Nikki Otten Joins Milwaukee Art Museum as Associate Curator

MILWAUKEE, WI -- Nikki Otten, has joined its curatorial team as the Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Milwaukee Art Museum, the museum has announced.

An expert on works on paper, Otten was most recently at the Weisman Art Museum, at the University of Minnesota, as the E. Gerald and Lisa O’Brien Curatorial Fellow. While there, Otten curated the exhibition Paper Mountains: Marsden Hartley’s Landscapes, which is scheduled to open in late 2020 or early 2021. Previously, Otten served as a part-time research assistant in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Milwaukee Art Museum for Degas to Picasso (2017) and Daring Technique: Goya and the Art of Etching (2018).

“Nikki’s particular expertise aligns nicely with areas of strength in our collection,” said Margaret Andera, interim chief curator and curator of contemporary art in a statement to Patch. “Her familiarity with the Museum, due to her previous experience here, has allowed her to quickly get involved in a number of projects.”

Otten has curated a number of exhibitions and rotations for museums and galleries including The Romantic Spirit: Dark Dreams at the Chrysler Museum of Art, in Norfolk, Virginia (2017); Sem, Gigi & Caricature at the T. R. Anderson Gallery, at the University of Minnesota (2015); and A Means of Escape: European Posters from 1889 to 1930 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2011).

A promised gift from James and Susee Wiechmann to the Milwaukee Art Museum of more than 500 Jules Chéret posters includes funding for the associate curator of prints and drawings position. One of Otten’s first major projects at the Museum will be organizing a traveling exhibition of the Wiechmann’s Chéret posters.
Otten has an MA in art history from the University of Minnesota, where she is currently completing her doctoral dissertation, “Alien Microbes: The Telescope, the Microscope, and Symbolist Artistic Vision in Nineteenth-Century France.” She also holds a BA in professional strategic communications from the same university.

Nikki Otten officially began her new role at the Museum on September 4, 2018.

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