Milwaukee-based artist, writer, and curator Michelle Grabner pays homage to custodial labor through this installation of household sinks and replicated everyday objects. Largely unseen janitorial work is instead foregrounded through the presence of commonplace objects used to keep institutional spaces sanitary. In the traditionally orderly gallery space, rests a silver leafed garbage can, cast bronze broom, and cast porcelain buckets, caddies, wash brushes, toilet paper rolls, washcloths, "wet floor" signs, and cleaning supplies.
The majority of the work in Grabner's exhibition is produced in the Kohler MakerSpace, an invitational project space for artists and designers based in Kohler's Pottery. In addition, the display includes work from Kohler Co.鈥檚 commercial production line including single basin wall-mounted sinks.
Grabner鈥檚 display celebrates the labor of sanitation, highlights the design of those objects, and creates a conceptual link to Cleaning Woman, a photograph by August Sander in the Museum鈥檚 adjacent collection display.
Michelle Grabner, based in Chicago and Wisconsin, has explored domestic themes for over 30 years. Her artwork memorializes household patterns or everyday objects through a variety of media such as burlap, bronze, crochet, spider webs, and gingham.
Grabner is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught since 1996. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2018 National Academician in the National Academy of Design, and a 2024 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters Fellow. Major museum exhibitions curated by Grabner include the 2014 Whitney Biennial and the inaugural 2018 FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. In 2021 she co-curated Sculpture Milwaukee with Theaster Gates. In 2024 she curated 50 Paintings, a survey of contemporary international painting at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Grabner, along with artist Brad Killam runs the artist-run project spaces, The Suburban, Milwaukee, WI (est. 1999) and The Poor Farm, Little Wolf, WI (est. 2008).
In Partnership with Kohler Co.
Support for this exhibition is generously provided by the Eleanor H. Boheim Endowment Fund.
