Warehouse Art Museum Is Moving
Modern and contemporary art museum founded in 2018 moving to undisclosed new location.
1635 W. St. Paul Ave. Photo by Graham Kilmer Jan. 29, 2024.
The Warehouse Art Museum is moving.
The new location for the private art museum, though, is being kept under wraps. Since 2018 the museum has been located at 1635 W. St. Paul Ave.
The museum was founded by the visual artist Jan Serr and her husband John Shannon, who serves as the museum’s managing director. It is located in the same building where Guardian Fine Art Services is located, founded by Shannon and offering secure storage, transportation, crating, and other services for art works and collections of all kinds. Guardian will continue in the historic building in the Menomonee River Valley, which was redeveloped to accommodate the business, which opened in 2017.
The museum temporarily closed at the end of 2023 and will not reopen until 2025, when it’s expected to be in its new digs. Though, it is planning “several events” in 2024.
“Jan Serr and I have wanted to make this move for the last year or more,” Shannon said in a public statement. “We’ve now made a firm decision to do so. We wanted to share this decision with you now.”
Serr and Shannon opened the museum for the exhibition of modern and contemporary art. The museum’s collection, including artists from around the world, is designed as a reflection of the “personal vision and values” of Serr and Shannon, according to the museum.
The general goal for the new facility is expansion. The museum hopes to provide greater gallery space with permanent and rotating exhibitions, new research services and extended hours of operation. Details about the new location will be provided at a later date.
“We have specifications for the location,” Shannon told Urban Milwaukee. Namely, that it will be “a convenient and safe location with parking and will be in the Greater Milwaukee area.”
The museum has had approximately 4,000 square feet of gallery space, Shannon said, and has only been able to exhibit a fraction of the 7,000 works in the collection since opening in 2018. It has held 12 exhibitions showing approximately 100 works each, he said.
“There are many pieces we have never exhibited before,” Shannon said.
Each of these exhibits has functioned as a temporary exhibition, Shannon explained, “We put it up, it has a theme, we open the exhibition, and then at the end, we take it down.”
The hope is that the museum can reopen with an equivalent amount of space for both temporary and permanent exhibitions. Other museums, he said, have pieces that are permanently displayed and become a popular stop for returning visitors. “We have some pieces that we hope would become community favorites,” Shannon said.
In 2023, the museum held exhibitions of photography; hand made objects ranging from pottery to furniture; and an exhibition focused on the work of Milwaukee-born painter Ruth Grotenrath.
The extra space would also provide the museum with a proving ground for the pieces it displays, determining whether they are “up to the standard of what we deem permanent collection,” Shannon said.
“A permanent collection allows people to see things repeatedly, learn them,” Shannon said, “and then also measure, weigh, test other pieces in relationship to that.”
Shannon said the museum closed “rather abruptly without a lot of notice” at the end of 2023, and that they are trying to make up for that.
“I want people who have been steady patrons to know that we are fully committed to a new space,” Shannon said, “And that we will return.”
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