The Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery at UWM is delighted to announce our first exhibition of the 2025-26 academic year, Max Arthur Cohn: Industrial Subjects. We hope you’ll consider joining us for the opening reception on Thursday, September 18th, 5-7pm (curatorial remarks at 5:30pm).

Max Arthur Cohn (1903-1998) came of age as an artist during a period of crisis and reform in American industry. Among the aims of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were reinvigorating industrial production and giving artists stable work. Cohn was one of thousands of artists employed under the New Deal, and industrial subjects pervade this period of his career. He became a pioneering figure in silkscreen printing (a medium associated with commercial production), co-authoring an influential technical manual and running a successful graphic art business in New York City. Although Cohn’s oeuvre encompasses a variety of subjects and stylistic approaches, the intersection of art and American industry wends its way throughout his work in both subtle and overt ways.

Max Arthur Cohn: Industrial Subjects draws from the UWM Art Collection – the largest repository of Cohn’s art – and explores his engagement with industry in paint, drawing, and print. It focuses particularly on the 1930s – as Americans grappled with the effects of the Depression – and the 1990s, when Cohn returned to and reconceived many of his New Deal-era compositions. As the exhibition demonstrates, Cohn’s works not only represent industry and labor, but also encourage the viewer to more deeply consider artistic production itself as a form of labor.

Exhibition runs through October 23, 2025

Gallery and events are free and open to the public.

Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery
3203 N. Downer Ave.
Mitchell Hall, 1^st floor
Milwaukee, WI 53211

Hours: Monday – Thursday, 10:30am – 2:30pm

https://uwm.edu/arthistory/gallery/

An exhibition featuring research by UWM undergraduate Art History students from the Fall 2024 colloquium taught by Associate Professor Richard Leson. The paintings in this exhibit raise questions about authenticity, value, and the ethical implications of traditional art-historical work.

Demoted opens in the Mathis Art Gallery, first floor Mitchell Hall, Thursday, March 13th with an opening reception from 5 until 7pm featuring remarks from undergraduate co-curators at 5:30pm. Exhibition runs through May 1, 2025.

The gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 10:30am until 2:30pm.

Gallery and events are free and open to the public.

UWM’s Mathis Art Gallery presents the Wood Engravers’ Network’s 5th Triennial Exhibition from March 6 through May 1st, 2025, with an exhibit opening reception, Thursday, March 6th from 5-7pm.

Selected by Juror and UWM Head of Special Collections, Max Yela, the show features 60 contemporary relief engravings that showcase the creative innovation and technical craftsmanship of an international group of artists.  

This exhibition is free and open to the public. Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday, 10:30am until 2:30pm (closed for break March 17 through 27th). Mathis Art Gallery is on the first floor of Mitchell Hall, 3203 N Downer Avenue. 

Revolutionary Realism: Prints and Portraits after the Mexican Revolution explores the traditions of print and portraiture in 20th-century Mexico and their influence in other Latin American countries. This exhibition examines the visual language of revolution, labor, and identity following the Mexican Revolution, featuring works from Manuel Carrillo, Leopoldo Méndez, Diego Rivera, Francisco Toledo, and more.

This show was curated by the ARTHIST 704: Intro to Art Museum Studies II class, this collaborative course teaches Art History graduate students the methodologies and technologies of art museum work, including collection management, exhibition organization, catalogue production, and educational programming.

• On view from December 5, 2024 through to February 20, 2025
  The opening reception will be held on December 5th
  from 5:00pm to 7:00pm
• Remarks at 5:30pm on 12/5/24
• UWM Emile H. Mathis Gallery
  Mitchell Hall 170
  3203 N. Downer Ave.
  Milwaukee, WI 53211
• Gallery Hours: Mon – Thurs: 10:30 AM – 2:30 PM
  And by appointment

Modern Impacts: Celebrating 50 Years of the Rosenberg Collection at UWM honors the fiftieth anniversary of the foundational bequest of the Blanche and Henry Rosenberg Art Collection to UWM. In 1974, the UWM Art Collection was much like the young university itself: small, impressive, and growing. With this significant gift, the artwork on campus more than doubled in number and was codified into one collection that highlighted modern art of the twentieth century.

This exhibition presents the personal aesthetic interests of the Rosenbergs while also considering collecting trends of the mid-twentieth century. The breadth and depth of the collection is especially significant when evaluating their decision to bequeath their collection to UWM to support teaching and learning. Major modern artists featured include Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Joan Miró, Ernst Kirchner, Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Jean Dubuffet, Alexei Jawlensky, and more. Also presented are works by the donor, Blanche Rosenberg, who studied in the fine arts department here at UWM. Organized to showcase major art historical movements represented in the collection, this show underscores the ways this donation established a strong teaching collection here at UWM and honors the legacy of these impactful donors.

Curated by academic curator Leigh Mahlik, exhibition runs through November 14, 2024.

All are welcome. The Emile H. Mathis Art Gallery, Mitchell Hall Rm 170 is open 10-4 Monday-Thursday and is always free to the public.