Mesocosm

I’m sad to report that the “Witch’s House”, a unique repository of folk art in Wisconsin, is now to be dismantled by its owner, the Kohler Foundation, and shipped in its entirety to nearby town of Sheboygan.

The Kohler Foundation struggled for years to make the site available to the public, battling neighbors reluctant to open their idyllic stretch of Beach Drive to tour buses and “weekend gawkers.” The village of Fox Point, where the house is located, previously took the Kohler Foundation to court to block use of the site as the museum.

“I’ve been trying to save Mary’s environment for 27 years,” Ruth Kohler, director of the arts center, told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

“We’ve worked with a lot of art environments, from as far away as New York and Louisiana, and we’ve always been able to change the minds of the village or town that the site was in. We’ve never had a complete stalemate like this before.”

Those of us who have known and loved the site for many years are saddened to see it torn from its setting, which is integral to its effect and an organic part of Nohl’s imagination. Many of the pieces were fashioned from driftwood taken directly from the beach abutting her property.

I began my previous post on the Witch’s House by quoting the artist, Mary Nohl, who observed that “Being conventional is worse than all other sins.”