Lubar Family Donates $10 Million to Milwaukee Art Museum

$10 Million Gift Establishes Center for Milwaukee Art Museum’s Vast Paper Collection

The donation will establish the Lubar Family Center for Drawings and Prints, providing permanent funding for a dedicated curator, a paper conservator, a fellowship, and an exhibition program.

The gift arrives at a critical moment for the museum’s collection, which holds more than 35,000 works. Over half of these—17,500—are drawings and prints, or “works on paper,” spanning more than five centuries. Yet these pieces are notoriously fragile. Their sensitivity to light limits exhibition time, often leaving them in storage and unseen by the public. The Lubar Center directly confronts this challenge, creating a permanent space for preservation, study, and display.

A Family’s Lifelong Commitment to Milwaukee

The Lubar family’s connection to the museum is not new. Sheldon Lubar founded the private investment firm Lubar & Co. in the late 1960s, and the family has become one of the Milwaukee region’s most philanthropically involved, including with the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Several family members contributed to the latest gift, including Sheldon and Marianne Lubar, Joan Lubar and John Crouch, David and Madeleine Lubar, and Susan Lubar. It’s where you see their ideas take shape before anything else.

Otten Leads New Center's Mission

The new center’s structure is designed to ensure the paper collection’s vitality for generations. Leading these efforts will be Nikki Otten, who joined the museum in 2018 and has been named the Lubar Family Curator of Drawings and Prints. Otten emphasized the curatorial opportunity this gift creates. “Each exhibition offers an opportunity to share different selections and explore new connections across the collection,” she said.

The specialized role of a paper conservator is crucial. Unlike paintings or sculptures, works on paper require meticulous handling and strictly controlled environmental conditions to prevent deterioration. This dedicated funding ensures the collection doesn’t just survive, but thrives, allowing for new scholarly research and public engagement. The fellowship, meanwhile, will cultivate the next generation of experts in the field.

Porto portugal exhibition curator robert lubar messeri presents joan miros works of art to the

Marianne Lubar, Milwaukee Art Museum Life Trustee, said the Lubar family’s donation is part of a larger wave of support for the museum.

As David Lubar noted, prints are democratic. By investing in the preservation and presentation of the museum’s drawings and prints collection, the Lubar family is ensuring that these works remain accessible to the people of Milwaukee.

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