MILWAUKEE – As snow blankets the pillars slowly rising from the ground at North 6th Street and West McKinley Avenue, Vice President and General Manager of Mortensen Kurt Thuene looks on as construction workers plow ahead on the exterior framework of the future Milwaukee Public Museum.
Thuene acknowledges the public is quite invested in the project, and recognizes the importance of getting things done right.
“We need to nail it, we’re going to stick the landing on this one because this is the building that everyone is going to remember for the next 100 years,” Thuene says as some of the roughly 100 crewmembers get a quick round of stretching in before heading to the jobsite.
Concrete pouring on what will be the first and second stories of the approximately 200,000 square feet structure has already finished, and Theune says the team is still on track for the museum’s planned early 2027 grand opening. Exterior work will continue through most of 2025, before the interior construction commences in 2026.
While much has been made about the uniquely contoured shape of the five-story building itself, equally important notes the museum’s Chief Planning Officer Katie Sanders is how the surrounding outdoor space will activated to ensure maximum usage of the property.
“We have this great opportunity to have a plaza and greenspace, that’s not something that we currently have,” says Sanders, adding the area will allow for increased educational opportunities on rain cycles and Wisconsin’s seasonality.
When asked about fundraising efforts for the new museum, Sanders said their team will release new totals raised at the end of 2024.
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Public discourse on the new museum has largely focused on the status of what exhibits and artifacts from the current facility at James Lovell and Wells Streets will make the move. Sanders says of the 4 million artifacts in the current museum, the ones that visitors will see are those determined by community engagement to be the most critical to the mission of the new museum.
“At the heart of that exhibit experience is the strength our collections, those are the stories that need to be told in the exhibits.”
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Sanders adds the fate of the current building once the new museum opens still hasn’t been determined. Milwaukee County owns the building, and will be conducting a real estate assessment before making any decisions.
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