The Milwaukee Art Museum, the largest visual art institution in Wisconsin and one of the oldest art museums in the nation, reopened its Collection Galleries to the public November 24. The reopening is the culmination of a 6-year, $34 million project to transform the visitor experience through dramatically enhanced exhibition and public spaces and bright, flowing galleries.

“The new Milwaukee Art Museum is poised to set the standard for a twenty-first-century museum at the heart of a great city,” said Museum Director Daniel Keegan. “What began as a desire to preserve the space and Collection grew into a significant expansion that rejuvenates and sets the future course for the entire institution.”

The project is part of a historic public-private partnership with Milwaukee County, which owns the buildings and provided $10 million toward the renovation, with the remaining $24 million raised through the Museum’s Plan for the Future campaign. It’s the first major reimagining of the Museum’s extensive Collection areas, including the Museum’s 1957 Eero Saarinen-designed War Memorial Center and 1975 David Kahler-designed addition.

While addressing critical infrastructure upgrades, the renovation creates an intuitive and welcoming visitor experience to showcase the Museum’s world-class Collection. The Milwaukee Art Museum’s renovated Collection Galleries and new east entrance now span 150,000 square feet. Within this space, the Museum is installing 2,500 works of art—almost 1,000 more than have been on view at one time in the past—from its rich Collection of 30,000 works.

“Pieces that haven’t been on view for decades are back again, alongside new acquisitions and old favorites,” said Keegan. “Add to that new public gathering spaces with breathtaking views. We simply can’t wait to share the new Museum with our community and visitors. This space is now worthy of the Collection their support has helped us build over our 125-year history.”

The expansion also allows for more comprehensive displays from the Museum collections—including the full story of American art from colonial times to the present day—and for experimental and rotating gallery spaces. The Museum will debut its first spaces devoted exclusively to 20th- and 21st-century design. In addition, the Bradley Family Gallery, a new changing exhibition space, doubles the Museum’s capacity for special exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition in this space is Sam Francis: Master Printmaker, which runs through March 20, 2016.

Sam Francis: Master Printmaker honors the 2009 gift of more than five hundred prints from the Sam Francis Foundation that made the Milwaukee Art Museum the largest repository of the artist’s works on paper.

American artist Sam Francis (1923–1994) is best known for his Abstract Expressionist large-scale paintings, innovative prints, and use of vibrant color. The exhibition’s fifty lithographs, etchings, aquatints, and screenprints provide a cross section of the most significant print series of Francis’s career.

Francis was one of the first post-World War II American painters to develop a reputation in the international art world. His work reflects his wide-ranging travels–from San Francisco to Japan to France–and artistic influences, including Impressionism and color field painting.

The vibrant colors associated with his paintings are equally in evidence in his prints, with stunning depths of inks he formulated himself. Printmaking was essential to Francis’s process throughout his career, as an opportunity to explore ideas relating to clarity and the possibilities of color. Francis was also instrumental in encouraging fellow artists to explore printmaking, and he invited artists to produce prints and artists’ books at his two presses, the Litho Shop, founded in 1970, and Lapis Press, which began in 1984.

As part of the opening the Museum will unveil the 10,000-square-foot Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts. Unparalleled in size and scope for a regional museum, this is the first time the Museum has dedicated significant permanent collection and gallery space to photography, video and light based media.

“The Milwaukee Art Museum was one of the first major museums to start collecting photography in the 1950s,” said Keegan. “The Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts continues the Museum’s tradition of leadership and establishes it as a national destination for this type of artwork.”