MIAD Galleries

Mission: The mission of MIAD Galleries is to support learning, cultivate conversation with the community, and demonstrate the cultural value of art and design. Through excellence and diversity in our changing exhibitions and educational programming,  MIAD Galleries reflect contemporary and historical trends in fine art and design. With a focus on diverse, innovative and interdisciplinary practices across art and design, we present a dynamic exhibition program featuring work by regional, national and international professional practitioners. Our exhibits are complemented by public and educational events.

Impact Statement: We make an impact through:

• The support of learning and pedagogy through programming reflecting contemporary and historical trends in fine art and design.
• Emphasizing diversity and engaging the college and community in issues of cultural construction and meaning.
• Expanding school curriculum and teaching by supporting new work and the curation of subjects and creative endeavors less commonly found in school or the larger community.
• Fostering connections with creative professionals and institutions in the region for mutual support of programming and audience cultivation.

MIAD’s Director of Galleries prepares professional shows in both the fine arts and design galleries, and also assists groups of students in organizing shows throughout the campus.

MIAD welcomes proposals for exhibitions during open calls. Please check the gallery page for information on calls.

MIAD operates two main galleries: the Brooks Stevens Gallery and the Frederick Layton Gallery. MIAD’s galleries are open to the public Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission to the galleries is free. Both galleries are located on the college’s lower level, the River Level.

FREDERICK LAYTON GALLERY

This gallery is named after Frederick Layton, the founder of the first art gallery in the city of Milwaukee. This early art venue was also the site where MIAD’s predecessor institution, the Layton School of Art was founded. Four to five exhibits are on view in this space each year, based on the college’s academic calendar. It has no exterior windows, about 320 linear feet of wall space and has about 3,600 square feet of open space. It is accessible to by a freight elevator, and can exhibit very large or heavy artifacts. Download Frederick Layton Gallery floor plan PDF.

BROOKS STEVENS GALLERY

This gallery is named after Brooks Stevens, the famed Milwaukee-based industrial designer who was instrumental in developing the college’s Industrial Design program. During his long career, his design firm worked for hundreds of clients creating many influential, well-known products. This gallery focuses primarily on design exhibits, presenting two to three exhibits per year. The gallery features exterior windows to view Milwaukee’s River Walk. This space has about 4,000 square feet of open space with 220 feet of linear wall space, depending on the temporary wall partitions being used. Download Brooks Stevens Gallery floor plan PDF.

Dates: January 12 – March 6, 2026
Location: Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

We May Be Soft is a showcase of regional and national fiber artists. The work within the exhibit creates a spiralic spectrum of processes and disciplines that utilize fiber – from utilitarian applications to conceptual gestures that consider the qualities and culture of “fiber art.” The exhibition raises questions around the distinctions of “craft” versus “art” versus “design” that are placed upon fiber artists and their work. It asks what softness may imply about an object or feeling, and how community is built in spaces of making, ritual and tradition.

Participating artists:
Natalie Baxter, Laura Brown, Dee Clements, DEGEN, Melissa Dorn, Ricki Dwyer, Eliza Fernand, Coulter Fussell, Alex Gartelmann, kg, Michelle Grabner, Sheila Held, Linda Marcus, Chad Alexander Matha, Rosemary Ollison, Erin Riley, Jonas Sebura, Amanda Tollefson, Jenna Valoe, Della Wells, Emily Winter, and Rainer Wolter

Curated by Kayle Karbowski ’15, Sarah Eichhorn and Grace Rother.

Gallery Night & Reception
Friday, January 16 | 5 – 8 p.m.

Gallery Day
Saturday, January 17 | 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Student Workshop: Fiber Arts in the Gallery
Wednesday, January 28 | 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Brooks Stevens Gallery
Bring a project and work on it in the community during Common Hour! Meet the curators of We May Be Soft and your MIAD fiber artist peers and get inspired by the contemporary fiber art on display in the gallery. This will include an informal Q&A about the show. Open to MIAD students, staff and faculty.

