One of Milwaukee’s art museum gems – the Warehouse Art Museum (WAM), 1635 W. St. Paul Ave. – is planning to move to a new location.
Although the new site has not yet been named, the current museum closed in December and will remain shuttered throughout 2024 in preparation for a 2025 re-opening in a new location.
The new location and a specific opening date will be announced in the future.
The museum – the only private museum in the city that focuses on modern and contemporary art – was opened by artist Jan Serr and her husband John Shannon in December 2018.
“Jan Serr and I have wanted to make this move for the last year or more,” Shannon said in a statement Tuesday.
“We’ve now made a firm decision to do so. We wanted to share this decision with you now.”
Shannon said that the plans are for the museum to remain near Downtown.
The 4,000-square foot museum has been free and open to the public since it opened and has hosted a more than a dozen exhibitions, including especially fine ones featuring South African artist William Kentridge and local painter Ruth Grotenrath.
During the closure, Shannon said, WAM has plans to host a number of events in other venues around town.
The new location will have twice the gallery space, which will allow WAM to show some of its permanent collection of more than 7,000 works, while continuing to host changing shows.
According to Tuesday’s statement, “WAM also hopes to provide new research services for students and scholars to better explore the collection.”
The museum is located on the first floor of Guardian Fine Art Services, a five-story Menomonee Valley building erected in 1924 and which had been vacant before it was purchased by Shannon and Serr as a secure art storage facility.
Guardian Fine Art Services will take over the space currently occupied by the museum.
More on WAM can be found at WAMmke.org.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
