Architecture tourists may think of Milwaukee as a destination thanks to the Quadracci Pavilion, the 2001 expansion to the Milwaukee Art Museum by Santiago Calatrava featuring a dynamic, wing-like sunscreen. But the Wisconsin city has a longer tradition of supporting contemporary architecture, evidenced by the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. Designed by Harry Weese and completed in 1969, the building originally known as the Milwaukee Center for the Performing Arts exemplifies the Chicago architect’s brand of Brutalism, which had propelled him to fame with his completion of the Washington, DC, metro rail system just several years earlier. Since April, Focus Lighting has made the Marcus Center famous again with a new, colorful nighttime personality.
When the Marcus Center contacted Paul Gregory, head of the New York–based lighting design firm, in 2005 about reinvigorating the structure with light, it wanted not so much to compete with Calatrava’s creation but rather to make its patrons’ encounter with the arts more substantial. “They had displayed paintings from the museum in the interior to make the pre-show experience a little better,” Gregory explains, “and illuminating the exterior also seeks to make it better.”
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