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INSIDE ARCHIVE


Marketing and
University Communication
UW-Green Bay, CL 815
2420 Nicolet Drive
Green Bay, WI 54311-7001
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E-mail: matzken@uwgb.edu

Rev. May 13, 2008

 

Art museum lures talented grad back to Wisconsin

Last fall, Green Bay native Dan Keegan ‘72 and his wife, Janne’, had it figured out. They would stay in California where the weather was mild, their friends were plentiful, and their careers were flourishing.

What they couldn’t have anticipated was a call from the Milwaukee Art Museum asking Dan to become its next executive director.

“Let’s see,” Keegan says, “The museum is nationally recognized with international notoriety, it has a fabulous art collection, it would be a great professional opportunity, and we would be returning home (Janne’ was born in Wisconsin and raised in Kansas City). We thought about it for about two seconds before saying ‘yes.’”

Keegan started his new position in March 2008, leaving the San Jose Museum of Art, where he was recognized as an arts and community leader and as an experienced and exceptionally talented executive director. Previously, he was director of Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Mo., and before that, a successful practicing artist and faculty member.

The foundation for it all, Keegan proudly proclaims, was his undergraduate experience at UW-Green Bay.

“I hope that your readers understand and appreciate how much UW-Green Bay has helped my career, by setting a tone, laying a foundation encouraging me to explore and examine and take creative risks. I always felt UW-Green Bay was a great place to do that…”

It was an invitation from his brother John, a UW-Green Bay student, to “play in the clay” at the campus studio (an old warehouse near Main St.), that sparked Keegan’s interest in art. Soon he was leaving behind his microbiology interest at UW-Madison, and enrolling as an art major at UW-Green Bay. What followed, he recalls, was an honor roll of faculty members and favorite courses… Bill Prevetti for drawing, Bruce Grimes for wheel throwing, basic design with Davy Damkoehler.

“The teachers were fantastic, different, robust,” Keegan recalls. “They inspired us to go on to graduate schools. Davy, in particular was a great mentor. He was a guy who truly took on the mentor role and posed the key questions and provided the opportunity to play and create and take risks. He was a mentor/model of living and breathing a lifestyle of art. He would hang out at Kapps (downtown restaurant) with us students and talk art. What better experience could he provide than that?"

Ceramics, both wheel-thrown and hand-sculpted, became both Keegan’s method for creativity — “it was magic”— and a means to earn an income as the Keegan brothers began to sell their work at local art fairs. It also became the medium that would gain him national visibility. As Keegan worked through campus administrative positions, chair of the art department, director of public relations and the like, he began to see how art and leadership could marry as a successful career.

“I really found a love for both,” he says. “I’ve come to love both the creative activity and the problem-solving. Making trains run on time has always been a lot of fun for me. I’ve also learned that artists have to be good business people or have good business people around them, if they don’t want to be overlooked."

New to his current directorship, Keegan has yet to spell out a plan for the museum, however he hints at a major project and a new visitor experience, which he hopes will inspire fellow UW-Green Bay alumni to plan a trip to the Milwaukee waterfront.

“I certainly see the Milwaukee Art Museum as the state’s museum,” he says. “It’s in the state’s largest city, is nicely located, easy to get to and is the state’s resource for world-class art and exhibitions and architecture and is a destination experience.

“I hope all of our alumni and colleagues would be supportive of this great resource,” he continues. “Cultural resources are fragile ecologies… but great cultural resources add to the quality of life as a state, and also fuel the economic engine by attracting quality people.”



Milwaukee Art Museum: At a glance

— Receives about 290,000 visits annually
— Houses about 20,000 works of art with about 1,500 works of art on current display (from ancient Egypt to today)
— Has 117,000 square feet of gallery space
— Holds one of the largest collections of works in the world by Wisconsin artist Georgia O’Keeffe
— Cock of the Liberation, by Pablo Picasso, is among the museum’s most famous paintings 
— Quadracci Pavilion is the first U.S. building designed by Santiago Calatrava in the U.S. The $121 million expansion added a distinctive 250-foot-long bridge linking downtown Milwaukee to its waterfront and museum; the new glass-walled reception hall; and the iconic Burke Brise Soleil (“Bree So-LAY”) — commonly known as “the wings” which is a moveable sun screen weighing 90 tons.

Click here to download a PDF file of the entire May 2008 issue of Inside magazine.