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MMoCA’s upcoming exhibits showcase the museum’s impressive permanent collection
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art’s permanent collection consists of 5,939 objets d’art.
May 5, 2021 9:17 AM Michael Muckian
“Carousel” by Sam Gilliam, 1970
Louis Pasteur once said that fortune favors the prepared mind. That applies to Madison’s once nascent arts scene and a surprise gift given more than a century ago.
In 1913, Florence Shirlaw, widow of landscape artist Walter Shirlaw (a former bank note engraver who helped found and served as president of the Society of American Artists), contacted what was then the Madison Art Association. She’d been donating her late husband’s pieces to museums across the country and wondered if the association would like two of his landscapes. Officials happily accepted the gift, which became the seedlings of one of Madison’s largest troves of hidden artistic treasures.