First published: Spring 2021
Seeing is believing – and to be able to peek behind the scenes and catch a glimpse not just of artworks from the John Michael Kohler Art Center’s (JMKAC) permanent collection that might be on view in temporary exhibitions but, instead, of the full range of its holdings in an array of different media and genres is to grasp just how ambitiously and discerningly this museum has amassed a trove of sculptures, paintings, and other objects over the last half-century since its founding in the late 1960s.
top and below: Items from Ray Yoshida’s collection installed in the Art Preserve evoke the way they were displayed in his own home, photo: JMKAC
With the imminent inauguration of the JMKAC’s new Art Preserve building, which will open on June 26, 2021, following a long delay caused by restrictions related to the coronavirus crisis, visitors will be able to do just that – examine up close the breadth of this unique American museum’s extensive holdings.
The John Michael Kohler Art Center is located in the small city of Sheboygan, in the state of Wisconsin, about an hour’s drive north of Milwaukee, on the west coast of Lake Michigan. When it was first established and before it erected a large, modern building to house its expanding range of exhibitions and other programmes, the JMKAC originally occupied the former, nineteenth-century residence of its namesake, an Austrian-born industrialist who founded the Kohler Company, a manufacturer of bathroom and kitchen fixtures. That company and the related Kohler Foundation – both headquartered in the city of Kohler, near Sheboygan – have long enjoyed a close relationship with the museum.
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #107
