John Michael Kohler Arts Center

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is an independent, not-for-profit contemporary art museum and performing arts complex located in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1967, the center has distinguished itself through its commitment to preserving and exhibiting artist-built environments and contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on self-taught artists and those working with commonplace materials. In 2021, the institution expanded its mission with the opening of the Art Preserve, a dedicated satellite museum space for large-scale art environments, cementing its role as a leading institution in this specialized field.

The Arts Center traces its origins to the Sheboygan Arts Foundation, Inc., established in 1959, whose first board included Mrs. Walter J. Kohler III. In 1966, the Kohler Foundation donated the Kohler family homestead, built by John Michael Kohler, to the foundation for use as an arts center. The John Michael Kohler Arts Center opened the following year, in 1967, and has since undergone two major expansions to reach its present size of 100,000 square feet. Ruth DeYoung Kohler II served as director from 1972 until 2016, a tenure of forty-four years during which she founded the Arts/Industry residency program in 1974 and the Connecting Communities program in 1997. The second expansion occurred under her leadership. The center reports approximately 160,000 annual visitors and an estimated 4 million visitors since its inception. It curates up to 30 exhibitions per year and operates the country's first arts-based preschool. The performing arts program began with small concerts and grew with the inception of the Youth Symphony in 1970, followed by the inaugural Summer Theatre season that same year. In 2021, the center opened the Art Preserve on a 15.7-hectare property in Sheboygan, a three-story, 5,200-square-meter building constructed at a cost of 40 million dollars, featuring 3,500 square meters of gallery space with visible storage, an education area, library, study collection, and archive.

The center's collection is defined by its focus on artist-built environments, contemporary art, and the work of self-taught artists, particularly those from Wisconsin. The institution preserves and researches environments that sometimes contain up to 4,000 objects, displaying them both within the museum and on surrounding grounds. The Art Preserve alone holds more than 25,000 works from the Arts Center's collection, including complete and partial environments by more than thirty local, academically trained, or self-taught artists whose work is often associated with folk art, Art brut, and Outsider Art. The center is internationally recognized for its artist-created public washrooms, designed through the Arts/Industry residency program, which cultural historian Barbara Penner featured as the introduction to her 2013 book Bathroom. The programming encompasses community art projects, artist residencies, dance, film, and music presentations, art festivals, classes, and workshops, with approximately twelve exhibitions annually.

The center holds the largest collection of Wisconsin-born artist Eugene Von Bruenchenhein's work, comprising over 14,000 pieces that constitute the majority of his estate. Bruenchenhein, a prolific self-taught artist, received limited recognition during his lifetime and died in 1983; the Arts Center's subsequent exhibition of his work established his posthumous reputation. In 2012, the Mary Nohl Art Environment was gifted to the center, preserving much of her work at her Fox Point home, one of the few known art environments created by a woman artist. The permanent collection and exhibitions feature works by numerous significant artists including Emery Blagdon, Nek Chand, Loy Allen Bowlin ("The Original Rhinestone Cowboy"), Dr. Charles Smith, Albert Zahn, Lenore Tawney, Ray Yoshida, Eddie Owens Martin, and many others. Past exhibitions have also featured Ebony Patterson, Saya Woolfalk, Lee Godie, Bill Daniel, Faythe Levine, Bernard Langlais, and Beth Katleman. Upcoming and recent exhibitions include presentations on Tyree Guyton, Sabato Rodia, Silvio Barile, Sam Barsky, and Joyce Kozloff.

The original building is the John Michael Kohler House, a nineteenth-century Italianate mansion built in the Gilded Age style, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The house that originally comprised the Arts Center was built by John Michael Kohler himself and gave the institution its name. Since 1967, the complex has been expanded twice and now includes eight galleries, classrooms, studio spaces, two performance spaces, a shop, and a café. The Art Preserve building, opened in 2021, is organized around a sheltered inner courtyard where artworks are also installed, and borders a nature preserve. Four additional artist-designed washrooms are located at the Art Preserve, created by Michelle Grabner, Beth Lipman, and the collaborative team of Joy Feasley and Paul Swenbeck, supplementing the original washrooms designed by Ann Agee, Cynthia Consentino, Carter Kustera, Casey O'Connor, Merrill Mason, and Matt Nolen. The center also maintains an adjunct space called ARTspace at the Shops at Woodlake in the nearby village of Kohler.

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is located in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, United States, with its main campus in the historic John Michael Kohler House and its satellite Art Preserve facility also in Sheboygan. The institution is independent and not-for-profit. It is accessible to the public and presents originally curated exhibitions that change throughout the calendar year, including commissioned works, new works, and contemporary art with multiple galleries devoted to common themes. The Arts/Industry residency program, founded by Ruth DeYoung Kohler II and her brother Herbert in 1974, continues to bring approximately twelve artists annually for three-month residencies working in the pottery or foundry at Kohler Co.'s factory in Kohler, Wisconsin. By 2024, nearly 600 artists had participated in the program. The Connecting Communities program, begun in 1997, connects artists-in-residence with underserved communities and the general public to create sculptures, dance works, and public art installations through collaborative projects.