At 2:38 PM, to be precise 😂

My office at Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) is on the second floor of the Grohmann Museum. Today was the last day of regular classes before final exams begin next week. My last class of the day finished at 2:00 PM, after which I went back across the street from my classroom to my office, where I began grading and catching up on email. After about half an hour of this, however, I was ready for a break and took a quick walk through the galleries on my floor. I took the photo because I loved how those fingers of afternoon sun stretched across the floor from the atrium staircase.

There is a really cool exhibition of train photographs and paintings at the Grohmann Museum right now titled

Gil Reid and Friends: Working on the Railroad
Sept. 6 – Dec. 22, 2024

Gil Reid was a watercolor artist who, among other things, painted images of trains for Amtrak, especially for their calendars. The “friends” in the show include such luminaries as O. Winston Link and David Plowden. Many of the Gil Reid materials came from Chris Burger, a friend of Reid’s in real life and collector of his work. Burger is described this way in the museum’s write-up on the exhibition:

A railroader and rail executive for 39 years, Chris is perhaps best known locally for managing the Chicago & North Western’s Wisconsin Division, where he was the moving force behind the railroad’s “Good Will Ambassador” steam program in the 1980s. 

I really like Chris Burger’s photos—which, as chance would have it, hang on the very wall being spotlighted by the sunbeams in my picture today. I’ve stopped to study his photography several times since this exhibition opened a couple months ago, and his work, to my eye, is equally as good as the work of O. Winston Link and David Plowden. When I tried to find out more about Burger, though, I really couldn’t discover any more than what appears to be his usual description of “retired railroad executive.” His train photos have been included in multiple exhibitions, and as I said, I think his work is quite good. If you live in Milwaukee or plan to travel through anytime in the next week or so, you should try to catch this show before it closes.