Michelle Grabner Gifts Huge Selection To The John Michael Kohler Arts Center
5Aug. 4, 2026
Artist and curatorMichelle Grabnerhas donated over 2000 pieces of artwork to theJohn Michael Kohler Arts Center(JMKAC) in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The gift makes JMKAC the single largest holder of Grabner’s works in the world.
The donated works span across Grabner’s career beginning in the 1990s and consist of 1200 prints and photographs, 700 paintings, and 200 sculptures. Also included are an additional 300 works from Grabner’s personal art collection. “What makes this gift significant is its breadth. That Grabner is a Wisconsin artist with international significance makes this gift especially meaningful—it ensures that a practice with global reach remains rooted in the place that shaped it,” Jodi Throckmorton, JMKAC’s chief curator, said in a statement.
Grabner was born in 1962 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and currently lives and works in Milwaukee. Known for paintings, prints and sculptures that blend craft, abstraction, and conceptual art, she is one of Wisconsin’s most widely known artists, and her work is held in major museums, including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She co-curated the 2014 Whitney Biennial and was a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.
Her relationship with JMKAC began in 2017 when she participated in the institution’s Arts / Industry residency program. She later served as a guest curator at the museum, designed a functional bathroom for the 2021 opening of JMKAC’s Art Preserve, and was part of Kohler Co.’s MakerSpace residency program. In a statement, Grabner said: “It is especially meaningful to make this gift to a museum that has been a site of creative collaboration and support for my own practice. Their commitment to experimentation, teaching, and the vernacular helped establish the department’s singular reputation and profoundly shaped the artistic culture of the Midwest.”
JMKAC said in a statement that it will soon begin cataloging, research, and exhibition planning to showcase the donated works to the public at a future date.