Chatting recently about the new Bradley Collection feature exhibition at Milwaukee Art Museum, it struck me that some of the nearly 400 works that the late Peg Bradley donated to the museum are what my mind immediately pictures when I think of the art museum.
While the Frederick Layton collection is undoubtedly the foundation upon which the museum rests, the Bradley Collection accounts for a good number of its load-bearing walls, with other collections adding a roof, doors and windows (to continue this perhaps shaky metaphor).
Just as surely, the presence of the Bradley Collection, with its German Expressionists, French Post-Impressionists and works by American artists like O’Keeffe and Warhol helped give the museum the kind of support and respectability it required to hire Santiago Calatrava to design the Quadracci Pavilion.
“Peg Bradley’s philanthropy and transformational gift of art were demonstrations of faith in the museum and its future impact on the people of Milwaukee,” said Marcelle Polednik, PhD, MAM’s outgoing Donna and Donald Baumgartner Director.
“She set an example of how one person’s generosity can shape both an institution and a community.”
So, it makes perfect sense that MAM is spotlighting the 50th anniversary of the donation of this collection – which New York’s Museum of Modern Art had hoped to get – in a new show, called “The Bradley Collection of Modern Art: A Bold Vision for Milwaukee,” which is on view now in the Baker/Rowland Galleries.
“The Bradley collection reflects the woman who assembled it: vibrant and colorful,” said the museum’s Chief of Curatorial Affairs Elizabeth Siegel.
“Fifty years after the private collection became a public good, generations of Milwaukeeans still appreciate and benefit from Peg Bradley’s gift to the Milwaukee Art Museum and its transformational effect on the city she called home.”
While not all of my favorites made the cut for the exhibition – most notably Chaïm Soutine’s “Children and Geese,” which I admit is perhaps an acquired taste – most did, and here is a look at some of my Bradley Collection favorites that are featured in the current exhibition.
These are works that, despite visiting the museum many times each year, I find myself drawn to over and over again, seeing them nearly every time I’m at MAM.
While these works are typically on view up in the Bradley Collection galleries – note that the Bradley Wing is currently closed as the collection will be re-installed at the end of the exhibition's run – this show not only offers an opportunity to see them in a different setting but also to learn more about Bradley as a collector and, as importantly for Milwaukee, as a donor who preferred to keep these works in Milwaukee rather than sending them to Midtown Manhattan.
So, in no particular order...
Wassily Kandinsky
“Fragment I for Composition VII (Center)”
This 1913 painting is playful and colorful and full of motion. There are so many little details that you can see something new in it every time you look at it. I think this may have been the first Kandinsky I really looked at and it made me extremely excited to discover that there was a Kandinsky exhibition going on the first time I ever landed in Milan, something I still remember all these decades later. Of course, this is a painting of a penguin in a blue hooded cape on a bicycle, right?
Raoul Dufy
“Red Orchestra (Le Concert rouge)”
An explosion of rouge, this painting, that almost feels like a pen and ink drawing doused in color, is one of those works I mentioned earlier: pure MAM. This, to me, is one of the signature works in the collection at the museum and it’s another one I can stare at endlessly.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
“Street at Schöneberg City Park (Straße am Stadtpark Schöneberg)”
If you know me, you’ll be very unsurprised to find that I love paintings of streetscapes and buildings and I really love this one of an intersection that’s got a bit of distorted perspective and blobs of people walking around. It reminds me of a more rock ‘n’ roll version of the Art Institute’s signature Caillebotte, “Paris Street; Rainy Day.” While Caillebotte is all formality and detail, Kirchner is all vibey feeling. MAM has a number of great German Expressionist works and this is one of them.
Gabriele Münter
“Portrait of a Young Woman (Bildnis einer jungen Dame)”
Speaking of German Expressionists, MAM has the more significant collection of works by Münter outside of Germany – in large part due to Bradley's gift of 11 – and I love them all, including this 1909 work that Del Amitri’s Justin Currie recently named in his memoir, “The Tremolo Diaries,” as the work he liked the most when he visited the museum in 2023.
Kees van Dongen
“Place Vendôme”
Another of the streetscapes in the Bradley Collection that I quite like, this one shows the famous Neoclassical octagonal square in Paris’ 1st Arrondissement bustling with activity. If you squint at it today, a century later, it looks more or less unchanged from this angle, swanky boutiques and all.
Alex Katz
“Sunny #4”
If you don’t recognize Sunny, I’ll just assume you’ve never visited the Milwaukee Art Museum. I have been shocked to discover that some people don’t like this vibrant, lively and oversized portrait – with its unique perspective – that to me is joyful and unfailingly smile-inducing.
Kees van Dongen
“Woman with Cat (Femme au chat)”
I guess if you’d asked me if I’d have picked two paintings by this Dutch painter, I’d probably have said no, but this emotive portrait of a woman and her cat from 1908 is one of my favorites. Expressive and serene, it also seems ahead of its time to me, hinting at what was to come later in the Art Deco era.
Georges Braque
“In Drydock”
It’s easy to miss this little Braque painting of a boat. It sits almost alone next to the doorway to my favorite Art Museum gallery: K218, which offers a lake view so stunning that the second one spies it, one beelines for the windows, bypassing this Braque that you’ll also likely overlook on your way back out. But make a point of looking next time. It’s a nice little painting and, I believe, the first painting that Bradley bought, making it the foundational object of the collection.
Barbara Hepworth
“Two Piece Marble (Rangatira)”
Once you’ve checked out the Braque (after the re-installation, of course) you should, by all means, bask in the glory of K218, with its expansive views and comfortable seating, and works by British sculptor Barbara Hepworth. I especially like this one, which despite its obvious abstraction, also feels obviously representational and I can almost see this as a character in a animated short.
Maurice Utrillo
“La Place du Tertre”
I’ve read that Bradley especially liked this painting and, again, it’s one of those streetscapes I am drawn to. The fact that it’s in Paris makes it even better. That’s it’s the “artists’ square” in Montmartre where I had my kids sit as a Japanese artist skillfully wielded scissors to snip their silhouettes out of black paper makes it even more sentimental to me. Some scoffed at Utrillo, who was the son of painter Suzanne Valadon, during his lifetime, but I find his cityscapes to be relaxing and interesting.
Georgia O'Keeffe
“Poppies”
Last but not least, Bradley collected works by Sun Prairie’s Georgia O’Keeffe, who because she couldn’t make it to the official opening of the Bradley Collection in the new “Kahler wing” designed and built especially to house it (and to create an apartment for Bradley), came later and got a private tour of it. Bradley had a good eye for O’Keeffes but to me, this one is special as it, like “Sunny” and “Red Orchestra,” is one of MAM’s signature pieces.
“The Bradley Collection of Modern Art: A Bold Vision for Milwaukee” runs through Jan. 18.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press. A fifth collects Urban Spelunking articles about breweries and maltsters.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has been heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
