RAM at Five: Racine Art Museum celebrates five years in Downtown, and the successes that have come with that time

By LEE B. ROBERTS
Journal Times

Friday, May 9, 2008 2:22 PM CDT

A slideshow of RAM's five years

RACINE — Some come to view the work of artists from across the nation and around the world, and to hear those artists talk about their work. Others come to explore their own creativity through a variety of educational outreach programs and drop-in sessions. And others still come out of pure curiosity about what lies behind the walls of the award-winning Downtown building that once was a bank and now is home to the Racine Art Museum at 441 Main St.

Whatever the reason, between 45,000 and 50,000 people have come to the Racine Art Museum (and its companion campus at the Wustum Museum of Fine Arts on Northwestern Avenue) each year since the Downtown museum opened, according to Bruce Pepich, executive director of the RAM. Those numbers — which are double what the Wustum drew when it was the only show in town — are pretty impressive for a mid-size art museum in a city of 81,000 that opened its Downtown location just five years ago this week.

On Sunday, the RAM will celebrate its fifth anniversary by inviting the community (and their mothers) to visit its galleries for free, enjoy some refreshments and get a discount in the museum store. It is all part of a series of special events that the RAM is hosting in celebration of all it has accomplished in its first five years.

Today, for example, the museum’s collection boasts nearly 4,000 contemporary crafts and fine arts pieces which have been acquired primarily through gifts from collectors and artists living in 30 different states. Its showcase exhibitions — featuring the work of artists such as Albert Paley, Toshiko Takaezu, and Judith Leiber — draw visitors from across the nation. And, the RAM’s reputation as one of the top three American crafts museums has been recognized in publications as far away as London, England.

In the last year alone, 100 of the museum’s objects were lent to other facilities around the country for inclusion in their exhibits. An exhibition of glass pieces from the RAM’s collection called “A Touch of Glass” was recently held over for two extra months at the Dane County Regional Airport in Madison because of the amount of interest it drew from visitors there, according to Pepich.

And, it’s not just the museum’s staff or its collectors that are making such successes happen, he said.

“It is the community and the board, too, who bought into the dream of what the museum could be.”

Takes a village

Karen Johnson Boyd is one community member who has played a major role in making the dream come true. A Racine native, Boyd has been a long-time patron of the RAM and its work, having given generous gifts of artwork and funding to the collection since long before the museum expanded to downtown. It was her donation of 200 contemporary works to Wustum in 1991, in fact, that created a nationally significant collection of contemporary ceramics, baskets and jewelry at the museum, bringing national attention and attracting other donors who have continued to help build RAM’s reputation.

Boyd’s most recent donation, in 2007, was a gift of 27 ceramic sculptures, nine fiber works and 81 works on paper, featuring pieces by important artists ranging from Jack Earl to Robert Rauschenberg and Horst P. Horst. Hers was one of two major gifts received by the museum last year, the other being more than 60 works in ceramics and fibers (mostly basekts) given by Donna Moog, the St. Louis based collector who gave her 286-piece collection of artist-made teapots in 2000 (exhibited in 2003). The gifts from the two women were part of a total of nearly 500 works in craft media, graphics and photographs that came to RAM in 2007, making it a record-breaking year for additions to the museum’s collection.

“The family of donors keeps getting bigger and bigger,” Pepich said.

Visitors can see some of the works from these most recent gifts in the show “New, Novel and Never Shown Before 2008: Recent Gifts to the Collection (Part I),” currently on exhibit at the RAM (through August 10), as well as in “Part II,” which will run Aug. 24 to Dec. 7.

The museum has done a great job of attracting visitors, as well as donors, both locally and from afar, said Boyd, whose interest in collecting art dates back to her grandfather, who headed the art department at Cornell University.

“I am really pleased with how the museum has continued to grow,” she said.

Other collectors and artists around the country are also impressed with the RAM’s success, according to Boyd. While a lot of the big museums have a decorative arts focus, the RAM’s concentration on contemporary crafts gives collectors and artists in those media more opportunity for their work to be exhibited.

“They know that what they give will be shown,” she said.

Good direction

Much of the credit for the museum’s growth, Boyd said, goes to Pepich who not only has great knowledge of the collection, but a very good relationship with artists, collectors, and the community.

“He’s very open to everybody,” she said. “When people come up from Chicago, Bruce goes out of his way to take them around the museum, talk to them and answer their questions.”

He is also a great teacher, Boyd said, and he is fun to work with.

“He has a good sense of humor.”

Teaching people the importance of the artwork in the RAM’s collection is one of Pepich’s passions.

In addition to its beauty and entertainment value, the museum’s artwork serves as historical documentation of our society — who we are and what issues we are concerned with — that will be viewed by generations to come, Pepich said.

“Much of what we know about people who lived 100 years ago, can be found in objects in museums,” he said.

“We’re creating a message in a bottle for people 100 years from where we are now.”

Certainly the expansion of the museum to Downtown was a challenge for Pepich, who had to double the museum’s budget and staff in order to open the RAM on Main Street. Yet it has also been a truly wonderful experience, the director said.

“I can’t believe it has been five years,” he said. “The grand opening is still fresh in my mind, as if it had just been last year.”

When asked if the museum today reflects the hopes and plans he had back then, Pepich said: “It is almost exactly as I envisioned it, only more exciting and more fun.”

The RAM has also gone further than he expected it to, in terms of its reach.

“We have truly achieved a national reputation for the museum,” he said.

Pepich is equally excited about the number of people here in Racine who visit the museum.

“We have been downtown here for five years, and it is still such a thrill every time I see the throngs of people coming in off the street during First Fridays and Gallery Night.”

Celebrate Mother's Day with RAM

WHAT: RAM Fifth Anniversary Open House

WHEN: Noon to 5 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Racine Art Museum, 441 Main St.

COST: Free admission to the museum. The RAM store is offering a 5 percent discount on items

purchased.

INFO: Call (262) 638-8300 or visit http://www.ramart.org

NOTE: Admission to RAM will also be free during Downtown’s First Friday events from 4 to 9 p.m. June 6, July 3 and Aug. 1, with free Family Hands-On activities offered during the June and August evenings. Free admission will also be offered during the next Downtown Gallery Night, from 5 to 9 p.m. July 19.

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