Erin Shirreff’s “Art at the Intersection of Photography and Sculpture” Opens at Milwaukee Art Museum in May

The Milwaukee Art Museum presents the most comprehensive exhibition in a decade of works by Erin Shirreff, a highly regarded contemporary artist at the forefront of sculpture, photography, and video. Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts showcases over 40 recent works, including installations specific to the Milwaukee Art Museum, and will be on view May 30–August 31, 2025, in the Museum’s Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts.

Erin Shirreff (b. 1975) creates boundary-crossing art that explores the gap between images and the things they picture. Trained as a sculptor, Shirreff understands photography as a significant but imperfect means of conveying three-dimensional objects. Her work focuses on the reproductions through which we often access art, inviting audiences to consider how each of us sees and interprets the world around us. Shifting across time, material, and dimension, her art rewards in-person engagement and slow, close looking.

“While photographs increasingly lose trust as conveyors of knowledge, Erin Shirreff’s work, which dwells in the place between image and object, has only become more relevant,” said the exhibition’s curator Kristen Gaylord, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts. “I have long admired her thoughtful approach to the generative potential of representation, and it has been a joy to collaborate with her in bringing this wide-ranging presentation of her recent work to Milwaukee.”

The exhibition will be installed in the Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts, the Museum’s dynamic space dedicated to photography, film, video, and light installations. Since 2015, when it was established, the Herzfeld Center has been home to cutting-edge exhibitions that feature artists who shape, push the boundaries of, and expand photography and media arts.

“Erin Shirreff: Permanent Drafts continues the Museum’s exploration into the expansive world of photography, beyond the traditional print to the medium’s larger role in art and society,” said Elizabeth Siegel, Chief of Curatorial Affairs.

Hear from the artist herself on Thursday, August 7, when Erin Shirreff will present an artist talk in Lubar Auditorium, and engage with Milwaukee experts on Thursday, August 28, at the Haberman Local Luminaries program taking place in the Herzfeld Center.