Save MPM

09/03/2026

This latest Milwaukee Public Museum ad seems to look deliberately old with a rummage sale sticker on it. Ironic? Cheeky?

09/03/2026

09/02/2026

This is happening now.

MPM is dismantling this iconic tiger diorama this month—September 2026. Four months before the building closes. According to MPM’s own concept renderings, it is not going to the new museum.

It’s being destroyed.

Hanson Puthuff, 1926: “Many of these animals are fast becoming extinct and it is the intention of the museum that for all time they may be preserved as seen in their native habitat for the study and enjoyment of future generations.”

This violates the 2013 Lease and Management Agreement. This violates the Collections Policy. This is the moment to act.

savempm.org

09/01/2026

Between 1919 and 1940, Charles Porteus hand-built roughly 55 miniature dioramas for the Milwaukee Public Museum - one-of-a-kind museum craft some of which were during the WPA era. MPM Inc. has been asked repeatedly what will happen to them. It has never answered.

Save the minis. Demand an itemized inventory and a public answer before anything is sold, shuttered, dismantled, or left behind. "The collections are moving" is not enough anymore. We need real, verified answers. Call your Milwaukee County Supervisor today and tell them to stop accepting vague promises that "the collections are moving" — and to demand an independent, itemized inventory before anything is sold, dismantled, or left behind.

09/01/2026

Seven years in the making. Fifty years on display.

SaveMPM explores the Living Oceans exhibit—from curator William E. Dickinson's 1965 vision through its opening night in 1972 and its role as one of Milwaukee's most iconic immersive museum experiences.

What made it work? Institutional commitment. More than a dozen artists and craftspeople. Exhibit supervisor Kenneth Kratz's pioneering work with custom lighting. Seven years of planning that survived essentially unchanged from concept to 1972 opening.

But here's the central question: what happens to this fifty-year-old habitat diorama when the museum closes January 3, 2027?

The public still hasn't seen a disposition plan. Read the full story and ask your County Supervisor for transparency.

https://www.savempm.org/post/living-oceans-portals

09/01/2026

Milwaukee could lose its museum twice.

MPM Inc., the private nonprofit managing our public museum, says it owns property inside it. Before other museums begin tagging items this fall, Milwaukee County should verify those ownership claims.

Section 5.9 of the 2013 lease gives the County the right, with 24 hours’ written notice, to inspect the museum property and examine MPM’s books and records.

This is not about whether we trust museum professionals or how MPM classified an object.

It is about one question: what proves MPM owns it?

Trust, but verify. Inspect before it’s gone.
Contact your supervisor today to make a request to inspect.

08/31/2026

Hope this isn’t what MJS will be reporting after the new museum opens. One difference: the new museum will not be owned by the county.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1Byq9VEHvh/?mibextid=wwXIfr

08/29/2026

The Milwaukee Style diorama was born at this museum in 1890 and perfected over 136 years. It survived two building moves. On January 3, 2027, Milwaukee County will be the city that let it disappear—replaced by CGI galleries in the new museum, while the originals face demolition under File No. 25-586.

Contact your County Supervisor.

08/28/2026

POSTCARDS OF THE PAST

Here's a Milwaukee Public Museum diorama that stopped us cold: "Wisconsin Pond Life," Phostint #6001, printed by the Detroit Publishing Company sometime between 1910–1930.

Look at this. The artist didn't just show you a pond—they cut it in half. Above the waterline: lily pads, reeds, the painted sky. Below: the hidden world. Fish, turtles, aquatic insects. The interconnected ecosystem. All of it visible at once.

This is ecological systems thinking packaged as art. It's pedagogy as beauty. MPM understood something that a lot of museums still don't: that education and wonder aren't contradictory. They're the same thing.

The Phostint printing process captured it perfectly—those soft pastels, the way light sits in the water. It looks almost like a Monet painting. Almost. Except it's accurate. It's teaching you something while it's moving you.

This diorama represents decades of curatorial vision: artists, scientists, and craftspeople working together to show Wisconsin's natural heritage not as isolated objects, but as a living, breathing system.

That's what we're fighting to preserve.

savempm.org

08/27/2026

POSTCARDS OF THE PAST

This is a Tlingit mortuary pole carved by a house-chief named Yennate in southeastern Alaska. Known as a Qadakedi—meaning "body" or "man's box"—it's a ceremonial object displaying family crests and kinship symbols comparable to European coats of arms.

In 1904, it was displayed at the St. Louis World's Fair. After the fair ended, it was considered too fragile to return to Alaska, so it was sold to the Milwaukee Public Museum.

For nearly a century, it stood outside the museum building. Decades of Wisconsin weather—rain, snow, freeze-thaw cycles—slowly deteriorated the wood. Eventually, MPM moved it indoors to preserve it.

This postcard shows it in its outdoor life, standing against the museum's classical façade. It's a document of preservation work—and of the cost of that work. Cultural objects, once displaced, require constant care.

We're sharing what we find because these artifacts deserve to be remembered, not erased.

savempm.org