Performing Arts Center’s debut drew rich, famous — and protesters
The gala opening of Milwaukee’s new Performing Arts Center was a night to remember. The protesters made sure of it. The $12 million arts center, known since 1994 as the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, had been in the works for a quarter-century. So anticipation for the formal debut of the center, designed by architect Harry Weese, had been building.
Although the building was dedicated over the summer of 1969, its official opening was Sept. 17, 1969, featuring performances by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Florentine Opera Company and guest dancers Lupe Serrano and Jacques d’Amboise.
Tickets for the gala were $100 (comparable to more than $650 in 2017 dollars), with many business leaders and other notables in attendance.
The rich and famous weren’t the only ones who showed up.
About 600 protesters, mostly young people, gathered outside the entrance to the PAC, calling the patrons to task for celebrating a building they believed underscored the divide between rich and poor in Milwaukee.
In a front-page story on Sept. 18, 1969, the Milwaukee Sentinel’s Keith Spore reported that the “noisy, taunting crowd” shouted “down with fat cats, up with people” at the concert patrons as they entered the hall.
“Nearly all the first-night patrons ignored the taunts, but there was at least one exception,” The Milwaukee Journal’s Michael B. Schmitz wrote in his story, also published Sept. 18. “When a group of youths started a ‘What about welfare?’ chant, one neatly groomed, aristocratic-looking blond man, about 35, replied: ‘Eat cake.’ ”
The protesters also disrupted the unveiling of a sculpture by Seymour Lipton at the center’s Harry Lynde Bradley Pavilion. When a couple of the protesters took it on themselves to do the unveiling, the police stepped in and arrested them.
Other protesters disrupted speeches at the unveiling, Schmitz reported, by rubbing “balloons to create a loud, rasping din that drowned out” the speakers.
One of the speakers was Margaret “Peg” Bradley, Harry Lynde Bradley’s widow and the benefactor who had commissioned the sculpture. “This is a very happy night for the people,” Bradley told the crowd, the Sentinel reported. “It (the arts center) belongs to all of you. That’s what it’s for.”
The Journal reported that some of the protesters passed out flyers reportedly from the Milwaukee
White Panther Party,” calling for, “among other things, a percentage of seats at all performances to be made available to the poor at reduced or no cost.”
Milwaukee police had been ready for the protesters; The Journal reported that 100 officers were on hand to keep the protesters and arts patrons separated.
Lt. John W. Davis told The Journal’s Schmitz that, even with chants such as “Stop the War on the Poor, Start the War on the Rich,” the protesters were “a pretty passive group. … These kids don’t want a confrontation.”
“Just then,” Schmitz reported, “several youths jumped into the plaza of loose rock facing Kilbourn Ave. and covered most of the sunken light fixtures with the rock. Davis ran after them and told them to ‘stop acting like foolish children.’ Under his direction, some of the youths uncovered the lights.”
Six people were arrested for disorderly conduct, three of them juveniles. Two of the others were found guilty of using profanity and fined $50, but the third, a 21year-old woman, was found not guilty after being charged for “prematurely” unveiling the sculpture at the gala. Milwaukee County Judge Louis J. Ceci ruled Oct. 28, 1969, that there was “an absolute paucity of proof” that revealing a statue constituted disorderly conduct.