One mid-September night in 2013, Paul Baker Prindle hovered close to a series of his photographs, “Memento Mori,” which had been chosen for the Wisconsin Triennial out of more than 500 applicants.
The Triennial, a wide-ranging exhibition of new work held every three years at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA), is a big deal for Wisconsin artists, particularly those who are earlier in their careers or from outside major metros.
But “I didn’t get to meet any of the other artists,” Baker Prindle recalled. “You get stuck by your work. All your friends and supporters come out, and you try to move, and you just can’t … I didn’t even eat that night.”
Baker Prindle has used that experience, among others, to inform the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial, which he now oversees as MMoCA's director.
Guzzo Pinc's 2025 acrylic on jute painting "Isthmus" will be featured in the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial.
GUZZO PINC
The final selection of 24 artists who will show about 50 works in the Triennial was announced in mid-January. The show opens May 2 and will run through the summer at 227 State St. The museum, which is free to visit, hopes the exhibition will draw crowds from the farmer’s market, Taste of Madison and more.
Baker Prindle was named head of the museum last spring. He started work on the 2025 Triennial almost immediately.
“My charge was twofold,” he said. “One, let’s return to the Triennial model that everybody knows and loves, which is an open call. Everyone who wants to apply can apply, and we will look at least once at every single application.
“The other charge was that I wanted the Triennial to be work that speaks to right now. That’s a larger goal of mine, to grow the sense that the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is a contemporary art museum.”
Paul Baker Prindle is the director of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
RUTHIE HAUGE
Let artists do their thing
The Triennial began as a biennial in 1978 and switched to its every-three-years schedule in 1984.
When the latest submission window opened in fall 2024, the museum received fewer than 300 applications, markedly down from a reported 600 in 2016. In 2019, 500 artists applied for 34 spots.
In 2022, Fatima Laster curated an invitation-only Triennial exhibition of 23 Black women artists, called “Ain’t I A Woman?” That exhibition ended with artists pulling their work off the walls and calling for then-director Christina Brungardt to resign. This was spurred by the vandalization of an artist’s work and frustration over a lack of support by museum staff.
The 2025 Triennial jury included Mel Becker Solomon, a former MMoCA staffer now with the Art Institute of Chicago, MMoCA assistant curator Eleanor Pschirrer-West and Bob Sylvester, the museum’s director of education and programs.
Baker Prindle said his philosophy was to make the resources and museum platform available and “let artists do their thing.” The team put a call out on social media and sent information to dealers, galleries and academic departments (interestingly, there are no graduate student artists in this year’s Triennial, a change from pre-2022 Triennials).
This ambrotype (a type of photograph made on glass) by J. Shimon and J. Lindemann is called "Prom Queen Picking Corn," from 2012. It is among works MMoCA owns that will be featured in "45 Years of Triennials" this summer.
J. Shimon and J. Lindemann
“We send out the invitations,” Baker Prindle said. “And then, to a large degree, the artists decide who’s going to participate.”
An unfortunately timed case of COVID for Baker Prindle meant that Pschirrer-West did the “lion’s share” of 30 gallery visits. Of the artists exhibiting in the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial, seven have been included in a previous Triennial. (Find a full list at mmoca.org/events/2025triennial.)
The show “means different things for different people, depending where they are in their career,” Pschirrer-West said. “For some, maybe this is the first time that people get to know their work, or it’s an opportunity to show what makes their work special.”
This piece is called "Dreamer," by José Lerma. In 1999, Lerma was among the artists featured in the Wisconsin Triennial. He will have his own solo show this summer in MMoCA's State Street Gallery.
José Lerma
“I was happily surprised by how much it means to people,” Baker Prindle added. “The art market has changed massively … but it is very difficult to make your career outside of LA or New York. So these things really do matter, functionally and practically.”
The museum does not ask Triennial applicants about their gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality or religion, or whether they identify as disabled. But Baker Prindle acknowledged there are, to his knowledge, no Black women artists in this year’s Triennial.
