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A State of Grace and Beauty

Miller Art Museum Executive Director Bonnie Hartmann.

“As hard as it will be to leave, my heart and soul are telling me it’s time,” says Bonnie Hartmann, as she prepares to end her 26-year association with the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay, including the last 23 as its executive director.

A graduate of Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois with a dual major in psychology and art, Bonnie worked as a guidance counselor in Chicago before spending four years in a graduate program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, studying painting and drawing.

She discovered Door County in 1982 when she entered a painting in a juried exhibit at the Miller and won a prize (she still has the painting!)

“It was a rainy weekend,” she recalls, “and we spent time driving around and falling in love with the place.”

She and her husband, Bob, moved to an acreage near Sturgeon Bay in 1983, and Bonnie worked at a variety of jobs – running a little summer bakery in Baileys Harbor, working and exhibiting at Edgewood Orchard Galleries, coordinating the county’s alcohol and drug prevention program, coordinating special arts programs in the Gibraltar School District for Friends of Gibraltar, and serving as executive director of the Peninsula Art School (all while working as a studio painter) before joining the Miller staff in 1988. She served as a member of the board and the acquisitions committee for three years before being named executive director in 1991.

“It was nice,” she says, “to have that introductory period. It’s been the career of a lifetime for me, pulling all my education and skills into one perfect job. It feels like I’ve been living in a state of grace and beauty all these years.

“There are so many reasons for this. I’m surrounded by the most generous group of volunteers one could ever imagine. They have given me support and share their time and talents in a way that makes this place hum.”

Bonnie has also been an active volunteer in the community, teaching, doing presentations and serving on boards and committees of more than a dozen organizations.

“Being able to look at art every day is a privilege I could never overstate,” she says. “And the service we provide to the community – having such a beautiful place for them to come and seeing the smiles on people’s faces as they leave – makes me feel good.”

One of Bonnie’s great joys was getting to know Gerhard Miller, for whom the museum is named, and his wife, Ruth.

“It was a wonderful privilege to have been a part of their lives and to be able to continue Gerhard’s legacy,” she says.

The museum that was born out of Miller’s generosity has grown tremendously during Bonnie’s years there. In 1995, a $250,000 expansion more than doubled the first-floor exhibit space with a wing added to the rear, and Gerhard was surprised when the top floor of a three-level addition was dedicated to his own artwork.

“He was so generous,” Bonnie says. “When he had his own gallery at his home, he always gave us one or two pieces a year before he made his work available for sale to the public. We have more than 100 of his paintings now and it’s such a pleasure to be able to display them to visitors. Even those who don’t know his story are so impressed with his work.”

The many special exhibits the Miller has had during the years are also a source of pride for Bonnie.

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin talking about them,” she says. “We’ve had so many wonderful, exciting ones. We’ve done a salon of high school art every year since 1975 and juried exhibits annually since 1976. Gerhard felt very strongly that one of the missions of the museum was to support working artists in the area and young artists.

“Since 1987, students in grades K-5 in Sturgeon Bay schools have come at least three times a year for docent-led tours. We like to think we’re helping to raise another generation of art appreciators and art makers. For the past 18 years, we have mounted special interactive exhibits for children, including the opportunity to meet well-known illustrators of children’s books, a Carnival of Art, a Castle of Art and, this year, a Passion for Pets that featured a 4’ x 8’ doghouse in which children could play with a collection of stuffed animals.”

The children’s exhibits, loved by the community, run for 13 weeks, twice as long as other exhibits so children can return over and over. In 2002, the museum received a service award from the Wisconsin Art Education Association for outstanding art education outside the schools. The museum does many cooperative activities with the Sturgeon Bay Library, which it adjoins. Bonnie notes that the museum is especially proud of the Performing Arts Series that included concerts, piano recitals and readings by professionals.

Through the years, the museum has staged retrospective exhibits with some of the area’s master artists, including Chick Peterson, Emmett Johns, Dan Anderson, Malin Eckman, Flora Langlois and Suzanne Rose. In 2013, a special show featured Door County Masters, artists who had been working for 50 years or more.

Elizabeth Meissner-Gigstead will officially take over at the Miller Art Museum on Jan. 1, 2015.

“We are so proud of our permanent collection,” Bonnie says. “It began in 1984 with just four pieces – two each contributed by Gerhard and Dan Anderson. When I came in 1988, there were 230 pieces. Now we have more than 850. It’s a stunning collection of the best of the best.

“Visitors from all over the world come in and are amazed to find such a magnificent space in such a small town. The community is to be commended for stepping up and providing these enriching opportunities.”

How do you say goodbye to a place you love? Bonnie says that she is retiring to another full-time job.

“Before coming to the Miller Museum, I had been a painter and exhibitor with awards and gallery representation. In order to be the kind of museum director I wanted to be, I had to quit my own personal art. Now I’m excited to return to it as a second career. My favorite medium is pastel, but I hope to get back to oil, too.”

Along with painting, she is looking forward to more time to garden, hike, read, see movies and write haiku poetry.

Her last official day at the Miller will be Dec. 1, although during a transition period she will work with her successor, Elizabeth Meissner-Gigstead, who is currently director of the Hardy Gallery in Ephraim.

Bonnie is proud to leave the Miller with a very healthy endowment fund and knows that the place she has loved for so long will do well in Elizabeth’s capable hands.

“My hope for the museum,” Bonnie says, “is that it will continue to delight and inspire.”