The Mary L. Nohl Fund, among the largest funds created at the Foundation, invests in local arts education programs and projects. Since its inception in 2001, it has invested more than $7.8 million in the creative spirit and culture in Milwaukee. Below is a list of the latest visual arts projects and programs the Nohl Fund has supported:
Artists Working in Education: $15,000 to help it provide visual arts education opportunities in five Milwaukee neighborhoods – Clarke Square, Harambee, Layton Boulevard West, Lindsey Heights and Washington Park – through its Truck Studio program and arts programming in libraries. The project will include a minimum of eight visual arts workshops in each neighborhood library throughout the school year and a minimum of one week of programming in each of the neighborhood parks during summer 2017. It also will include an artist-in-residence program for teens to create public art in each neighborhood.
Arts@Large: $15,000 to help MPS students, families, educators and the larger community explore issues related to Native American culture through a two-phase project. In the first phase, MPS students will engage in four to five research trips in Native American locations throughout Wisconsin and will integrate the themes into grades 4, 8, and 10 curricula. In the second phase, MPS students from four to five schools will work with community artists and local Native American cultural experts to express their findings through photography, film, spoken word poetry, music composition, theatrical performances, visual art and/or dance.
Casa Romero Renewal Center: $12,000 for its Journeys Art Program, which includes after school workshops during fall 2016 and 2017, an overnight retreat each semester; art and activism retreats in spring 2017; and a 2-week art club summer camp in June 2017. Participants will include at least 140 students from middle schools and high schools primarily in the 53204 and 53215 zip codes. Artists Raoul Deal, Leo Lopez and Peck School art students from the community art program will be involved.
Cedarburg Art Museum: $3,226 for an eight month visual arts program in which a professional local artist will provide free visual arts instruction once a month to at least 50 Ozaukee County students from grades 9-12. The project will include a closing reception in May 2017 where student participants will share their art.
Clark Square Neighborhood Initiative: $15,000 for the Chavez Drive Farm Project, which aims to spur economic development through the arts. The agency and an assembled review task force, with the guidance of Artists Working in Education and community input, will conduct a request for qualification process to identify at least 1 artist-in-residence. The artist will begin a residency in March 2017 that will include art-making workshops and between three to seven public art projects.
Cross Lutheran Church: $8,000 to implement the second phase of its Cross Mural Arts Project, in which an artist-in-residence and an emerging artist assistant will lead the creation of a large mural with neighborhood adult and youth residents. The mural will be painted on the exterior of the church and the project will culminate with a community event.
DanceCircus: $8,000 to continue the work of Milwaukee Art & Hope, a program that works with homeless individuals in shelters, including Salvation Army and Cathedral Center. The grant will help expand the program to include art-making projects at Milwaukee Center for Children & Youth, a nonprofit agency serving young people who are aging out of the foster care system. The program will culminate in a celebration at each of the facilities where the completed artwork is displayed and participants will talk about their experience.
Express Yourself Milwaukee: $15,000 for its visual arts project for the 2016-17 program year that will use photography, painting, stagecraft, fiber arts and public art to help Milwaukee’s urban youth explore and develop the qualities and skills necessary for demonstrating leadership within the community. The projects will focus on the issues of the juvenile justice system in Milwaukee, particularly focusing on issues of racial disparity and incarceration. It will include two semesters of eight weeks each with a public open house in December 2016 and a culminating public performance in May 2017 combining the efforts of the 19 participating community organizations who will partner on the project.
First Stage Children’s Theater: $15,000 to support the visual arts-related production expenses for “Welcome to Bronzeville,” a play written by Sheri Williams Panell that will run from Jan. 13 – Feb. 5, 2017. Components include a written guide that will be distributed at the performances as well as to attendees at the exhibit in conjunction with 2017 Gallery Night. The exhibit will include a show at the Milwaukee Youth Arts Center of works celebrating Bronzeville by local African American artists. It also will feature a photo exhibit at the Todd Wehr Theater of historic images of Bronzeville from local elders and the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. Local artist Mutope Johnson will create original artwork that will become the stage set. Adam Carr, a local oral historian and journalist, will create a production guide with material from his research and interviews with individuals about Bronzeville.
Marquette University: $6,000 to support Water Across the Curriculum, in which arts educator Sylvia Peine will integrate water-themed artwork from the Haggerty’s collection in presentations and art-making sessions for Milwaukee-area elementary and middle school students in in-school sessions and tours of the Haggerty. Through professional development sessions, teachers will learn how to integrate the visual arts into their academic curricula; and Marquette’s art education students will learn to integrate visual arts programming across the curriculum.
Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design: $7,500 to present “Just the Facts,” an exhibit featuring the work of artists Beauvais Lyons, Diane Fox and Jennifer Angus, who explore issues related to the exhibition of artwork through academy parody and creative editorializing, and Mark Dion and Tony Matelli, a successful MIAD alum, whose art practices take a more subjective but complementary approach to the topic. The exhibit (from Jan. 9 through March 4, 2017) will inspire a dialogue about how exhibits influence the fields of art and design. MIAD will partner with Milwaukee Public Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee Public Library, Discovery World, ArtSpin and Urban Ecology Center to create community programming.
Milwaukee Muslim Women's Coalition: $12,000 to present the third annual Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival in April/May 2017, the only Muslim film festival in Wisconsin and one of few nationwide. Each film will include a talkback with the film’s creator and/or professionals and scholars with a depth of knowledge about the issues raised. New this year will be school showings of the films with educational materials.
Museum of Wisconsin Art: $7,500 for a new hands-on art education program, in partnership with Northwestern Mutual, that will take place at the company’s new downtown location. NM’s collection of more than 7,000 works by Wisconsin artists will serve as inspiration. Wisconsin artists will serve as instructors of classes – a mix of free weekly drop-in family classes and fee-based master classes offered twice per quarter – that will begin in April 2017 and will run throughout the year, including a summer format junior master’s program.
Riverwest Artists Association: $7,000 to coordinate a collaborative program of art-related initiatives at and around Riverwest’s Jazz Gallery Center for the Arts. A series of workshops will occur at various partner locations with programming culminating in exhibitions at the gallery. Local artists will serve as artist educators and programs will include art bookmaking with Woodland Pattern, fiber art creation with ABK Memorial Weaving Center and community dialogue facilitation with Riverwest Radio, among other offerings.
Ruach: $10,000 to create a new program under its Project: VITAL banner that will develop intensive partnerships with at least five Milwaukee-area schools, both Jewish and public. The program’s centerpiece and thematic underpinning will be five paintings from a series entitled 'Passages' by Jeanine Semon, an 85-year-old Wisconsin artist, who will participate as an artist and lecturer.
Skylight Music Theatre: $10,000 for its theatre production artist apprenticeship program, which will engage two young adult apprentices for season-long advanced training opportunities in the visual arts related to theatre production. Apprentices will work in the properties and scenic arts areas of Skylight productions, participate in master classes on specific technique-oriented subjects and be mentored by staff.
UWM Foundation: $15,000 for the UWM Peck School of the Arts to administer the Milwaukee Visionaries Project, a free hands-on program in which urban middle and high school students learn to work with industry-standard hardware and software to produce and edit video work that tells stories of personal and community significance. The videos will focus on the theme of race and identity and will be screened at two free public screenings and at film festivals, including the Milwaukee Film Festival.
More than $330,000 invested into area visual arts programming>
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