John Michael Kohler Arts Center

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center will implement a new art-making initiative to foster innovative, scholarly work and to deepen public awareness of art environments. This multi-component initiative will take an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding and interpretation of art environments. An onsite exhibition series will be integrated into a yearlong research and response program culminating in an international conference. The exhibition will include seminal art environments in the collection. A cohort of ten scholars, writers, artists, and curators will work in pairs to respond to and reinterpret one of the exhibited art-environment builders. A three-day international conference in partnership with the Kohler Foundation, Inc., and the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training will include white papers and artistic responses to art-environment builders and an interactive website. Online source materials documenting the collection generated and disseminated throughout the initiative and a virtual, online recreation of the anniversary year exhibition will incorporate the new scholarship and responses.