Milwaukee Reaches Funding Goal for Expansion

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And so, the recent good news for the museum its Santiago Calatrava-designed addition, which was planned ten years ago and opened in 2001, has finally been paid for. The new museum started in 1995 as a $35 million undertaking, but ballooned to $125 million as Calatrava made alterations to the project. Now the museum has reached its final $25 million fundraising goal.

Gordon says it was all worth it to put up Milwaukee's "masterpiece." "When Calatrava came with changes not in the budget, instead of making the prudent choice of saying no, the building committee got excited and said, We'll find a way of financing it.'"

Gordon acknowledges that the museum has been "understandably criticized for allowing the project to grow in scale and cost. There were cost overruns. In raising the money we spoke to people and took them through the story of the construction project, showing them where there had been cost overruns and we admitted where mistakes may have been made. I think that honesty of approach brought people around."

It wasn't easy to raise the funds after the building was completed. "People on the list of donors had all given to us once before," Gordon notes. "Every person on the list, bar one, had given at least once, in some cases three times. When you go back to donors it's more difficult each time, but such is the success of this building for the city and for its purposes that people in the community felt it was necessary to do this."

Gordon points out that kudos go to Sheldon Lubar, a respected Milwaukee financier who was president of the museum in the late 1970s and stepped in to spearhead the fundraising. Lubar is now chairman of the museum's board of trustees.

A few years ago, when the news broke that Milwaukee hadn't entirely funded its completed building, rumors were afloat in the press that the museum had put up its collection as collateral for a loan, which the museum has vehemently denied.

As it turns out, the museum completed its fundraising just in time for a visit from President Bush, who spoke about Social Security reform in the museum yesterday. For a video of Bush's appearance in the museum, go to: http://www.jsonline.com/multimedia/multiplayer.asp?id=8951