The John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) is a nationally acclaimed visual and performing arts complex located in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. It is known worldwide for preserving and exhibiting artist-built environments—where artists transform their surroundings into exceptional, multifaceted works of art, and visitors experience art in a deeply personal way that speaks to them and also reflects our common humanity.
JMKAC’s mission is to generate a creative exchange between artists and the public. The Arts Center features rotating contemporary art exhibitions and hosts multidisciplinary artist residencies throughout the year. Onsite are eight gallery spaces, a performing arts theatre, and a family-friendly café serving fresh, seasonal fare. The museum gift shop features unique gifts and handmade artist creations. Classes and workshops are offered throughout the year for students of all ages. A hands-on art studio and award-winning, artist-designed washrooms round out the experience. During the summer months, JMKAC presents a free outdoor concert series and a popular arts festival. Admission and parking are always free. Winner of the 2023 Governor’s Tourism Award for Arts, Culture & Heritage.
Image: John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2023. Photo courtesy of John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
In her 2021 essay “A Family Reunion Near the End of the World,” botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer contemplates our kinship with nature and proposes a road map for deepening our care and respect for all living things.
“Being a relative,” she writes, “is more than shared blood from a common past. Real kinship arises when we realize that we have a common future, that our fates are linked.” She goes on to suggest, “Real kinship comes when you live it. It’s not a noun, but a verb, it’s not a thing, it’s what you do.”
The cultivation of kinship with the living world is the foundation for Sharing the Same Breath. The exhibition brings together nine artists who consider the world’s complex web of relations through artworks that emphasize human, nonhuman, and interspecies forms of kinship and connectivity. These relationships are explored through a wide range of mediums including sculpture, photography, drawing, video, film, and installation. Together the works form a kincentric viewpoint that challenges narratives of human exceptionalism and encourages us to regard our symbiotic relationship and shared fate with our more-than-human family with greater attention and care.
Artists in the exhibition include Juan William Chávez, David Freid, Lindsey French, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, Nina Katchadourian, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Marie Watt, William Wegman, and Dyani White Hawk.
Image: Sharing the Same Breath installation view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, 2023. Dyani White Hawk in collaboration with photographer Tom Jones, I Am Your Relative, 2020; pigment prints on aluminum composite; 70 1/2 x 38 1/2 in. each. Courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery.
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