“My feeling about it was that this was a message, not necessarily directly to us or with intention, but there was a message to be taken,” he said, “which is, ‘We need a break. We don’t want to be part of this new cycle. … We don’t want to deal with the drama of it. We just want to do our thing.’”
Sonya Y.S. Clark's "Unum" from 1998, made with cloth and thread, is in the collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. It is among works to be featured in "45 Years of Triennials" this summer.
Sonya Y.S. Clark
‘Make something big’
The final group of 24 artists — curators chose a smaller number in order to show more pieces per artist — is fairly diverse. Several artists have Indigenous roots, like University of Wisconsin-Madison art professor Tom Jones, who makes photos of Ho-Chunk America, and Tom Antell, an Ojibwe painter from Hayward.
Antell lives the farthest north of the artists appearing in the show. Baker Prindle told Antell to “make something big” and “we’ll figure out how to get it down here.”
Angelica Contreras, who works in mixed media, and Yeonhee Cheong, who will show needlework, are both former Forward Art Prize winners based in Madison. Theresa Abel owns Abel Contemporary Gallery in Stoughton, which shows work by painter Kelli Hoppmann. Both have work in the Triennial.
Milwaukee-based sculptor Nomka Enkhee made "Horseboy," shown here. Her work will be featured in the 2025 Wisconsin Triennial.
NOMKA ENKHEE
Milwaukee artist Shane Hudnall will show one large painting. John Riepenhoff, director of Sculpture Milwaukee, had work chosen. And UW-Madison is well-represented — in addition to Jones, Leslie Smith III, John Hitchcock and Michael Velliquette will have work in the show.
Madison artist Katie Hudnall’s kinetic sculpture from 2009 will be the only piece in the show that’s not new.
“It’s a kinetic sculpture that is never in balance,” Baker Prindle said. “She made the work when her father was dealing with a serious illness and her mother was in the caretaker role. She realized, watching this play out, it wasn’t just ‘caretaker’ and ‘sick,’ there’s this back and forth.”
The Triennial team noticed a few trends in applications. MMoCA received only one application from Oshkosh and none from Green Bay or La Crosse, where university art departments are “being gutted,” Baker Prindle said. He doesn’t know if those things are connected, but it’s something he wonders about.
This acrylic painting from 2003 by José Lerma is called "Girl." Lerma will have a solo show this summer in MMoCA's State Street Gallery.
And there is quite a bit of painting in this year’s show. Curators have theories about why.
“Maybe we have more painting because of the pandemic and people having that ability to make work at home,” said Pschirrer-West. “What did this intense period of isolation or forced self-reflection cause in these artists, and what themes do we see from that?”
“It really is a snapshot,” Baker Prindle agreed. “If we get a bunch of painters, that tells us there’s a robust painting practice happening in Wisconsin right now.”
Triennial pieces will be installed in the second floor Main Gallery, the multimedia Imprint Gallery (which will feature Sarah FitzSimons) and the museum lobby. In the State Street Gallery — with windows facing State Street — MMoCA is planning a simultaneous show with José Lerma, an internationally known artist who showed work in the 1999 Triennial and earned an MFA from UW-Madison in 2002.
A third show in the Henry Street Gallery will be called “45 Years of Triennials: Acquisitions 1978-2022.” These will complement the Triennial itself, which Baker Prindle plans to kick off the night before with a barbecue for the artists at his house so everyone can meet each other.
“We’ll have some good Moroccan food and some booze in the backyard, and just have a good time,” he said. “What makes Wisconsin so great is its scale. And if we’ve learned anything from the Triennial, it’s that our relationships keep us going.”
Lindsay Christians is an editor for the Cap Times. Lindsay oversees the newsroom’s coverage of food, arts and culture in the Madison region. Email story ideas and tips to Lindsay at lchristians@captimes.com.
Please consider supporting Lindsay’s work by becoming a Cap Times member or sponsor. Sustaining local journalism in Madison depends on readers like you.
2025 Wisconsin Triennial
May 2-Sept. 14; opening reception Friday, May 2, 5-8 p.m.
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 227 State St.
FREE
mmoca.org/events/2025triennial
Food and culture editor