Chazen Museum of Art faces you here as a brutalist block on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Founded in 1970 as the Elvehjem Art Center and later known as the Elvehjem Museum of Art, it moved into a brutalist building designed by Illinois architect Harry Weese to house the university's collection of 1,600 artworks. The museum was named for Conrad Elvehjem, the 13th president of UW–Madison and an internationally known biochemist in nutrition.
Until 2005 it was regularly called the Elvehjem Museum of Art; in 2005 it was renamed the Chazen Museum of Art after a gift from businessman Jerome A. Chazen and his wife Simona, both university alums. That gift provided part of the construction funds for an additional museum building designed by Machado-Silvetti and inaugurated in 2011. Today the museum complex totals 176,000 square feet of gross floor area and, as of 2026, holds a collection of over 25,000 objects, making it the second-largest art museum in Wisconsin after the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Stand here and feel the presence of the Weese brutalist volume beside the Machado-Silvetti addition; imagine the 1,600 works it first housed and the many thousands added since. Over 25,000 objects fill 176,000 square feet here, second in Wisconsin only to the Milwaukee Art Museum.