More than 100 Milwaukeeans sat down with artist-photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki and independent journalist Mary Louise Schumacher for deeply personal conversations about the state of our democracy during the year and a half leading up to the consequential 2020 election. 

The This is Milwaukee project had a core question, designed to inspire people to reflect on democracy in a deeply personal way: “What is democracy, for you?”

Each subject was chosen because they contribute to the public life of their community. The nonpartisan project aimed to make citizenship, in its many forms, more visible. The community conversation generated by this project felt relevant in a time of political polarization and coarse civic discourses, especially in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

This site is the permanent archive of the This is Milwaukee project, which also culminated with the distribution of a special, newspaper-like publication featuring portraits of the subjects made by Miyazaki and excerpts of the interviews conducted by Schumacher. The publication was disturbed at dozens of locations, including public libraries, public schools, and near polling sites on Election Day. The publication was also made available via newspaper vending machines – reimagined by artists David Najib Kasir, Zachary Ochoa, and Aisha Valentín – and was translated into Spanish.

This is Milwaukee took inspiration from other civically engaged initiatives and people who have done similar work, including the BLC Field School at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee under the leadership of Arijit Sen; the journalism of Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, based at Marquette University; the community-driven art practices of Adam Carr; andAnne Basting, the founder of TimeSlips and an innovative artist who transforms the lives of people living with dementia.

WHO WE ARE

Kevin J. Miyazaki is an artist and photographer born and raised in Wauwatosa. He has made portraits of various communities in the Midwest, including political activists, artists, tourists in the Wisconsin Dells, and people who work and live near the edge of Lake Michigan. “This is Milwaukee” builds on that decade-long practice. His artwork has been exhibited at the Haggerty Museum of Art, Museum of Wisconsin Art, Hyde Park Art Center, Jewish Museum Milwaukee and Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. His publication clients include The New York Times, AARP, Food Network, Southwest Airlines, HGTV, and Architectural Digest. He is the author of Perimeter (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2014), an examination of Lake Michigan through portraits made in the four states bordering the lake.

Mary Louise Schumacher is an independent journalist, critic and filmmaker. She was the longtime art and architecture critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and directed a documentary film about art critics, which will be released in 2023. She was the 2019 Clarice Smith Distinguished Critic at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and also the 2017 Arts & Culture Fellow with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University

This is Milwaukee was co-created by Miyazaki and Schumacher, but is the work of a large, collaborative team: advisers Adam Carr and Arijit Sen; project coordinators Kathryn Reimer and Katie Avila Loughmiller; audio editors Lena Anne Jensen and Jason Rieve; researcher and editor Karen Samelson; social media managers Erin Wolf and Naomi Waxman; videographer-photographers Eric Kleppe-Montenegro and Aris Owens; educators’ toolkit creator Andrea Rodriguez-Strock; educational resource consultants Katie Dukes and Joey Zocher; Spanish-language translators Carmelo Velázquez and Christina Green, of Green Linguistics; “This is Milwaukee Talking” facilitators Adam Carr; “This is Milwaukee Talking” artists Portia Cobb, Kellen “Klassik” Abston, and Cree Myles; designers Ken Hanson and Kevin McGeen; newspaper distribution coordinators Judith Berger and Diane Bacha; newspaper box preparator Mike Sieger; and newspaper box artists David Najib Kasir, Zachary Ochoa, and Aisha Valentin. 

Credit also goes to Sandi and Josh Adams of Mindpool Live for their support and ideas and Debra Brehmer, gallery director at the Portrait Society Gallery, which exhibited a form of this project as part of the “Art + Protest” exhibit. The project’s subjects, who generously shared their recommendations and resources with us, served as collaborators as well. 

This is Milwaukee was supported in part by Arts Wisconsin, the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, Greater Together, the Milwaukee Arts Board, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee SURF (Support for Undergraduate Research Fellows) program, and donors Sharath and Nirmal Raja, and Joseph Pabst. 

Copyright This is Milwaukee, by Kevin J. Miyazaki and Mary Louise Schumacher, 2020. All rights reserved, 2020.

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