![\"Living](\"https:\/\/urbanmilwaukee.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ex.liv_.2016.0047-jpeg-only-1-scaled-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nLiving Rooms installation view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, work by Michelle Grabner, 2016. Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center<\/p>\n
Artist Michelle Grabner<\/a> is gifting a large piece of her legacy to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan.<\/p>\n Grabner is an artist, critic and curator from Wisconsin who has works in collections of museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.<\/p>\n She is donating over 2,000 pieces of her work spanning three decades to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.<\/a><\/p>\n Grabner splits her time between Milwaukee and Chicago, where she is a teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago<\/a>. She said she once wanted to be in a larger art market in cities like New York. Now she sees the value in the art scene of the Heartland.<\/p>\n \u201cI kind of wanted to reject what was close to me and started to look more broadly at art,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd needless to say, I came right back around to recognizing how exceptional the John Michael Kohler Arts Center is.\u201d<\/p>\n She said she decided to donate her pieces to the Kohler Arts Center because the museum encompasses a broader scope of artwork from its artists rather than choosing their best pieces.<\/p>\n \t\tGet a daily rundown of the Milwaukee stories\t<\/p>\n \u201cThey take their archive, their manuscripts, and in this case, even my syllabi from teaching at the School of the Art Institute,\u201d Grabner said. \u201cMost legacy institutions don\u2019t have that as their mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n Amy Horst<\/a>, the executive director of the Kohler Arts Center<\/a>, said that Grabner\u2019s gifts allow viewers to better understand her full story.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen an artist\u2019s work becomes dispersed amongst hundreds of collectors, it becomes very hard to see the evolution of an artist\u2019s thinking and really their full network of influence,\u201d she said. \u201cBy collecting a large body of work, it allows future scholars, students, artists and our visitors to really be able to follow the entire arc of a career.<\/p>\n Horst said artists produce their best work when they have the freedom to experiment. She said being in Sheboygan allows them to do that.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that being here in Sheboygan particularly, not just the Midwest, but in a working-class town of 50,000, it allows this opportunity for artists to experiment in ways that they can\u2019t when they\u2019re under the spotlight of major art metropolitan areas,\u201d Horst said.<\/p>\n Grabner said that being in the Midwest gave her imagination more freedom than being in a large cultural center.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a kind of distance from those big commercial capitals, cultural capitals on the coast that allow artists the freedom to really explore and think differently,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Horst said that Grabner\u2019s collection gives the art center access to a new generation of artwork. She said that having a relationship with an artist who is mid-career is unusual.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the rare opportunity to work with an artist while they\u2019re here, living, continuing to make, continuing to teach, continuing to influence and can be active partners in that stewardship,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really important moment for the art center.\u201d<\/p>\n