Milwaukee, WI
Milwaukee's mural scene reflects the city's dense industrial heritage and vibrant immigrant community history, with the Third Ward's arts district providing institutional support for large-format commissions and Walker's Point's Latinx character anchoring a mural tradition rooted in Mexican muralism. Riverwest's bohemian residential neighborhood hosts community-scaled murals that reflect one of Milwaukee's most eclectic neighborhoods.
Featured Artists
All artists →Petra Kowalski
Kowalski comes from a Milwaukee Polish-American family and has built a career creating murals that honor the industrial heritage and immigrant culture of the south side communities her family has inhabited for five generations. Her Third Ward work draws on Polish folk art visual traditions combined with the imagery of Milwaukee's brewery and manufacturing industries, creating compositions that are distinctively local and universally resonant.
Rafael Garza
Garza is Walker's Point's most celebrated artist, creating murals in the tradition of the great Mexican muralists that address Milwaukee's Latino community with a visual sophistication rarely achieved outside the major Mexican-American cities. His S. Fifth Street work is considered by many to be the finest mural in Wisconsin—a massive composition tracing the history of Milwaukee's Mexican community from its earliest workers to its current cultural flowering.
Odalys Webb
Webb has been documenting Riverwest through murals for fifteen years, creating a visual archive of one of Milwaukee's most intentionally diverse neighborhoods. Her Locust Street work celebrates the community-building practices—the cooperative businesses, the community gardens, the neighborhood radio station—that give Riverwest its character as a place where people have made deliberate choices about how to live together.