Marcus Center

Marcus Center for the Performing Arts

The Marcus Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. It serves as the home of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Florentine Opera, Milwaukee Ballet, First Stage Children's Theater and other local arts organizations. It is located at the corner of Water Street and State Street in downtown Milwaukee, and is owned by Milwaukee County.

The Marcus Center was designed in the Brutalist style by noted Chicago architect Harry Weese.[1] Construction began on June 27, 1966, and it opened on July 26, 1969 as the Performing Arts Center. After a $25 million donation from the Marcus Corporation in honor of its founder Ben Marcus and his wife Ceil, Milwaukee County decided to change the venue's name in 1994.

In July 2015, at the urging of Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele, the Wisconsin Legislature paved the way for the Marcus Center to be transferred to the state-chartered Wisconsin Center District, removing it from ownership and oversight by Milwaukee County. Urban Milwaukee's investigative journalist Bruce Murphy explored the shotgun plan on July 28, 2015 in "Is Abele Dumping the Marcus Center?": "One day Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele got up and decided he’d like to change the governance of the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. Lo and behold, Republican legislators agreed with him, or more likely didn’t care one way or the other about it, and so an idea never broached in public was suddenly enacted into a bill mainly concerned with creating a new NBA arena. Welcome to the new world of government by whim."

The formal hand-off had not yet occurred by November 2015. Murphy wrote about how and why the plan was hatched: "Abele doesn’t deny the Marcus Center switch was his idea and points to the competition that went on between some downtown venues, suggesting this consolidation will force them to work together...And is it really likely the Marcus Center will save on administrative costs by becoming part of a many-headed, downtown Super District? As Abele notes, the Marcus Center has 'historically done a pretty good job' of managing its costs.

As Abele concedes, the suspicion among many is that his goal is to eliminate the $1 million subsidy the county provides to the Marcus Center, not to mention the estimated $37 million in deferred maintenance costs the center faces, according to a 2013 Public Policy Forum study." Abele should be well aware of the inner workings of the Marcus Center since he chaired its board for several years before he was elected Milwaukee County executive.

Performance and other facilities

The center contains four major theater venues:

In addition, the center's grounds feature several public artworks including Seymour Lipton's Laureate and Allen Ditson's Trigon.

See also

References

  1. ↑ JS Online: Oh, the Humanities!

External links

Coordinates: 43°2′34″N 87°54′41″W / 43.04278°N 87.91139°W / 43.04278; -87.91139

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