Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts Presents Art at the Intersection of Photography and Sculpture, Opens at Milwaukee Art Museum in May

MILWAUKEE, WI—February 27, 2025—The Milwaukee Art Museum presents the most comprehensive exhibition in a decade of works by Erin Shirreff, a highly regarded contemporary artist at the forefront of sculpture, photography, and video. Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts showcases over 40 recent works, including installations specific to the Milwaukee Art Museum, and will be on view May 30–August 31, 2025, in the Museum’s Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts.

Erin Shirreff (b. 1975) creates boundary-crossing art that explores the gap between images and the things they picture. Trained as a sculptor, Shirreff understands photography as a significant but imperfect means of conveying three-dimensional objects. Her work focuses on the reproductions through which we often access art, inviting audiences to consider how each of us sees and interprets the world around us. Shifting across time, material, and dimension, her art rewards in-person engagement and slow, close looking.

“While photographs increasingly lose trust as conveyors of knowledge, Erin Shirreff’s work, which dwells in the place between image and object, has only become more relevant,” said the exhibition’s curator Kristen Gaylord, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts. “I have long admired her thoughtful approach to the generative potential of representation, and it has been a joy to collaborate with her in bringing this wide-ranging presentation of her recent work to Milwaukee.”

The exhibition will be installed in the Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts, the Museum’s dynamic space dedicated to photography, film, video, and light installations. Since 2015, when it was established, the Herzfeld Center has been home to cutting-edge exhibitions that feature artists who shape, push the boundaries of, and expand photography and media arts.

“Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts continues the Museum’s exploration into the expansive world of photography, beyond the traditional print to the medium’s larger role in art and society,” said Elizabeth Siegel, Chief of Curatorial Affairs.

Hear from the artist herself on Thursday, August 7, when Erin Shirreff will present an artist talk in Lubar Auditorium, and engage with Milwaukee experts on Thursday, August 28, at the Haberman Local Luminaries program taking place in the Herzfeld Center.

Sponsors

Leadership Sponsors
Estate of Anna Cordelia Parkin
Milwaukee Art Museum’s Friends of Art
Christine A. Symchych and James P. McNulty

Exhibitions in the Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts are sponsored by
Herzfeld Foundation

The Milwaukee Art Museum extends its sincere thanks to the Visionaries

Mark and Debbie Attanasio
Donna and Donald Baumgartner
Murph Burke
The Helmerich Trust
Kenneth and Alice Kayser
Joan Lubar and John Crouch
Joel and Caran Quadracci
Sue and Bud Selig
Jeff and Gail Yabuki

About the Milwaukee Art Museum

The Milwaukee Art Museum is an essential destination for art and architecture and a vital cultural resource that connects visitors to dynamic art experiences and one another. Housed in iconic buildings by Santiago Calatrava, Eero Saarinen, and David Kahler on a 24-acre lakefront campus, the Museum is Wisconsin’s largest art institution and home to both broad and deep collections, with exceptional holdings in American painting, sculpture, and decorative arts; conceptual and minimalist art; prints and drawings; European art from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century; photography and new media; modern and contemporary design; folk and self-taught art; and twentieth-century Haitian art. A bold symbol of Milwaukee’s ambition and forward-thinking vision, the Museum is a place for community building, education, and celebration that fosters creativity, free speech, and critical discourse for audiences of all ages and backgrounds. For more information, visit mam.org.

About Erin Shirreff

Erin Shirreff’s work has been featured in recent solo exhibitions at SITE Santa Fe (2024); Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2021–22); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019); and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2016). A survey exhibition of her photography, sculpture, and video was co-organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and the Buffalo AKG Museum, New York, in 2015–16. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; among others. Shirreff was born in 1975 and lives and works in Montreal.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.