Departments

Please check in with individual galleries and museums before you visit to ensure you have the most updated information and hours.

Appleton Historical Society Museum. 920-540-3699.

Vulcan Hydroelectric Replica

May-October, every other Sunday and by appointment. Appleton Historical Society, in partnership with the City of Appleton, opens the Vulcan Replica to the public. The Edison K dynamo and replica water wheel; that in conjunction with the leather belts, created electricity from the water power of the Fox. The 1932 replica of the Vulcan hydroelectric is on display.

Then and Now

Ongoing. This photo display of modern day images next to historical photographs gives a retrospect on what used to be where in Appleton. New display of major department stores in Appleton including Prange’s, Sears and more, as well as a five-cent to a dollar store display.

Jimos Hat Cleaners and Shoe Shine

Ongoing. In the Langenberg Room, find a recreation of the Jimos Hat Cleaners and Shoe Shine store which was the longest running business based on College Avenue. It chronicles the Jimos story from penniless immigrant to successful building and business owner.

Art Garage, Green Bay. 920-448-6800.

First Annual: A Year in Review – 2021

Through Jan. 29. Join us as we begin a new side gallery tradition, reflecting on the previous year through art! The First Annual: A Year in Review exhibition will feature work inspired by or created in the year 2021.

The Building for Kids Children’s Museum, Appleton. 920-734-3226. Open by reservation only.

Station 99
Ongoing. Time to save the day! Wear firefighters’ gear as you drive the truck, get out the hose and make sure everyone is safe. Station 99 is sponsored by Pierce Manufacturing.
Move It
Ongoing. Physics, engineering and air pressure come together in what would likely be Newton’s favorite exhibit. Use levers, pulleys, and ramps to change air flow and the path of bright balls shooting through clear tubes in this simple machines exhibit sponsored by AZCO Inc.

Elisha D. Smith Public Library, Menasha. 920-967-3690.

Annie Gouldberg Exhibit
January. Iowa based artist, Annie Gouldberg, brings to the library a show that contains part of the work that documents her passion for life in the Midwest and oil painting.
Scott Francis Photography
February and March. A Menasha resident, Scott Francis explores with light, timing and keen eye familiar places in our community. His photographs bring powerful images of the city, our parks, waterways and many other iconic places.
Sonja Oldenburg
April and May. Artist and Illustrator Sonja Oldenburg is exhibiting a variety of her favorite pieces. Colored pencil drawings and watercolor paintings, and mixed media. Enjoy the playful and intricate work featuring wildlife, landscapes.
L. Marie – Printmaking Exhibit
June and July. The library will host the work of Lisa Baltes. A variety of her linoleum block prints, dry-point, monoprint and collage.

Hearthstone Historic Museum, Appleton. 920-730-8204.

Lewis Latimer: Self-Made Renaissance Man
Ongoing. An inventive genius who worked alongside some of the most famous names in American history—Alexander Graham Bell, Hiram Maxim, Thomas Edison—before gaining his own fame as an inventor and educator, Lewis Latimer is the subject of a new permanent exhibit at Hearthstone. It features artifacts and video presentations covering not only Lewis Latimer but also his parents’ fight for freedom from slavery. 

History Museum at the Castle, Appleton. 920-735-9370.

AKA Houdini

Ongoing. AKA Houdini lets you experience Harry Houdini’s tricks of the trade and see handcuffs, keys, and a straitjacket used by the famous magician. It is great fun for the whole family! See why the world renowned magician called Appleton his hometown.

Play: The Golden Age of Toys

Ongoing. Explore the history of classic and locally-made toys in this whimsical exhibit that offers children, parents, and grandparents an opportunity for intergenerational learning.

Lawrence University Wriston Art Center Galleries, Appleton. 920-832-6621. 

January 14-March 11. Open to the community by appointment, visit https://www.lawrence.edu/s/wriston.
Consuming Modern Women
Students Charlie Wetzel and Emma Goodman curated an exhibition on the ways early 20th-century print publications created a performative consumer culture in the U.S. Understanding consumerism as a deeply gendered pastime, this exhibition includes women’s magazines from the LU Art Collection.
Alexandra Bell: Counternarratives

Select works from multidisciplinary artist Alexandra Bell’s Counternarratives series on disrupting media bias will be on view. In this series, Bell edits New York Times articles, altering headlines, changing images, and redacting text to reveal oppressive patterns in news reportage and society at large.
Crossing the Vertical Border: On the Central American Migrant Trail 

Professor of Spanish Thelma Jiménez-Anglada organized this powerful exhibition which pairs documentary photographs taken by Edu Ponces and Toni Arnau with text from Óscar Martínez’s book The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail.

