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"angel in a cage"

A volunteer-driven effort is rapidly developing what is planned to be a comprehensive catalogue of public art in Milwaukee.

The Milwaukee section of a national Wikipedia project, the “WikiProject Public Art,” has grown rapidly since the project began last year. The effort, begun by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, aims to document public art in cities around the country. Milwaukee, along with Washington D.C., has been an early joiner of the project. In this city, about 80 installations have been documented, and volunteers have written articles for about 40.

The Milwaukee Arts Board, part of city government, employed a coordinator last year, Claudia Mooney, to recruit volunteers and train them.

More familiar entries include the “Bronz Fonz” by Gerald Sawyer, which the article says “is giving a two handed thumbs up, a gesture he often made in Happy Days,” the “Wind Leaves” installed outside the Discovery Center and “The Calling,” the orange Mark di Suvero sculpture made from steel I-beams that overlooks O’Donnell Park and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

And then there are the oft-overlooked, such as “Angel in a Cage” by Richard Pflieger, located in the Menomonee River Valley. A fiberglass angel statue is suspended at the top of a 40-foot steel tower walled-in with chain-link fencing. “The artist’s inspiration came from the many fences throughout the Menomonee Valley in contrast with the numerous shrines with angels in the backyards of the Milwaukee south side homes,” the accompanying article says.

Also, check out “Pattern,” a design by Paula Schulze that was painted onto plywood used to board up an office building at the former A.O. Smith site. “Pattern” was commissioned by IN:SITE, a Milwaukee non-profit that “fosters place-responsive temporary public art,” according to its website.

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