MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM

Milwaukee, WI

I was introduced to this iconic museum by the Uber driver on the way from the airport to the Pfister Hotel, “You have to see this building here that looks like a boat”. The multi-purpose facility contains a soaring 90-foot tall reception hall, an auditorium, 40 art galleries and stores, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. It is very reminiscent of Calatrava’s 2016 Oculus in Manhattan (SWB 2.0, page 2), in being an ambitious “design statement”, organic and skeletal-like in nature. Like the Oculus, the interior drama here matches up to the exterior. Unlike the Oculus, this building changes shape from night to day, when gigantic wings open up, to resemble a gull soaring over Lake Michigan, which the building fronts (wings were closed for this early morning sketch). The wings are also programmed to retract when winds off the lake exceed 23 mile per hour.

The style and symbolism of the building are based on Gothic architectural principals, in this case designed to represent the shape of a ship, set to sail across Lake Michigan. Calatrava stated, “the building’s form is at once formal, functional, symbolic and iconic”. The architect here had to have already reached super-star status, to have convinced the client to invest so strongly in the imagery, when the functional needs could have been satisfied in half the cost. But now, to a certain degree, the silhouette of this iconic building is synonymous with the city itself. Well worth the investment.