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Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Underneath the hand of god, you're there and then you're not
My first visit back to Milwaukee in almost a decade was, as you can imagine, really just an excuse for another pilgrimage to see Santiago Calatrava's first ever American building, his still wonderful addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. The building has a lot going for it, from its spectacular parking garage to its even more spectacular brise soleil. The building often feels close to perfect, despite the fact that it's always possible to find flaws in most everything if you look hard enough.
Ok, here's a flaw. Despite the building's drop dead gorgeous design, it really doesn't have all that much inside. There's a parking garage and a cafe and a shop and one temporary gallery but, all things considered, not really an awful lot of art. The rest of the museum (behind that black door and while uite nice it is nothing like the Calatrava part) still does almost all the heavy lifting while the addition goes about its non art business and remains lighter than air.
The day that I was at the museum, its normally empty and serene entry hall was completely out of character. That day was a special family day, featuring loud family activities and even louder family concerts. Of course none of that matters in this photo, where the ceiling and skylights and brise soleil above look just as they always do, family day or not.
If you're unfamiliar with the building then you're probably unfamiliar with its brise soliel (or sun shade). The wings on both sides actually move, they open up when the museum opens, close down at the end of the day and do both at noon just to show off. When they move they move slowly and gracefully, although some of the grace is lost due to some awful and totally unnecessary theme music the museum insists on playing each time the brise soliel moves.
Milwaukee is more than just its Santiago Calatrava designed Milwaukee Art Museum, although for me at least, anything else was bound to be a letdown. Despite such negative thoughts I still went to the other big (non-beer) attraction across town, the Harley Davidson Museum. In a brand new building in a brand new complex, the museum has a fine collection and is well presented enough to remain interesting even if (like me) you really could care less about motorcycles.
While not nearly as quaint as San Antonio's (or even Oklahoma City's), the Riverwalk in Milwaukee certainly has its moments. It connects fine historic buildings (there are a lot of them) and pleasant enough low scale residential neighborhoods, all along a river that often still has a real industrial feel to it (not always a bad thing). A surprisingly pleasant and wonderfully urban experience, right in downtown Milwaukee.
And if you don't recognize the statue then you're not nearly as old as me, or you never watched TV Land, the people who actually put the well loved statue up in the first place.
