Save MPM

Thank you County Supervisor Martinez

The State was told the Milwaukee Public Museum was a poorly built, uninsulated "concrete block building" that would cost more than $100 million to bring up to standard.

Milwaukee County's own records say something different:

🏢 The County classifies it as a seven-story, fire-resistive concrete structure. Block is only a backing layer behind the granite and limestone.

🧱 Insulation and a v***r barrier were installed on the inside of the exterior walls after 1994. In 2013–14 the south face was rebuilt with an insulated wall system carrying 234 solar panels.

📉 In 2013, the museum's own capital submission showed $11.2 million in actual repairs. The other $16.5 million was new projects, including a $10 million entrance that was never built.

📈 From there, the "deferred maintenance" number grew to $30M, then $50M+, then $100M+, then $154.3M, while the County's own 2023 assessment put current repair needs at $3.8 million and rated the building Good.

🏅 The American Alliance of Museums reaccredited MPM in this building on August 1, 2022, six months before the State was told the building was jeopardizing accreditation.

The building has real needs, as any sixty-year-old public building does. But the public record doesn't support the story the State was told.

The funding decisions have been made. What hasn't been decided is what happens to the dioramas, the European Village, the Streets of Old Milwaukee and every other built-in exhibit left behind when the building closes January 3, 2027. They were built by generations of Milwaukee artists and paid for by the public.

👉 Read the full breakdown, with every source and the County's own numbers. The link is in our bio. Click our profile.

👉 Then contact your County Supervisor and ask them to preserve these exhibits, not demolish them with the building.

Carolina Parakeet. Extinct since 1918. Known to science only through specimens and memory.

"Natural history collections are the memory of life itself. Once we weaken the places where that memory is kept, studied, and shared, we lose more than a museum. We lose our ability to understand what the living world is becoming."

— Dr. Utku Perktaş, Ornithologist & Evolutionary Biologist
Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History

The Milwaukee Public Museum holds that memory. What's its future?

Four or five generations of Milwaukeeans pressed their faces to the glass of these dioramas.

Now the museum is being taken apart piece by piece. The old building closes January 3, 2027. Most of the roughly 150 habitat dioramas on Wells Street are not moving, and A Tribute to Survival, built with Wisconsin tribal members, isn't going to the new building either.

The County's own 2023 facility report priced a full replacement of the existing building at $82 million. The new building is costing more than three times that.

Our newest essay, "Nothing Goes Unwitnessed," is about grief, and about why we can't stay on the sidelines as the angels in the film Wings of Desire do, just watching. Milwaukee has standing. We need to use it.

📖 To read the essay: Facebook recently updated its terms, and we'd have to pay to post links. So instead, we will always keep the latest blog post link in our bio.

Click our profile, then the blog link, and it will take you straight to the newest post.

Here's what you can do this week:
👉 Write to your County Supervisor (the supervisor lookup is on our site)
👉 Speak at a committee meeting
👉 Send us your museum memories, photos, or clippings
👉 Share this post

Central Indian Wildlife. A diorama from the Milwaukee Public Museum.

What happens to it now?

INSPECT BEFORE IT'S GONE.

Call your County Supervisor. Demand a Section 5.9 inspection and the title records—before October.

Once the pre-sale walkthroughs start, it may be too late. The clock is running. 108 days until closure. Make your voice heard NOW.

http://findyourcountysupervisor.com

SECTION 5.9 GIVES THE COUNTY THE RIGHT TO INSPECT.

24 hours notice. Records included. Use it NOW.

The law is on your side. The County has the power to walk into that building and demand a complete accounting of every object, every piece, every exhibit before January 3, 2027. They just need you to ask them to do it.

Don't wait. Call NOW.

http://findyourcountysupervisor.com

"The collections are moving" is not an answer.

Call your Milwaukee County Supervisor. Demand Section 5.9 inspection and an itemized inventory—before October.

The County has the legal right. The law gives them 24 hours notice to inspect. The official Records must be submitted for review.

Use the contractual Stewardship & Oversight Authority before valuable Public Assets become the financial gains of the Private Non-profit management entity - who was hired to display the Artifacts and Exhibits - not rob them from Milwaukee County residents!

WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT WHAT'S HAPPENING?

All we've been told is "the collections are moving."
No inventory. No itemized list or breakdown. No preservation plan for what stays, what gets sold, and what's destroyed. No word about the dioramas, the immersive built-in environments, the irreplaceable exhibits. Just vague, misleading semantics and stonewalling.

The County Board doesn't know what's on the Auction list. The public is in the dark. And that's intentional.

Demand specifics. http://findyourcountysupervisor.com

HOW DID THIS BECOME THE PROPERTY OF MPM INC.?

This model of Ramses III Temple was being created at the Milwaukee Public Museum in the 1960s—long before MPM Inc. became the private nonprofit manager in 1992. It took the artist, Ed Moll 8,000 hours over nearly a decade to meticulously craft to perfection. MPM Inc. now claims to “ own” - yet they won't produce a single record shows when and how ownership was transferred?

A slide is not a deed. Produce the authentic documentation, or stop claiming to own it!