The Art Preserve of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center is the world’s first museum to focus entirely on work from artist-built environments—spaces and places that have been significantly transformed by an artist. With over thirty-five art environments in one space, visitors can immerse themselves in entire worlds constructed by artists and glimpse thousands of pieces of art in visible, curated storage.
The Fred Smith Bar, located in the lobby area, offers cold and hot beverages.
Award-winning, artist designed washrooms enhance the overall experience.
Admission and parking are always free.
Winner of the 2023 Governor’s Tourism Award for Arts, Culture & Heritage.
Image: The Art Preserve of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI. Photo: Durston Saylor, courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
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At the Arts Center: May 30, 2026–December 6, 2026
This exhibition will bring together for the first time the work of two artists who have both dedicated their lives, through their multifaceted artistic processes, to healing.
After a life of rambling, Emery Blagdon (1907–1986) settled on his family’s homestead in Garfield Table, Nebraska. Many members of his family had been afflicted with cancer. Convinced of the healing potential of the unseen forces of the earth, Blagdon spent forty years constructing “The Healing Machine.” Using largely tin foil, masking tape, Christmas decorations, and wire, Blagdon sought to harness magnetism, electricity, and other energies to surround visitors with positive forces. JMKAC has owned “The Healing Machine” since 2004.
Guadalupe Maravilla migrated to the United States from El Salvador, unaccompanied, at age eight. At thirty-six, he was diagnosed with cancer, which he links to inherited trauma. During treatment, Maravilla connected with Indigenous healing practices, including sound baths—ceremonies that harness sonic vibrations from gongs, conch shells, and other instruments to restore calm and balance and release toxins in the body. He began making sculptures, paintings, performances, and large-scale installations that incorporate found objects related to his own migration story and various gongs and bowls, which he activates to conduct sound ceremonies. Blurring art, science, and medicine, he calls these activations “healing machines.”
At the Arts Center, central to the exhibition is Maravilla’s Mariposa Relámpago, a school bus that has been reimagined as a healing temple. Throughout the exhibition, the healing machines will be activated by Maravilla and various other healers, playing the sculptures to turn on and amplify the energy in the gallery—transforming the space into an immersive healing environment.
For the coinciding installation at the Art Preserve, Maravilla’s El Espíritu de Mariposa Relámpago Disease Thrower, a monumental bronze snake with a butterfly head, lightning bolt, and gong, serves as a central altar. Surrounded by Blagdon’s energy-focusing paintings and a selection of Maravilla’s retablos, this installation harnesses the energy held in the shed formerly occupied by Blagdon’s “The Healing Machine,” while it is on view at the Arts Center.
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