Building Bronzeville celebrates the bold generation of artists, activists, and cultural workers who made Milwaukee an important regional center of the global Black Arts Movement. Featuring paintings and screenprints, alongside magazines, flyers, and printed archival materials, this exhibition introduces visitors to Bronzeville’s vibrant art scene as it developed between 1967 and 1981.

Many Bronzeville artists drew inspiration from the global Black Arts Movement. Spanning the African diaspora, the movement called on Black artists to develop new forms of cultural representation and to build autonomous institutions for Black art. In Milwaukee’s North Side, visual artists gave these ideas shape through artmaking and community arts organizing. Artists were also administrators, educators, and volunteers, and moved nimbly between artistic production and civic engagement. They published writing in local magazines, formed collectives and institutions, and organized exhibitions in storefront galleries, public libraries, and municipal cultural centers. Their work raised enduring questions about art, community, and social power.

Bronzeville is still building, and its art history mirrors our present moment. While surveying the past, Building Bronzeville affirms that community-based arts organizing has long been central to Milwaukee’s North Side. As Bronzeville Center for the Arts builds upon this legacy, this exhibition reflects a dynamic moment when artists made themselves into a force for community life.

Bronzeville Center for the Arts extends its thanks to Milwaukee County Historical Society, Milwaukee Public Library, South Side Community Art Center Chicago, Frieda High Wasikhongo Tesfagiorgis, Mutópe J. Johnson, and Evelyn Terry for loaning art objects and archival materials integral to this project. Building Bronzeville is co-curated by Phoenix Brown (Bronzeville Center for the Arts) and Christopher Dingwall, PhD (Washington University in St. Louis).