Indigenous Artist Creating Art Installation For New Public Museum

Rendering of new museum viewed from the west side of N. 6th St. Rendering by Kahler Slater.

The Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) has commissioned an art installation for the plaza of its future museum, currently being constructed at the corner of N. 6th Street and W. McKinley Avenue.

Mark Fischer, an artist and member of the Oneida Nation, is creating a large copper sculpture called “Gathering Place” that will be installed in the plaza adjacent to the museum and in front of the parking structure.

The domed sculpture will be shaped to resemble a group of aspen trees, representing Wisconsin’s First Nations. The trees will also resemble the poles used in Great Lakes homes, according to the museum, and cultural patterns from each of the tribes of Wisconsin will ornament the structure.

“Inside the dwelling, there will be 13 large stones arranged in a circular design on the ground to represent the 13 squares, called scutes, found on every turtle shell,” Fischer said in a statement. “Many Indigenous people consider a turtle’s shell to be a representation of the lunar calendar, which has 13 full moons in a year. Turtles also have 28 tiny square shells — the same number of days between each full moon — around the perimeter of their shell. Knowing this, I plan to incorporate 28 smaller stones around the structure’s outer edge. My hope is that these stones will serve as a place for children to sit for storytelling.”

Fischer previously created pieces for the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation, Oneida Nation Museum, UW-Madison, the Smithsonian Museum of Contemporary Native American Art and Milwaukee’s Indian Community School.

MPM ceremonially broke ground on the five-story, 200,000 square foot 200,000-square-foot museum this spring. Construction began this summer and it is expected to take two years to complete. MPM plans to open the new museum in early 2027. In the meantime, it is engaged in a herculean packing and moving of the approximately four million items in the museum’s collection.

The museum is moving out of its current county-owned building at 800 W. Wells St. in part because the 1960s-era structure is in increasingly poor condition and has significant maintenance needs endangering some of the collections.

The new building is being designed by New York-based Ennead Architects and Milwaukee-based Kahler Slater. It will be smaller than the Wells Street building, which was previously shared with Discovery World.

The public plaza where Fischer’s installation will go is planned as a green space with year-round public access.

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