Light and shadow at the Milwaukee Public Museum

Display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

View through a microscope at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Mineral lightbox display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Shrunken head display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

View through a microscope at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Mineral lightbox display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Shrunken head at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Display at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

The good hang: revisiting the spaces of the Milwaukee Art Museum

Windhover Hall, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

We’ve been under a stay-at-home order for over a week now, and a self-imposed quarantine for a week longer. I’m finally past the initial stir-craziness and am settling into a more productive routine, aided by the fact that we are still allowed strolls around the neighborhood. Even with these occasional wanderings, I find myself thinking about internal spaces a lot these days—how they’re designed and why, and what we do with those spaces once we’re in them.

Museums have always been particularly interesting to me in this regard, in part because I used to be literally surrounded by their carefully designed spaces on a regular basis, and in part because, even more than other structures, those spaces are self-consciously curated by so many people: the architects who designed them, the actual curators who present their collections in them, and the visitors who photograph them.

Of these three groups, it’s the curators whose relationships with the galleries are arguably the deepest and most active, at least once the buildings are actually erected. At the very least, their relationships are the ones I personally find the most interesting, because they are the ones that largely determine how I and other visitors interact with and understand both the spaces themselves and the objects within them.

In curatorial parlance, a “good hang” is what happens when objects are presented in a way that tells a story, stimulating visitor insights purely through visual comparison. The good hang is also what makes walking through the galleries—particularly the contemporary galleries—of the Milwaukee Art Museum such a consistent visual and intellectual pleasure. Even now, when the only access I have to the galleries is through photographs viewed on a laptop screen within the confines of my home, I am still impressed by the intelligence and beauty of their arrangements, which serve the individual objects so well.

Thoughtfully placed works by Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd—both of which play with repetition, squares, relationship to the wall, and the removal of the hand of the artist—in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s contemporary galleries. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Duane Hanson’s hyperrealistic and life-size Janitor (1973) is the only person allowed to lean against the walls of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Behind him is an actual visitor, along with Chuck Close’s giant portrait Nancy (1963) and Christopher Wool’s Untitled (1990). Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Warhol’s images of Mao reflected in Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Ragazzo (Boy) (1965) in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Josh in Anthony McCall’s You and I, Horizontal (II) installed at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Even the basement is beautiful. Staircase in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Nick Cave’s wearable Soundsuit (2013) in front of Kiki Smith’s Honeywax (1995) in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Tara Donovan’s Bluffs (2009) in front of Martin Puryear’s Maroon (1987–88) in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Cornelia Parker’s Edge of England (1999), Kehinde Wiley’s St. Dionysus (2006), and Yinka Shonibare’s The Age of Enlightenment—Immanuel Kant (2008) in the contemporary galleries of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

Light reflecting off the walls of an elevator in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.

The feet and fist of Kiki Smith’s Honeywax (1995) in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by Renée DeVoe Mertz.