Art from Northeastern Wisconsin 1940 to Present

January 24, 2025 – May 18, 2025
Exhibit Admission: Visit FREE with your Museum membership, starting as low as $15 for the year. One-day passes also available at $10.

Guest curated by Annemarie Sawkins, A Creative Place: Art from Northeastern Wisconsin 1940 to Present celebrates over 85 years of regional artistic history. With a range of mediums, styles, and themes, this exhibition explores how local artists have responded to distinct cultural and environmental influences.

The exhibition begins in the 1940s, a pivotal time with the waning of Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the emergence of individual investment in the arts. Despite shifts in government policies, the region continued to foster creativity. This exhibition features more than 130 works from 1940 to the present day, offering a look at the area’s artistic evolution.

While regional in nature, this exhibition is inspired by the book A Creative Place: The History of Wisconsin Art, co-authored by Annemarie Sawkins and Thomas D. Lidtke, published by the Cedarburg Art Museum. It marks the Trout Museum of Art’s final months at its current location before it moves to its new home on East College Ave.

A Creative Place is Sponsored by:

The exhibition catalogue was made possible by Thomas Sutter.
Additional exhibition support comes from the Sandra and Monroe Trout Art Exhibitions Endowment Fund within the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region.

Opening Night

Join us on January 24 from 5 to 8 PM for the opening night of A Creative Place, free and open to the public. We invite guests to come dressed in their most “artful” attire—whether it’s vintage fashion, avant-garde pieces, or outfits inspired by the movements and eras featured in the exhibition.

One of the evening’s most exciting features will be the live creation of an artwork by Appleton-based instant film photographer Joy Laczny. Using Polaroid photographs taken throughout the evening, Laczny will create a dynamic installation that allows guests to become part of the artwork. As attendees explore the exhibition, their images will be captured and added to this installation and later the Museum’s permanent collection.

Guest Curator: Annemarie Sawkins

Annemarie Sawkins, PhD, is a Milwaukee-based independent curator, art historian, and co-author of A Creative Place: The History of Wisconsin Art (2021). She has curated over twenty exhibitions nationally, including A Creative Place, and her most recent: Profound Prints: Art by Exceptional Women at the Hilliard Art Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana (September 28, 2024 – January 18, 2025) and the comprehensive retrospective Rediscovering Ruth Grotenrath: All things belong to this earth (2023) for the Warehouse Art Museum, Milwaukee. From 1999 to 2012, she was associate curator at the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University. Prior to the Haggerty, she worked at the Milwaukee Art Museum, where she contributed to A Renaissance Treasury: The Flagg Collection of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture (1999). A frequent juror and portfolio reviewer, Annemarie Sawkins has a MA and PhD in Art/Architectural History from McGill University in Montreal, CA.

The Artists

Image: Lauren Semivan, Old Roses, 2008