The Grohmann Museum, at Milwaukee School of Engineering, is home to the world's most comprehensive art collection dedicated to the evolution of human work. The museum opened on October 27, 2007 and is located at 1000 N. Broadway, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
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The museum has three floors of galleries where a core collection is displayed as well as themed exhibitions. The museum also has a rooftop sculpture garden, a vending cafe and museum store.
The museum is named in honor of Dr Eckhart Grohmann, an MSOE Regent, Milwaukee businessman and avid art collector, who donated the Man at Work collection (see below) to MSOE in 2001 and subsequently the funds to purchase, renovate and operate the museum that bears his name.
German artist Hans Dieter Tylle created stained glass, a mosaic atrium floor and a painted ceiling mural for the museum.
With nearly 700 European and American paintings and sculptures that depict various forms of work, the Eckhart G. Grohmann Collection Man at Work is the world's most comprehensive collection of its kind. Captured on canvas and cast in bronze, the images reflect a variety of artistic styles and subjects that document the evolution of organized work, from manpower and horsepower to water, steam and electric power. The artworks span over 400 years of history (17-20th centuries).
The earlier paintings depict men and women working on the farm or at home. Later images show trades people engaged in their work, such as blacksmith, chemist, cobbler, cork maker, glass blower, or taxidermist. The most recent works are images of machines and men embodying the paradoxes of industrialism of the mid-18th century to post-World War II. These works, often commissioned by the factory's owner, are exterior views of steel mills and foundries surrounded by hefty trains and tracks or dark factory interiors where glowing molten metal is juxtaposed with factory workers and managers.
Most of the paintings are by German and Dutch artists, although others include American, Austrian, Belgian, Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, English, Hungarian, Flemish, French and Spanish.
Artists include Flemish painter Marten van Valckenborch (1535–1612), Dutch artists Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Jan Josefsz van Goyen (1596–1656), German painters Ludwig Knaus (1829–1910), Max Liebermann (1847–1935), Erich Mercker (1891–1973), American painters J.G. Brown (1831–1913), F.A. Bridgman, and French painter Julien Dupré (1851–1910).
The inaugural special exhibition Physicians, Quacks, and Alchemists, showed 17th century paintings and ran from October 27, 2007 to April 14, 2008.