National Railroad Museum, Green Bay. 920-437-7623.

Pullman Porters: From Service to Civil Rights

Ongoing. The life story of the porter, from working for the Pullman Company to efforts to unionize. Housed in a Pullman sleeping car restored to its 1930s appearance.

Lawton Gallery, UW-Green Bay. 920-465-2000.

Cruel Summer
March 3-31. Exhibition featuring paintings by current Artist-in-Residence, Andrew Norris. Norris creates figurative oil paintings that explore how the often-disparaged forms of Americana and heartland kitsch can be recharged as instruments through which to generate and explore queer identities. Artist Talk with Andrew Norris March 24.
2022 Senior Exhibition
April 9-May 14. Exhibition featuring Art and Design students who are showcasing work they created during their time at UW-Green Bay. 

Neenah Historical Society. 920-729-0244.

Tracing Our Paths – Neenah’s Immigration Stories

Ongoing. The Neenah Historical Society’s exhibit highlights the stories of Neenah’s immigrants over the past 175 years including many familiar as well as not so familiar names of the community. Visitors will discover what it took to make the journey here from Europe in 1880, but also learn about some of our most recent immigrants and the challenges they have faced.

Neville Public Museum, Green Bay. 920-448-4460.

Generations Gallery

Ongoing. For over a century, the museum has collected and preserved history. From fossils to footballs, explore the vast collection through a variety of themes and the stories of the people of Northeast Wisconsin in the Generations Gallery.

76th Art Annual

Through Jan. 30. The 76th Art Annual exhibit is an all-media, juried exhibition of current artworks produced by artists living in the counties of Northeastern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A total of 40 artworks by 39 artists were chosen by juror George Williams (Professor of Visual Arts, Beloit College). 

107th Green Bay Art Colony Exhibition

Jan. 22-March 13. In September 1915, the Green Bay Art Club held its first public art exhibit in the children’s room of the Kellogg Public Library (125 S. Jefferson St.). This exhibit laid the foundation for a permanent museum in the library in 1917, which became the Neville Public Museum. Ever since then, Colony artists have held an annual art exhibit at the Neville Public Museum. For more than a century, hundreds of women artists have been part of the Green Bay Art Colony. These women continue to inspire each other, educate the public, encourage new artists and give scholarships to art students. Styles and club rules may have changed, but the dream to keep art and culture part of the community remains the same.

Spectacular Science
April 3. Spectacular Science is the Neville Public Museum’s newest gallery focused on subjects of science. This exhibit provides the museum the opportunity to present four different mini science exhibits with hands-on experiences. Spectacular Science allows the museum to partner with organizations in our community. Videos in the exhibit allow guests to see N.E.W. Zoo zookeepers at work or hear a Brown County Public Health professional talk about how they work through the pandemic. Working with these partners provides great opportunities to learn more about organizations in our community. 

New London Public Museum. 920-982-8520.

V is for Victory

Through Jan. 15. An exhibit focusing on the home front during World War II. Historic newspaper articles from the New London Press Republican are paired with artifacts and photographs from the collection and on loan to the museum. Please contact the New London Public Museum for information about visiting.

Oshkosh Public Museum. 920-236-5799.

White Christmas: The Exhibition

Through Jan. 23. Enjoy the classic and beloved holiday film, White Christmas, with costumes, accessories, sheet music, memorabilia, posters, photos, and more!
Iridescence

Through April 2023. The Durow Trust presents the colorful exhibition “Iridescence” in the Sawyer Library that, along with the historic Sawyer Home portion of the Museum, was uniquely designed by Tiffany Studios. The exhibition demonstrates how iridescence has impacted the decorative arts and design and showcases iridescent items in the Museum’s collection. The exhibition will also introduce three new acquisitions of iridescent glass pieces recently added to the Museum’s decorative arts collection.

Paine Art Center & Gardens, Oshkosh. 920-235-6903.

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence
Feb. 19-May 22. Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence showcases a new form of bead art, the “ndwango,” developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa… Ubuhle means “beauty” in the Xhosa and Zulu languages and it describes the shimmering quality of light on glass that for the Xhosa people has a particular spiritual significance. From a distance, each panel seems to be formed from a continuous surface, but as each tiny individual bead catches the light, the viewer becomes aware of the meticulous skill that went into each work and the scale of ambition: a single panel can take more than 10 months to complete.