Artist Talk: Sheila Held with special guest Sara Caron ’11
Wednesday, Feb. 18 | 6 p.m.
160 Auditorium

Film Screening: Handmade Nation
Wednesday, March 4 | 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Room 299Q

Dates: January 12 – March 6, 2026
Location: Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

Nature’s patterns – from honeycombs to spirals – reveal the harmony underlying our world. Rooted in mathematical principles of symmetry, proportion and tessellation, geometric designs bridge the natural and the cosmic. Originating from a single circle that multiplies and expands, these forms have long served as both decoration and contemplation, adorning architecture and inspiring spiritual reflection.

This exhibition brings together artists who reinterpret these timeless patterns through diverse materials and scales. Their works celebrate geometry as a universal language – one that connects science, art and the meditative act of creation across centuries and cultures.

Participating artists:
Sarah Ahmad, Shafaq Ahmad, Tony Conrad, Nina Ghanbarzadeh, Nosheen Iqbal, David Najib Kasir, Melanie Pankau, Sharmistha Ray, Farah Salem, Paula Schulze, Edra Soto

Curated by Nina Ghanbarzadeh.

Gallery Night & Reception
Friday, January 16 | 5 – 8 p.m.

Gallery Day
Saturday, January 17

Artist Talk: Edra Soto
Tuesday, Feb. 10 | 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
160 Auditorium

Dates: September 19 – December 13, 2025
Location: Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

Our Mothers Ourselves is a photographic based exhibit reflecting on the legacies of our mothers and their larger impact. Diverse in ethnic and generational backgrounds and experiences, ten artists share their work of photographic based prints, constructions, and narratives which reflect their maternal legacies. The exhibition entices and even challenges viewers to reflect on their own mothers’ legacies and what they themselves hope to pass on to the next generation of Americans. The exhibit also serves to illustrate various visual methods/strategies in the exploration of one’s lineage in deeply personal ways: from historical persecutions or conflicts (e.g. surviving the Holocaust or a Japanese internment camp) to the hardship of immigration, the love of poetry, and even to the legacy of a debilitating degenerative and seemingly genetic disease. The exhibition is designed to engage the community in reflection and conversation by challenging viewers to adopt a ‘legacy mindset’. In addition to the exhibition, there will be a panel discussion addressing the process of art-making within the framework of legacy which often involves family, loved ones, and the ethics/burden of remembrance and preservation.

Curated by artists Ellen Konar and Adrienne Defendi.

Gallery Night 
Friday, October 17 | 5 – 9 p.m.

Gallery Day 
Saturday, October 18

Dates: September 19 – December 13, 2025
Location: Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

The Dry Points are a Milwaukee-based printmaking “rock band” comprising band leader Charles Dwyer ’84 (painting), N. Adam Beadel (letterpress and printmaking), Fernando Gonzalez (graffiti), Stanley Ryan Jones (multi-instrumental), Devin Owsley-Aquilia ’15 (printmaking and drawing), Kruze Karstedt (drawing) and Zachary Rueter ’08 (painting, calligraphy and digital media). In 2015, they produced a series of more than 100 collaged prints – 30″ x 40″ – based on steel-engraved portraits of notable Milwaukee business, religious and political leaders found in Howard Louis Conard’s “History of Milwaukee County” published in the late 1890s. This exhibition presents a selection of prints from the series, which was donated to UWM Special Collections in 2023.

In monumentalizing and cynically altering the original steel engravings, which frame their subjects as deities of Milwaukee’s success, the Dry Points skewer the self-important patriarchy of these titans, while at the same time back-handedly celebrating their commercial, industrial and civic successes by layering their portraits with contemporary pop-cultural references, rude insinuations and Duchampesque facial interventions to satirically represent them as ridiculous spectral figments of a gone world.

Curated by Max Yela and Jon Horvath.

Gallery Night 
Friday, October 17 | 5 – 9 p.m.

Gallery Day 
Saturday, October 18

Dates: September 27 – November 20, 2025
Location: Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

MIAD faculty and staff are accomplished, practicing artists and designers working across animation, communication design, fashion and apparel, fine arts, illustration, interior architecture, performance, product design, textiles and more. Constant Practice celebrates their diverse, innovative approaches to ideas, media and disciplines. Their creative work enriches MIAD’s academic community – promoting exploration, clarifying complex ideas, inspiring new perspectives, and contributing to cultural and social change. While their work is regularly exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally, Constant Practice offers a unique opportunity to collectively experience their pursuits.

Curated by Monica Miller and Steven Anderson.

Gallery Night 
Friday, October 17 | 5 – 9 p.m.

