Milwaukee Art Museum's 'Winter Series' Launches With Larry Bell's ICEBERG

The Milwaukee Art Museum commences its new Winter Series with the installation of Iceberg (2020) by Larry Bell. Open to the public with free admission during Museum hours, the monumental sculpture will be on view in Windhover Hall through March 10, 2024.

The Winter Series is a new annual exhibition series that brings color and joy to the coldest, dreariest months of the year. Each year between December and March, the light-filled, 90-foot-high Windhover Hall will showcase a large-scale installation by a renowned or up-and-coming artist whose work reflects a profound meditation on nature. Open to all with free admission, this series invites visitors to experience an intriguing and often colorful alternative to the winter beyond the windows and affords artists an opportunity to reflect upon nature within this one of-a-kind space.

This unique series commences with the installation of Iceberg by Larry Bell (American, b. 1939), a leading artist of the California Light and Space Movement. Bell is known for his innovative sculptural experiments with light and perception, primarily through the medium of glass. By exploring its surface effects—how glass simultaneously reflects, absorbs, and transmits light— Bell produces spatial ambiguities that vacillate between the material and immaterial. Part of the artist's Standing Wall series, which he began in the late 1960s, Iceberg includes four zig-zagged, free-standing panels—each seven feet tall at its pinnacle—made from two sheets of clear glass between which color film is placed. It connects the architectural wonder that is Windhover Hall to its natural, seasonal surroundings by evoking the shape and shifting tones of floating ice forms and, incidentally, the effects of a changing climate.

“Iceberg presents visitors with a perceptual experience that shifts in response to their vantage point, the light and time of day, and the colors of the lake and sky just beyond, reminding visitors of the power of viewing art in person,” said Elizabeth Siegel, chief curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

This installation continues the Milwaukee Art Museum's longstanding relationship with Bell. The Museum's collection is home to three untitled sculptures made by the artist, having acquired its first piece in 1970 within a year of its creation. It is also home to works that Bell created in 1965 and 1972.

“Welcoming visitors to engage with innovative contemporary art is vital to our mission at the Milwaukee Art Museum,” said Marcelle Polednik, PhD, Donna and Donald Baumgartner Director. “As a public gathering place that is open to all, Windhover Hall is an ideal setting to kick off the annual Winter Series. Visitors will be able to revel in the perception-altering forms of Iceberg, all the while reflecting on the austere beauty of winter on view within and outside the Museum.”