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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In the late 1960s, a widow named Ella Riley had moved onto the land near Davis, living in a one-room construction he built for her. After her death, in 1973, Davis stacked all of her possessions into a pseudo-mausoleum memorial, which he planted with flowers and tended to for the rest of his life. This act of remembrance stirred a creativity in the artist, leading him to a decades-long artistic practice.
Davis made costumes comprising elaborately wrapped and twisted bracelets and belts. Many of his sculptural pieces were used for a game of his own invention that involved a combination of tug-of-war and jousting. Over time, his homestead became an amalgamation of scattered constructions, ad-hoc modes of transportation, old farm equipment, and forms hung from trees. He lived there until his death in 1999.
In 2022, the Arts Center acquired four works by Davis as part of a larger gift from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. They are believed to be the only surviving pieces from his now-destroyed site and will be on view at the Art Preserve with a selection of documentary photographs.
Image: Asberry Davis, group of untitled work, c. 1998. Souls Grown Deep Foundation Collection (20491), Southern Folklife Collection at Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Photo: William Arnett.
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As part of the Considering Kin theme, on the first floor of the Art Preserve, a grouping of Fremderman’s sculptures will be installed alongside works of artists from the John Michael Kohler Art Center’s collection by grotto-inspired makers Jacob Baker and Madeline Buol.
Grotto building has roots in Europe, particularly in German Catholic traditions. Grottoes are composed of statues and structures in homage to faith and contemplation. Their surfaces are commonly adorned and formed with materials such as colored glass, gems, pottery, porcelain, minerals, and objects gathered by the maker(s).
Throughout the twentieth century, there was a rich production of grottoes in the upper Midwest, inciting pilgrimages and tourist visits. Most significantly, Father Wernius’s Dickeyville Grotto has inspired numerous people to construct their own grottoes and shrines.
The sculptures in the exhibition are the culmination of a dedicated and deliberate gathering practice, reflecting the contributions of source places and people. Regardless of scale, the conglomerations are fossils of objects’ pasts and memorials of artists’ care.
Internally lit, her sculptures cast colorful refractions, like a stained-glass window in a church. Recontextualization and illumination of found objects create new connections and moments of observing, inviting meanings to emerge between previously disparate components. Now divorced from their original uses or sites, the fragments are presented as new formations for visitors to contemplate, whether it be in prayer, reflection, or levity.
Bea Fremderman: Weeds Compared to Flowers, a solo exhibition, will be on view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center October 2023 through early March 2024.
Image: Bea Fremderman and Grottoes installation view at the Art Preserve, 2023. Bea Fremderman, untitled, 2023; metal, glass, and found objects. Courtesy of the artist.
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Inside the Roger Brown Study Collection
On View at the Art Preserve
Opening Saturday, October 11, at the Art Preserve, a new installation brings a selection from artist Roger Brown’s eclectic Chicago home collection into public view for the first time since its acquisition. Containing over 2,000 works by fellow Chicago Imagists and non-mainstream artists, Brown’s collection reflects his playful sensibility, Southern heritage, and deep admiration for his mentor, artist Ray Yoshida.
Visitors will encounter a vibrant mix of folk and Indigenous art, thrift store finds, souvenirs, fine art, costumes, and pop culture objects—all echoing Brown’s unique eye for composition, narrative, and the silhouetted form. This introductory installation—situated near Yoshida’s own home environment collection at the Art Preserve—highlights the visual and conceptual connections between the two artists.
Among the featured objects is Brown’s rear stairwell shelf, a striking vignette modeled after Yoshida’s signature shelves, packed with quirky toys, thrifted paintings, and references to artist Jesse Howard. Brown’s love of Southern pottery, mid-century cars, and figures also shines through, offering a rich glimpse into his singular artistic world.
Wayside Days is a free two-day community event at the Art Preserve, featuring music, dance, performance, hands-on artmaking, and community gathering. A highlight of the event is the Rock Procession on Saturday, Sept. 19, where 79 rocks will journey approximately three miles through Sheboygan. This procession is part of an installation called Rock Fade (≈ 45 Billion Years) by artists Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis, moving from the John Michael Kohler Arts Center to its permanent home at the Art Preserve.
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