Free or discounted entry for members of NARM.
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
About this place
About the Museum Housed in a soaring, Cesar Pelli-designed building, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art provides free exhibitions and education programs that engage people in modern and contemporary art. The museum’s four galleries offer changing exhibitions that feature established and emerging artists. The Rooftop Sculpture Garden provides an urban oasis with an incredible view. Full Circle: Acquisitions and Exhibitions (On view through August 22, 2021) Full Circle traces MMoCA’s collecting and exhibition history over the past 30 years and reflects the culmination of the work and dedication of recently retired director emeritus Stephen Fleischman. Artworks were acquired that complemented and bolstered the strengths of the permanent collection in the areas of contemporary photography, Chicago Imagism, and works by Midwestern artists. Full Circle features familiar favorites alongside more recent acquisitions, including works by Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, Deborah Butterfield, Sam Gilliam, Jim Nutt, Susan Rothenberg, Frank Stella, H.C. Westermann, and John Wilde. Full Circle includes a wide range of artistic sensibilities, media, and ideas at work. Like the many staff members who have taken inspiration from these works, MMoCA hopes that viewers will find objects that speak to them or perhaps bring back fond memories of days spent in the galleries. These works are embedded in MMoCA’s history and are part of Madison’s bright future where they will continue to inspire museumgoers for generations to come. Amy Cutler: A Narrative Thread (On view through May 16, 2021) Amy Cutler is known for her highly detailed compositions of austere but immaculately attired women who, with singular focus, engage in curious activities—from sewing stripes onto tigers to delivering elixirs while wearing boot-shaped wooden stilts. Despite their fictionalized settings, the drawings are often inspired by Cutler’s own experiences and anxieties, which she brilliantly transforms into allegorical scenarios that resonate with emotional depth and humor. Seamlessly integrating subtle allusions to contemporary politics and even stories of religious martyrdom into her work, the artist is also influenced by a range of visual sources, including Persian miniatures, Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, and ethnographic dress and textiles. This exhibition takes a deeper look at Cutler’s use of material culture as a subtle narrative device, and focuses particularly on her embrace of elaborate costuming and fabric patterns as a means to express her characters’ psychologies and to reinforce the narrative backstory of her compositions.
If you are a member here
A membership to Madison Museum of Contemporary Art carries reciprocal admission, so the same card is worth free or discounted entry at other places in this program.
- NARM in Wisconsin Art, history and cultural institutions. Not valid within 15 miles of here.
Reciprocal programs are built for travel and most exclude places close to the one where you hold your membership, so this is worth the most when you are away from home. How reciprocal memberships work