich paintings, and metal sculptures that hang, roll, wind, and animate, the exhibition reveals a lifelong commitment to invention, including works never before seen. Reid’s menagerie of creatures, from intimate two-dimensional scenes to larger-than-life, almost fourth-dimensional absurdities, performs the full spectrum of human emotion, absorbing cultural anxieties and returning them as wonder. Filtered through humor, tenderness, wordplay, and mischief, this make-believe world feels truer than reality itself.
Margaret Lockwood | Awakening Space
June 27 - September 12, 2026 | On view in Ruth Morton Miller Mezzanine
From loom to brush, Margaret Lockwood’s more than five–decade arc unfolds in a quiet pursuit of the sublime. Informally trained as a weaver, she carried an established sensibility for structure and rhythm into painting through graduate study. Her work steadily distills, allowing atmosphere, color relationships, and softened form to emerge as its primary language – rooted in memory, landscape, and lived experience. Lockwood’s career unfolds across many phases, each inviting quiet contemplation and creating a universal destination, awakened.
51st Juried Annual
September 19 - Novemebr 7, 2026 | On view in Galleries 1 and 2
The 51st Juried Annual 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 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.
Emmett Johns | Transending Time
September 19 - Novemebr 7, 2026 | On view in Ruth Morton Miller Mezzanine
Black-and-white abstraction emerges from a six-decade career, marking a culminating distillation and evolution of the artist’s practice. With a long-spanning career built upon subject-driven work, Johns now freed, the mark-making unfolds through instinctive gesture tempered by deliberate reconsideration. Directly influenced by Willem de Kooning’s 100 Drawings series, Johns similarly turns to drawing as a vehicle for renewal and transformation. Embracing elemental materials, the work reflects the clarity of a mature practice – one that embraces simplicity as a catalyst for complex transcendence. What emerges is a body of work that feels timeless, confident, and deeply grounded in emotional intelligence, conveyed through the hand of a master.
Dome House | The First Five Years
November 21, 2026 – March 27, 2027 | On view in Gallery 1
A place can leave an enduring imprint on an artistic practice. Shaped by light, solitude, and sustained attention, six artists return to Door County carrying work that continued to unfold long after the residency concluded. Fueled by a heightened sense of place, the Dome House Fellows are reunited in a collective reflection on process and progression. Featuring Amy Usdin and Ariana Vaeth (2021), Nicole Shaver (2022), Christopher T. Wood (2023), Jessica Harvey (2024), and Douglas Pendleton (2025), the exhibition brings together works made during or influenced by their eight-week residencies alongside more recent work. Spanning sculpture, fiber, drawing, painting, photography, video, sound, and installation, the exhibition traces how deep immersion in an iconic site leaves a lasting imprint on artistic vision.
Dome House | A Vision Reimagined
November 21, 2026 – March 27, 2027 | On view in Gallery 2
Born from necessity and imagination on the dunes of Lake Michigan, an experimental earth home evolved into a living testament to vision, stewardship, and renewal. Conceived and hand-built in 1978 by artist and designer Albert “Al” Quinlan, the Dome House embodied a radical integration of architecture, landscape, and daily life. Decades later, that original vision was thoughtfully reclaimed and reimagined by his daughter Mary Grace Quinlan and her husband Kurt Wagner. Through archival blueprints, photographs, and objects, the exhibition traces how an iconic structure moved from private experiment to shared creative legacy, becoming a vessel for contemporary practice and future possibility.
Al Quinlan | Form + Flux
November 21, 2026 – March 27, 2027 | On view in Ruth Morton Miller Mezzanine
A life shaped by precision and perception unfolds through images that balance structure and atmosphere with quiet intensity. Trained in design and printmaking, Albert “Al” Quinlan moved fluidly between commercial and fine art, translating photography into layered serigraphs that distill landscape into tone, rhythm, and light. Drawing from scenes across Wisconsin, the Door Peninsula, and the American West, his work reveals a disciplined yet deeply sensitive vision. Featuring works from the Miller Art Museum’s collection alongside loans from the family, the exhibition traces Quinlan’s enduring commitment to seeing, where form remains in constant dialogue with flux.
12x12 Project
Perpetual monthly cycle beginning June 1, 2026 | On view in Gallery 3
The 12x12 Project is an ongoing initiative that centers on a single contemporary artist each month, offering focused, 30–day solo exhibitions that trace the evolving voices of emerging to mid–career artists. The series is dedicated to foregrounding the vitality of an active studio practice while offering artists a platform for supported visibility and meaningful engagement. Through the combined framework of a solo museum exhibition and acquisition into the museum’s collection, the 12x12 Project provides foundational professional recognition that supports artistic growth and career advancement. The Miller Art Museum serves as a catalyst for artists to expand their practice, explore new work, and position their contribution within a broader cultural and historical context.
June 2026 – Adam Fulwiler, painter, Sturgeon Bay
July 2026 – Linda Marcus, multimedia, Milwaukee
August 2026 – Lois Bielefeld, photographer, Milwaukee
September 2026 – Lauren Semivan, photographer, Appleton
October 2026 – Jean Roberts–Guequirre, painter, Milwaukee
November 2026 – Ciel Skål, multimedia painter, Madison
December 2026 – Barbi Gossen, metals and enamel, Green Bay