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Racine, WI     April 23, 2013  
Racine Art Museum Celebrates
a Decade in Downtown Racine

 

RAM

Photography: Zaitz Photography

This year marks the Racine Art Museum's 10th Anniversary in Downtown Racine. Since 2003, the museum has worked steadily to create a cultural center in the heart of the Racine Community, while serving the national fine arts field through its exhibitions and permanent collection of contemporary crafts. With the national scope of its programs and reach, RAM has also helped create a positive image for the greater Racine community through traveling exhibitions, publications, and media coverage. The museum is a significant anchor to downtown Racine as  

well as a nationally recognized cultural destination in the heart of the community.

 

Over the last decade, RAM has served over 500,000 guests. At present, 67% of its visitors come from outside Racine County and 35% from outside Wisconsin. In 2012, the museum welcomed guests from 42 different states and 23 countries. These out-of-town visitors help sustain the local economy with an annual positive impact of $5 to 6 million.

 

Through gifts from collectors living in 30 different states, RAM's collection of artworks has tripled in size since the museum's opening in 2003. More than 8,000 objects from internationally recognized artists make RAM's contemporary crafts collection the largest in the nation.

 

Over the past 10 years, the museum has organized 150 exhibitions, some of which have traveled to major cities in the US, including Houston, Seattle, Newark, and New York City, as well as to Canada and as far away as Israel. RAM regularly receives national and international attention in a variety of art and news publications, including Art in America, American Craft Magazine, and The New York Times.

 

"Every time this museum is mentioned in the outside world, it is like a miniature billboard, advertising this community as a wonderful place to live in and visit. The museum's media presence compliments the people who live here for making it possible for RAM to exist," explains RAM Executive Director and Curator of Collections Bruce W. Pepich. In 2010, Pepich was awarded two prestigious professional excellence awards for his accomplishments at the Racine Art Museum from the Wisconsin Federation of Museums and the Wisconsin Foundation for the Arts. In 2012, the American Craft Council named him as Honorary Fellow, which is considered one of the highest honors in the field.

 

RAM's Wustum Museum of Fine Arts proudly offers one of the largest studio arts programs of any museum in Wisconsin, including over 40 different studio art classes each quarter for children and adults. Since 2003, over 110,000 people have studied art at Wustum. RAM has reached a diverse cross section of the community by offering free hands-on art experiences to over 57,000 visitors.

 

Launched in 2011, RAM on the Road brings the joy of creating art directly to kids and adults in schools and other community venues throughout the area. In addition, RAM was one of five museums initially chosen by Milwaukee's Helen Bader Foundation to create SPARK!which provides cultural programming for people with memory loss and their caregivers. 

 

Throughout 2013, visitors are invited to discover stunning exhibitions and exciting events at both campuses that shine a light on RAM's achievements over the past decade and predict an even brighter future. At RAM, many of the exhibitions will explore the concepts about the passage of time and heirlooms, and will feature artists with whom the museum has had a long-term relationship. Guests will also be invited to vote on their favorite pieces in the permanent collection. The top 10 artworks will then be highlighted in a fall 2013 exhibition curated, in part, by the community. RAM's Wustum campus will feature a photography exhibition of the many individuals involved in creating the Racine Art Museum a decade ago. Wustum will also feature an inaugural exhibition of the first four recipients of the RAM Artist Fellowship.

 

Local residents and people outside the region alike view RAM as a supportive force and catalyst for this vibrant community and for contemporary crafts.

 

Further details of the Racine Art Museum's year-long anniversary celebration can be found online at www.ramart.org. RAM is open Tuesday-Saturday 
10:00 am - 5:00 pm, Sunday Noon - 5:00 pm, and Closed Mondays, Federal Holidays and Easter.
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Together, the two campuses of the Racine Art Museum, RAM in downtown Racine at 441 Main Street and the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts at 2519 Northwestern Avenue, seek to elevate the stature of contemporary crafts to that of fine art by exhibiting significant works in craft media with painting, sculpture and photography, while providing outstanding educational art programming.

Docent led contemporary craft and architectural tours of the museums are available. Both campuses of the Racine Art Museum, are open to the public Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 am - 5:00 pm, and are closed Mondays, Federal holidays and Easter. RAM is open Sunday Noon - 5:00 pm, while Wustum is closed Sundays. An admission fee of $5 for adults, with reduced fees for students and seniors, applies at RAM. Admission to Wustum is free. Members are always admitted without charge to either campus.

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For more information or to request images, please contact:

Laura Gillespie
RAM Marketing Assistant
262.619.3543