Peninsula School of Art, Fish Creek. 920-868-3455.

To the Letter: Text in Art

Through Jan. 29. From cubists like Georges Braque collaging newspapers into their still lifes to draw attention to the flatness of the picture plane, to conceptual artists like Lawrence Weiner using language to emphasize ideas over visual forms, to Jenny Holzer’s Truisms confronting societal issues, visual artists have been widely using text since the beginning of the 20th Century. To the Letter examines the different ways artists incorporate text today.

Plymouth Arts Center. 920-892-8409.

26th Annual Holiday Membership Exhibition

Through Jan. 14. The Plymouth Arts Center is presenting a public Holiday Open House while celebrating the fine art created by its Member Artists. The original pieces entered represent a wide variety of media. Paintings in oil, watercolor, pastel and acrylic, photography, pen and ink, sculpture, jewelry, fiber, stoneware, clay, wood, and mixed media are included. Many of the pieces will be for sale. Consider original fine art as a holiday gift.

Rahr-West Art Museum. 920.686.3090.

Ladies of the Lake Quilt Exhibit
Through Jan. 30. The Ladies of the Lake Quilters have been exhibiting their quilts at the Rahr-West Art Museum for over 20 years.
Marc Chagall: Le Cirque
Through Feb. 13. Le Cirque is a print portfolio of 38 prints completed by Marc Chagall in 1968. For Marc Chagall, the circus stage was the ideal setting for the dreamlike, extraordinary acts ever-present in his art. In Le Cirque, he summoned the spectacle of the circus experience in all its colorful variety – clowns, acrobats and women riding bareback, stands brimming with onlookers – as a vivid metaphor for the sometimes precarious artist-lifestyle he had decided to lead. With time, the circus came to lie at the very heart of his personal mythology and became symbolic of the human condition.

Seymour Community Museum, Seymour. 920-833-6064.

World’s Largest Hamburger Collection

Ongoing. Items include an original Burger Time arcade game, burger telephones and radios, hamburger banks, burger candles, burger jewelry, watches and magnets, clothing, dolls, a battery operated burger skateboard and much more.

Trout Museum of Art, Appleton. 920-733-4089.

(I’m) fine by Cristian Andersson and Tyla Hilfreich
Through Feb. 6. Andersson and Hilfreich exhibit together for the first-ever Artist in Residence exhibition entitled (I’m) fine. Andersson finishes a five-year journey with his Symphonic Series–turning classical music into arrangements of pigments and canvas. Hilfreich displays sculptures and hanging displays of hand-made paper and found objects. (I’m) fine has dual meanings of “the end” in musical terms, as well as the reactionary concept of stating “I’m fine” when asked, but honestly feeling finished on the inside.
“Llévame Contigo, Yo Quiero Estar Contigo” by Arleene Correa Valencia
Through Feb. 6. “Take Me With You, I Want To Be With You.” Arleene Correa Valencia seeks to investigate and question her political status as a registered “illegal alien” by drawing connections to those in similar legal confinements through painting, textiles, sculptures, and found objects. Using her narrative, she touches upon themes of migration, human rights, hardship, discrimination, visibility, invisibility, the fear of deportation, and separation. With her art practice, Arleene aims to acknowledge a long history of oppression, resilience, and undying strength reflected in her community. Her works take on a new meaning when viewed through the eyes of a blacklight.
“New Island” by Lee Mothes
Through Feb. 6. Welcome to the Commonwealth of New Island. It’s a place that just might exist in the form of paintings, maps, documents, artifacts, a website, and as an emerging community of real-life residents. New Island is an ongoing work of art by Lee Mothes intended to engage your imagination and provide a place of your own in which to wander.

Weis Earth Science Museum, Menasha. 920-832-2925.

Fossil Gallery featuring the Bruce Danz Collection
Ongoing. One of the best dinosaur nests in any exhibit. Find a life-size skull replica of Stan, the Tyrannosaurus rex, a thigh bone of a duck-bill dinosaur that you can touch and a complete Psittacosaurus with stones in its gizzard – just like the birds.
Explore Minerals and Mines
Ongoing. Walk through a lead-mine tunnel, explore Wisconsin’s mining history, discover how Native Americans mined copper, learn how we use rocks and minerals and marvel at our beautiful minerals.