Milwaukee Art Museum Awarded Curatorial Internship Grant

The Decorative Arts Trust is thrilled to announce that the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) is the recipient of the 2026–28 Curatorial Internship Grant. The Marie Zimmermann Curatorial Fellow at MAM will gain hands-on curatorial work experience across collection assessment, development, exhibition planning, educational programming, and publishing.

MAM, Wisconsin’s largest art institution, is housed in a sequence of iconic buildings by Santiago Calatrava, Eero Saarinen, and David Kahler on a 24-acre lakefront campus. The fellow will work primarily under the guidance of Shoshana Resnikoff, the Demmer Curator of 20th and 21st Century Design, who is a past recipient of support from the Trust’s Emerging Scholars Program. Shoshana oversees a collection that specializes in the American Arts and Crafts movement and 20th-century European Modernism, with a concentration on the Bauhaus, Mid-Century American industrial design and craft, and industrial design rooted in Milwaukee and the Midwest. The museum’s holdings also feature 20th-century silver, work by women designers, and the archive of industrial designer Brooks Stevens.

The fellow will be an integral part of the planning and execution of two major initiatives that will advance MAM’s American decorative art and design programs: the Goisman Collection Project and the American Decorative Arts Collection Assessment and Gallery Reinstallation.

The Goisman Collection Project honors MAM patrons Jody and Dick Goisman, who have generously supported the design program since 2008 through an annual grant that funds Shoshana’s position and provides ongoing financial support for acquisitions. The Goismans also collected with MAM in mind for years, considering their future contributions to the museum’s design holdings as a vital commitment to the cultural and artistic landscape of Milwaukee. With Jody’s passing in 2024, Dick formalized the Goismans’ longstanding plans to donate their collection to MAM. To celebrate this transformative gift, MAM will develop an exhibition and publication, scheduled for fall 2027, that contextualize the Goismans’ collection within MAM’s remarkable decorative arts and design holdings and that celebrate their visionary leadership.

For the American Decorative Arts Collection Assessment and Gallery Reinstallation project, the fellow will help review MAM’s collection to identify strengths and possible areas of growth through acquisitions of American decorative arts. The goal is for the organization to have a better understanding of the collection in advance of an American art gallery reinstallation. Planning will begin in 2027 with installation scheduled for 2029.

Through these projects, site visits, engagement with the Chipstone galleries at MAM, and access to resources at the Chipstone-affiliated Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the fellow will gain invaluable exposure to a broad range of professional paths within the fields of decorative arts and material culture.

MAM will post the Marie Zimmermann Curatorial Fellow position on their website in January 2026.

The Curatorial Internship Grant is awarded annually to museums and historical organizations who are interested in hiring a deserving young professional to learn about the responsibilities and duties common to the curatorial field while working alongside a talented mentor. The Trust thanks the members and donors who make programs like the Curatorial Internship Grant and our Emerging Scholars Program possible.