feature image: Roger Brown in his Chicago home. John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection, gift of Kohler Foundation Inc.
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Sheboygan, WI — September 30 — This October, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) will open the Roger Brown Study Collection at the Art Preserve—an introductory installation of approximately 200 works drawn from the Chicago home of artist Roger Brown (1941–1997). The collection, acquired from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago by Kohler Foundation, Inc., includes more than 2,000 artworks and objects in total. Together, they offer a window into Brown’s creative world and the vibrant community that surrounded him.
A leading figure among the Chicago Imagists, Brown was a dedicated student of artist Ray Yoshida, whose influence is deeply felt throughout the collection. Like his mentor, Brown had a deep appreciation for folk and Indigenous art, popular culture, and found materials. His collection includes works by fellow Imagists and non-mainstream artists, as well as costumes, thrift-store paintings, souvenirs, and fine art. While echoing many of Yoshida’s aesthetic sensibilities, Brown also brought his own distinct voice—rooted in his southern heritage, wry humor, and love of the silhouetted form.
Previously maintained as a semi-private house museum in Chicago, the collection’s relocation to the Art Preserve marks a significant expansion of JMKAC’s commitment to preserving artists’ living and working environments. The collection, on view in October, is located near Yoshida’s home environment collection area, emphasizing the aesthetic and philosophical connections between the two artists. Highlighted is Brown’s rear stairwell shelf—a personal vignette modeled after Yoshida’s own display systems—which showcases their shared interests in mid-century toys, the artist Jesse Howard, and vernacular objects, while also revealing Brown’s unique attraction to subjects like cars, southern pottery, and figurative forms.
The Roger Brown Study Collection opens to the public on October 11, 2025, at the Art Preserve in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Foundation Inc. Photo: William H. Bengtson.
About Roger Brown
James Roger Brown (1941–1997) was born and raised in Hamilton and Opelika, Alabama. From an early age, he showed an interest in art and creative expression and appreciated the southern vernacular traditions around him. Raised in the fundamentalist Church of Christ, Brown first briefly attended David Lipscomb College in Nashville before moving to Chicago in 1962. He studied at the American Academy of Art and then earned two degrees at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Under the tutelage of Ray Yoshida, Brown amassed a personal collection of art and objects that filled his northside Chicago home.
Brown became associated with a group of other Chicago artists active in the city beginning in the mid-1960s, now known as the Imagists. These artists took to the streets of Chicago, finding influence in the city’s flea markets, hand-painted street signs, and ethnographic museums. These touchpoints are reflected in their own artwork through bright, geometric shapes and an irreverent and humorous approach to pop culture, the human body, and word play. Brown died from complications from AIDS in 1997, leaving behind three homes and attendant collections. The Chicago collection had previously been established as the Roger Brown Study Collection, a resource of SAIC.
Brown exhibited extensively throughout his lifetime and was represented by Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago and New York from 1970 to 1997. His art is included in many important museum collections such as those of The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; and Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna.
About the John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Founded in 1967, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) is a nonprofit creative hub that supports the work of contemporary artists through original exhibitions, commissions, residencies, publications, and community programming across visual and performing arts. The only institution in the world that collects artist-built and artist home-based environments, JMKAC is a leading center for the research, preservation, and presentation of artists with wide-ranging practices and backgrounds from academically trained to self-taught and folk traditions, championing long-term relationships with artists and elevating work that has often been overlooked or under-recognized. JMKAC is a vital cultural resource that responds to the needs of its local and regional communities, preserving artistic heritage by uplifting contemporary voices and empowering future generations.
About the Art Preserve
The Art Preserve opened in 2021 and is the world’s only collection space dedicated to art environments. Located a short drive from the Arts Center on 38 acres of land, the 56,000-square-foot, three-story building gives visitors unprecedented access and insight into the preservation, conservation, and interpretation of artist-built and artist home-based environments through tableaux and curated, visible storage. JMKAC’s permanent collection of more than 38,000 works includes complete and partial environments created by more than 30 artists, housed at the Art Preserve. Highlights of JMKAC’s collection include the largest institutional collections of Dr. Charles Smith and Eugene Von Bruenchenhein; the expansive home collections of Chicago Imagists Ray Yoshida, Roger Brown, and Barbara Rossi; Emery Blagdon’s “Healing Machine” art environment, housed in a reconstruction of its original shed; and a diverse collection of 20th- and 21st-century artworks and artifacts from China to Laos, Thailand, and the U.S. that reflect the diasporic experiences of HMong, Miao, and other cultural groups represented in JMKAC’s local community. In addition to those at the Art Preserve, JMKAC is the site steward to several art environments, including Mary Nohl’s lakefront home in Fox Point, Wisconsin, in which the artist transformed every aspect of the property into a comprehensive work of art.
Hours
Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Thursday: 10:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m.
Saturday, Sunday: 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
Locations
John Michael Kohler Arts Center: 608 New York Avenue, Sheboygan, WI
Art Preserve, 3636 Lower Falls Rd, Sheboygan, WI 53081
Contact
Emily Shedal, Communications Specialist, JMKAC
EShedal@jmkac.org