The Milwaukee Art Museum is hosting a major traveling retrospective of Gertrude Abercrombie, the Chicago-based painter known as the "jazz witch" of Hyde Park. Titled "Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery," the exhibition features nearly eighty paintings sourced from major museums and private collections, marking the largest survey of her work to date. The show highlights her unique brand of Surrealism, characterized by dreamlike interiors, stark landscapes, and enigmatic self-portraits.
This retrospective represents a significant milestone in the posthumous critical reappraisal of Abercrombie’s career, which has seen a dramatic resurgence in interest since a 2018 New York gallery exhibition. By co-organizing this exhibition with the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Colby College Museum of Art, major institutions are cementing Abercrombie's place in the American art canon. The Milwaukee presentation is particularly notable as the only Midwest stop for the tour, returning the artist's work to the regional context where she lived and worked for decades.