Upcoming Events and Exhibitions
2025 Spotlight Exhibition Series featuring Michael Koerner and Yicong Li
Through the Spotlight Exhibition Series, Peninsula School of Art intends to provide career development and experience for visual artists and to share high-quality, concept-driven exhibitions with the Door County community. Instead of the thematic group exhibitions normally presented in the Guenzel Gallery, the Spotlight Series features concurrent solo exhibitions by two or three artists, each showing a complete body of work. The spring of 2026 marks the next installment in this series.
Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective
Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective
Curated by Adam Erickson and Elysia Michaelsen
Nancy Sargent’s paintings are imbued with exuberance and curiosity. As an artist, she seems to be always moving, always exploring, always evolving. Her retrospective this year at Peninsula School of Art (PenArt) is the culmination of 65 years of creative, perpetual motion. On full display is her masterful grasp of composition and the interaction of color – often balancing a bright palette with intricate patterns and fearless experimentation.
Frequently rendering tight lines and patterns in astonishing detail, she is a careful study of her subjects as well as her craft. At the same time, Nancy embraces a sense of playfulness and is just as ready to shift into loose and expressive gestures. The work on view in Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective demonstrates the unfolding conversation of one artist between abstraction and figuration – weaving back and forth over several decades. In more recent years, the two approaches seem to find harmony within a single composition – florals both rendered and flattened, patterns both referenced and imagined, combined with linear elements to create shifts in perspective among the layers of abstraction and representation.
After rigorous art training in college, Nancy returned to her hometown of Fish Creek to begin her career in art and education. At Gibraltar High School, her alma matter, Nancy was invited to launch the school’s first official art program. She would later open and run an advertising company with her husband, John, in Milwaukee, where the couple raised two children. Upon retirement, Nancy decided once again to make Fish Creek her home. At that time, she was introduced to PenArt, where she continued her artistic development by taking classes in a variety of mediums. The Art School facilitated social connections as well, allowing Nancy to build relationships with a growing network of artists in Door County. She taught a number of classes herself at PenArt, and later joined the board of directors, where she has served as an advocate and ambassador for 30 years.
Nancy is an engaged resident and a dedicated champion of the arts in Door County. She became an artist and art educator despite not having art education in her own early schooling. Through observation and imagination, she creates works that are bold and energetic while also being carefully crafted. She is a fearless and joyful painter whose evolution is never complete, yet one thread that stretches across six and a half decades is a powerful understanding of formalism. She explores and celebrates the creative process as much in her paintings as she does in her life and community.
Opening Reception: Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective
Join us for an opening reception of Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective in the Guenzel Gallery.
PenArt presents a career-spanning retrospective of artist, educator, and community champion Nancy Sargent. The exhibition follows a thematic journey from her earliest paintings studying at Cardinal Stritch University to works made during her careers in education and advertising to pieces made in her Fish Creek studio as recently as this year.
Art Amped - Of Place
Enjoy our latest exhibition and live music from Deathfolk! Signature beverages provided. Free and open to the public!
Personalized Shopping Event
Let us help you find the right work of art for that special place in your home or special someone on your holiday list. Enjoy complementary hot chocolate while you shop the over 200 works of art in the BIG little Art Show. We will wrap your purchases for free so they are ready to go under the tree!
Coffee with the Curator
Join us for a casual conversation in the gallery. This session, we’ll break into small groups and use gallery games to explore the art in the second annual BIG little Art Show. Free and open to the public.
Coffee with the Curator
Join us for a casual conversation in the gallery. Hear more about the art in our current exhibition, Backstory: The Artist’s Process, ask questions, share your thoughts, and discover answers together in this lively discussion of works on view. Free and open to the public.
Gallery Tour
Join an informal gallery tour and conversation with Mynn Lanphier! Chat about the work on view and take a peak at PenArt’s campus. Meet Mynn at 3 pm in the Guenzel Gallery. No registration required.
Gallery Tour
Join an informal gallery tour and conversation with Mynn Lanphier! Chat about the work on view and take a peak at PenArt’s campus. Meet Mynn at 3 pm in the Guenzel Gallery. No registration required.
Gallery Tour
Join an informal gallery tour and conversation with Mynn Lanphier! Chat about the work on view and take a peak at PenArt’s campus. Meet Mynn at 3 pm in the Guenzel Gallery. No registration required.
Gallery Tour
Join an informal gallery tour and conversation with Mynn Lanphier! Chat about the work on view and take a peak at PenArt’s campus. Meet Mynn at 3 pm in the Guenzel Gallery. No registration required.
Gallery Tour
Join an informal gallery tour and conversation with Mynn Lanphier! Chat about the work on view and take a peak at PenArt’s campus. Meet Mynn at 3 pm in the Guenzel Gallery. No registration required.
Gallery Tour
Join an informal gallery tour and conversation with Mynn Lanphier! Chat about the work on view and take a peak at PenArt’s campus. Meet Mynn at 3 pm in the Guenzel Gallery. No registration required.
Coffee with the Curator
Join us for a casual conversation in the gallery. Hear more about the art in our current exhibition, Just Add Water, ask questions, share your thoughts, and discover answers together in this lively discussion of works on view. Free and open to the public.
Gallery Tour
Join an informal gallery tour and conversation with Mynn Lanphier! Chat about the work on view and take a peak at PenArt’s campus. Meet Mynn at 3 pm in the Guenzel Gallery. No registration required, $10 suggested donation.
Coffee with the Curator
Join us for a casual conversation in the gallery. Hear more about the art in our current exhibition, BIG little Art Show, ask questions, share your thoughts, and discover answers together in this lively discussion of works on view. Free and open to the public.
Coffee with the Curator
Join us for a casual conversation in the gallery. Hear more about the art, ask questions, share your thoughts, and discover answers together in this lively discussion of works on view.