Gallery Day 
Saturday, October 18

Dates: June 16 – August 30, 2025
Location: Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

The exhibit showcases junior student work from MIAD’s six majors: Communication Design, Illustration, Interior Architecture and Design, Fine Art + New Studio Practice, Product Design and Fashion and Apparel Design.

The featured work covers 2D, 3D and 4D projects from core and elective courses, including collaborations with community partners on sponsored client projects.

The exhibit features the talent and vision of a new generation of emerging artists and designers and reflects how, through a broad range of experiences, MIAD’s 3rd year curriculum prepares students for careers in their respective fields.

The junior year is a transformative year in which students hone their unique individual voices and set a direction for their professional focus in their senior year.

Gallery Night 
Friday, July 18 | 5 – 9 p.m.

Gallery Day 
Saturday, July 19

Dates: June 9 – September 13, 2025
Location: Brooks Stevens Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

“Meet Me at Dandy Draw” celebrates “Draw!”, a monthly gathering of creatives hosted by vintage store and event venue, Dandy, in Milwaukee’s Washington Heights neighborhood.

Since November 2021, “Draw!” has been welcoming adults of all skill levels to learn about the studio practices of artists near and dear to Milwaukee, make new friends and discover the potential of their own imaginations through art.

This exhibition showcases artwork by past host artists and recreates the event’s unique atmosphere within the gallery space. Visitors are invited to explore the role of art in building community, fostering empathy, and bringing people together.

Curated by Christina Persika and Xoe Fiss.

Gallery Night 
Friday, July 18 | 5 – 9 p.m.

Gallery Day 
Saturday, July 19

Dates: April 11 – May 10, 2025
Location: All MIAD Galleries, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

​Digital and traditional innovations meet in MIAD’s 2025 Senior Exhibition. The exhibition celebrates works of MIAD’s graduating class of emerging creative professionals representing all of MIAD’s Bachelor of Fine Arts majors, programs and minors. Explore our galleries and meet the class of 2025. Learn more at miad.edu/seniorexhibition.

Preview Night 
April 9, 2025 | 4 – 8 p.m.
All MIAD Galleries, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI
Business and gallery representatives, VIPs and family and friends of exhibiting seniors are invited to view the exhibition.

Gallery Night Public Opening
April 11, 2025 | 5 – 9 p.m.
All MIAD Galleries, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Gallery Day
April 12, 2025 | 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
All MIAD Galleries, 273 E Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Fine Art + New Studio Practice Group Shows

Group Show 01: March 18 – 21, 2025
Closing reception Friday, Mar. 21 in MIAD’s 160 Gallery & 160 Auditorium.

Group Show 02: March 25 – 28, 2025
Closing reception Friday, Mar. 28 in MIAD’s 160 Gallery & 160 Auditorium.

Group Show 03: April 1 – 4, 2025
Closing reception Friday, Apr. 4 in MIAD’s 160 Gallery & 160 Auditorium.

Dates: January 13 – March 8, 2025
Location: Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, W​I

Each year since 2015, Plum Blossom Initiative (PBI) — a collaboration between Leah Kolb and MIAD Fine Art Professor Jason S. Yi — invites three promising Milwaukee-based artists to join the Bridge Work program, which they established to help guide recent BFA graduates through the process of transitioning into a professional studio practice. “Bridge Work: Ten Years of Making” showcases recent work by 23 of the 29 program participants. Whether exploring consciousness through abstract forms, exposing hidden connections between body and environment, or imagining more equitable ways of existing in the world, their work pushes past conventional understanding to help us see new possibilities for our shared future.

Curated by Leah Kolb and Jason S. Yi.

Gallery Night 
Friday, Jan. 17 | 5 – 9 p.m.

Opening Reception
Friday, Jan. 17 | 6 – 8 p.m.

Bridge Work Panel Discussion
Thursday, Jan. 30 | 6:15 p.m.
Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N Art Museum Dr., Milwaukee, WI

Panelists:

• Leah Kolb – Moderator (Co-Founder of PBI)
• Julia Bradfish (Bridge Work 09)
• Phoenix S. Brown (Bridge Work 05)
• Dominic Chambers (Bridge Work 02)
• Chad Alexander Matha (Bridge Work 10)
• Lindsey Yeager (Bridge Work 07)