Local Arts

The arts under the tree on Christmas morning? Sure!

Milwaukee’s performing arts groups all offer voucher gift cards good for just about any remaining event. So you can give tickets to the Milwaukee Symphony, the Skylight Opera, the Florentine, the Milwaukee Ballet, the Rep, Present Music, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre and so on without tying your recipient to a specific date.

A membership in the Milwaukee Art Museum might be the best Christmas bang for the buck. A single adult admission to MAM is $15. A family membership, which allows one year of unlimited access to Mom, Dad and their 18 children, is $75. That’s amazing. And you will find yourself visiting this remarkable institution much more, because you don’t have to make a day of it to make it worthwhile. You can dr0p in for short visits when you’re in the neighborhood. Memberships are especially nice gifts for people who work Downtown — MAM is a refreshing lunch-hour field trip.

Looking and listening are great, but there is also doing. You can give the gift of lessons.

Many private studios offer ballroom and other sorts of dance lessons, but I recommend Danceworks, a non-profit pillar of Milwaukee’s dance community in all its aspects. Danceworks, at 1661 N. Water St. (at the Brady Street bend), offers an astonishing range of classes, from hip-h0p to ballet to tap to ballroom to modern. Highly trained and dedicated professionals teach all the classes. And you’ll know that part of your class fees help to support the superb Danceworks Performance Company and the institution’s Mad Hot Ballroom and inter-generational dance outreach programs, which serve the very young and the very old very well.

For music lessons, I recommend the non-profit Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Its entire faculty plays at the professional level, and many of them are high profile. They teach just about every instrument and have classes tailored for everyone from pre-schoolers to retired people picking up that saxophone for the first time since college. They also have music appreciation-type classes, several aimed at jazz. The conservatory’s headquarters is in a magnificent restored mansion overlooking Lake Michigan, at 1584 N. Prospect Ave. WCM also has branches in western Brookfield and in Bayside.

All of the above manifest themselves under the tree as envelopes containing documents redeemable for future pleasures. Some people prefer immediate gratification.

Actual art objects provide that. Galleries abound in Milwaukee, from the high end to the funky with price points to match.

I want to suggest three institutions for art in the stocking-stuffer price range. First, TCD’s Judith Ann Moriarty told us all about art priced at $1 per inch and at $50 and down at the Safi Gallery and the Portrait Society Gallery, both in the Marshall Building in the Third Ward. Second, the Art Bar, in Riverwest, is holding its annual Mini Art (at mini prices) show. Dozens and dozens of works by more than 20 artists line the wall. So down a little holiday cheer and by and artwork for one you hold dear to unwrap at the most wonderful time of the year.

– Tom Strini
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Gailmarie Haller is a local artist who takes vintage material and transforms them into original, nostalgic works of art; a sort of vintage mixed-media assemblages, if you will. Her work takes quite the imagination and skill set, and she has long been a standout in the local community theatre scene.

– Curt Yorkey, Sales Manager