Friends of the Haggerty Museum of Art members are cordially invited to celebrate the New Year at the Haggerty! Join us for this festive event featuring a captivating live vocal performance by Catherine Steinhafel, an effervescent signature cocktail, delicious heavy hors d'oeuvres, and the delightful company of fellow Haggerty Friends. This year, attendees will enjoy an exclusive preview of our 2025 spring exhibitions, complete with insights into the installation process and special access to the collection vaults. Not yet a Friends member? You can join when registering for the party!

Special thanks go out to event Co-chairs and Friends Board Members Kate Hookham and Casey O'Brien!

Celebrate the 1984 grand opening of the Haggerty Museum and the opening of four new Spring exhibitions, meet the curators, vibe to an 80s throwback playlist, and be the first to view freshly interpreted works. The free-to-the-public opening reception will celebrate these four new shows:

The Big 4-0, Vol. 2: New Views of the Collection

Parallel Play: The Art of Science and the Science of Art

Visual Legacies: Photographs by Ellie Lee Weems

Michelle Grabner: Under the Sink

Special thanks goes out to event Co-chairs and Friends of the Haggerty Board Members Philip Babler and Mary Cimrmancic!

Free and open to the public.

A gallery talk with Dr. Deanna Arble (Biology) and Lynne Shumow (Haggerty Museum of Art) featuring the exhibition Parallel Play: The Art of Science & the Science of Art. 

Parallel Play: The Art of Science & the Science of Art was created as an integral component of Marquette’s Biology class, Creative Problem Solving. This cross-disciplinary course teaches STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) students to embrace divergent thinking as a path to innovative problem solving. The class is team-taught by Dr. Deanna Arble, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences and Lynne Shumow, Curator for Academic Engagement, Haggerty Museum of Art.

Featuring work from the Haggerty’s permanent collection, the Parallel Play exhibition makes connections between the work of artists and scientists with a special emphasis on the essential elements of scientific research—rejection, revision and the formulation of new ideas. The exhibition aims to demystify the process of innovation across disciplines and to illuminate the multiple routes of discovery and interpretation that art has to offer.

Free and open to the public.

Please join us for this engaging 20-minute Lunchtime Talk featuring the work of Ray Johnson. A New York Times art critic once labeled Johnson “New York’s most famous unknown artist.” A contemporary of Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, Johnson today is internationally recognized for his achievements in both collage and correspondence art. This month’s Art Talk will present some two dozen pieces of mail art that Johnson sent to the Haggerty Museum through the U.S. postal system in the early 1990s. Currently on view in the Museum’s anniversary exhibition, The Big 4-0 Vol. 2: New Views of the Collection, these wonderfully playful and witty creations will forever locate the Haggerty within Johnson’s seemingly infinite web of correspondents. After the discussion, you can stay to continue the conversation or explore the Haggerty's current exhibitions.

In partnership with Marquette University’s GROW program. Free and open to the public.

Hear from exhibiting artist Michelle Grabner and Haggerty Director John McKinnon as they discuss Grabner’s newest body of work featured in Michelle Grabner: Under the Sink on view from January 17 to May 24, 2025.

Milwaukee-based artist, writer, and curator Michelle Grabner pays homage to custodial labor through this installation of household sinks and replicated everyday objects. Largely unseen janitorial work is instead foregrounded through the presence of commonplace objects used to keep institutional spaces sanitary. In the traditionally orderly gallery space, rests a silver leafed garbage can, cast bronze broom, and cast porcelain buckets, caddies, wash brushes, toilet paper rolls, washcloths, "wet floor" signs, and cleaning supplies.  

The majority of the work in Grabner's exhibition is produced in the Kohler MakerSpace, an invitational project space for artists and designers based in Kohler's Pottery. In addition, the display includes work from Kohler Co.’s commercial production line including single basin wall-mounted sinks.

Free and open to the public.

Please join us for this engaging 20-minute Lunchtime Talk featuring the work of Nam June Paik. The Korean-born artist is widely considered the founder of video art. This month’s Art Talk focuses on his 1994 video sculpture Cage in Cage, a Victorian-style birdcage filled with active television monitors, currently on view in the Haggerty’s anniversary exhibition, The Big 4-0 Vol. 2: New Views of the Collection. Inspired by Paik’s admiration for the avantgarde composer John Cage, the work is a meditation on human perception that takes poetic form as a chorus of disparate audio-visual signals. After the discussion, you can stay to continue the conversation or explore the Haggerty's current exhibitions.

In partnership with Marquette University’s GROW program. Free and open to the public.

Please join us for this engaging 20-minute Lunchtime Talk featuring the work of Salvador Dalí. Dalí is known for painting logic-defying imagery with meticulous skill, such as his famous melting pocket watches, but Dali’s Surrealism took many forms during his long career. This month’s Art Talk will focus on his Madonna of Port Lligat, painted in 1949 and currently on view in the Haggerty’s anniversary exhibition, The Big 4-0 Vol. 2: New Views of the Collection. Rendered with Dali’s characteristically immaculate brushwork, this stunning portrayal of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child brings Italian Renaissance art into dialogue with the Atomic Age. After the discussion, you can stay to continue the conversation or explore the Haggerty's current exhibitions.

In partnership with Marquette University’s GROW program. Free and open to the public.

This special anniversary fundraiser will honor all past recipients of the Patricia B. Apple and Kairos Awards along with Founding Director Dr. Curtis Carter for their service and support of the Museum. Individual tickets start at $275, tables are available. Registration information to follow.