Out of the Picture
Milwaukee, Wisconsin | Film Feature
Documentary
Out of the Picture is a documentary film about art critics living through a cultural reckoning and a period of historic transformation to both art and media.
Out of the Picture
Milwaukee, Wisconsin | Film Feature
Documentary
1 Campaigns | Wisconsin, United States
Green Light
This campaign raised $37,251 for post-production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
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Out of the Picture is a documentary film about art critics living through a cultural reckoning and a period of historic transformation to both art and media.
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
Out of the Picture
When Mary Louise Schumacher first set out to make a documentary film about art critics 10 years ago, her motivation was personal. She was one of the last, full-time art critics at a daily newspaper in the country, and she wanted to understand a field that was collapsing as she was coming into it.
Media was in the early days of its massive disruption, and as outlets began to downsize, arts writers were often the first to go.
Mary Louise wanted to explore what it would mean to lose a generation of these witnesses to what artists do. Would anyone care? Does it matter? So she put together a team and began turning her cameras on some of her favorite writers—to see what would unfold.
A PERIOD OF CHANGE
What our team never expected was for our cameras to roll during a time of historic change to both art and media. When we started making this film, the iPhone camera was still new, Twitter was in its infancy, the term “fake news” was not in common usage and no one could have imagined TikTok or NFTs.
Today, the once rare tools of the artist are in all of our hands. Visual culture is pouring out of our screens and devices, and into our streets, too. It is shaping how we see the world and one another in entirely new ways.
Many of the writers in our film are as likely to write about social movements, memes and monuments as they are museums or galleries. They have pioneered a new way of thinking about this work. In a world that is changing rapidly and that can feel so full of peril, their writing on culture is in the very heart of things.
Some of the writers in our film rose to become essential voices for their generation during filming, while others became obsolete, out of the picture.
OUR RESEARCH
While fundamentally about the human stories of these change-making journalists, our film is also rooted in scholarship.
Mary Louise was the Arts & Culture Fellow with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University in 2017. She spent 18 months conducting a national survey of arts journalists. Many of the survey's questions replicated those of a seminal study done 15 years prior by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, which provided a rare opportunity for comparison over a period of dramatic change.
That research revealed a great deal about who holds power, influence and visibility in the art world. Those findings informed our work and strengthened the stories we're telling.
BECOMING PART OF THE STORY
Then, Mary Louise became a part of the story we're telling, when her own job was eliminated. But this also allowed her to become more single-minded about the making of Out of the Picture, which really needed to happen. Since then, and during the pandemic, our team has completed production in 10 cities across the country. Mary Louise camped in her Beetle, showered at truck stops and, along with other members of our team, was trained in Covid safety protocols in order to make it all work during the health crisis.
In addition to final shooting with our primary subjects, we snagged time with well-known art world figures such as Los Angeles-based artist Catherine Opie; author of Seven Days in the Art World Sarah Thornton; art critic Seph Rodney; and technologist An Xiao Mina. We shot perhaps two of the best known art critics in America, art critic couple Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz, of The New York Times and New York magazine, respectively.
OUR PROGRESS
Now, with filming essentially complete, we are putting our film together. We plan to finish the edit by the summer of 2022 and then begin applying to festivals. We have established a core team of experienced professionals and need to add a talented composer, who will help us define the feel of our film, and an animator, who can bring art world terms and histories to life in a lively way. We also need funds to license archival material, to complete payment to our editor and to apply for festivals.
Through our own hustle, we have raised more than $160,000 for our film from prestigious funders, including the Wisconsin Humanities Council (with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities); the Herzfeld Foundation; the Greater Milwaukee Foundation; the Heil Family Foundation; the Convergence Fund via the Greater Milwaukee Foundation; the Brico Forward Fund; the No Studios/Gener8tor Fellowship; individual donors and others we are not able to name publicly just yet.
DISTRIBUTION PLAN
Our goal is to gain acceptance into at least one reputable festival and also focus on regional festivals, where our film will have special relevance. In addition to screening at festivals, Out of the Picture will be the centerpiece of a national impact campaign we’re developing with dozens of partners across the country. This will include free, community-based screenings and local discussions about sustaining arts journalism. It will also include the production of a newspaper-like publication that will showcase writing by some of our film’s subjects and other essential writers on art. This will allow us to put the work of criticism directly into the hands of our audiences at our events.
MEET OUR TEAM
While a veteran journalist, Mary Louise is also a first-time filmmaker. As such, she knew she had to have a strong team around her, one with expertise and connections in the film industry and the art world. As a team based in the Midwest, we're uniquely qualified to tackle our subject. We are outsiders, who work beyond the dominant structures of the art world, but we also have enough credentials and connections among us to gain unique access. Be sure to check out our team bios.
OUR COVID PLAN
Keeping our team and the subjects of our film safe during the Covid 19 pandemic has been a priority for us. Several members of our team, including Mary Louise, were certified as Covid Compliance Officers. We updated our training and our protocols under the rapidly changing environment of the health crisis, keeping tabs on national and local guidelines prior to every shoot. Our protocols include health screenings on set, pre-production testing, the wearing or protective gear and several other precautions.
JOIN US
So, once again, Out of the Picture is the first documentary film ever made about art critics, a Milwaukee-made film of national significance. It promises to crack open a national conversation about the nature of art, modern life and how meaning gets made in our time.
We are incredibly proud of the work we've done. Please join us in this journey. No gift is too small, and we will meet every kind of support—including simply talking up our project and sharing this campaign—with genuine gratitude.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Composer
Costs $4,000
We will hire a composer to help define the sound and feel of our film.
Animation
Costs $5,000
An animator will help us make sense of art world terms and history in a lively way.
Festival Fees
Costs $2,000
Festival application fees get costly but are essential if our film is to be seen.
Licensing of images
Costs $4,500
In a film about art critics, licensing images of art is essential.
Editing
Costs $6,000
After a decade of shooting, our editor will put the pieces together and help us craft the story.
Final interviews
Costs $3,500
We have just a few interviews left to tie everything together.
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Mary Louise Schumacher (director, camera) is an award-winning journalist and art critic based in Milwaukee. She was the longtime art and architecture critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. More recently, she was the 2019 Clarice Smith Distinguished Critic at the Smithsonian and also the 2017 Arts & Culture Fellow with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she spent a year studying the history of criticism and documentary film, among other things. Her bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, ARTnews, Hyperallergic, Nieman Reports and Milwaukee Magazine. Out of the Picture is her first film.
Johnathon Olsen (editor) is a filmmaker and commercial editor based in Milwaukee. His debut feature film waltz premiered at the Wisconsin Film Festival in 2009. Today, he splits time between his own projects, including the feature film Corridor, and collaborations that have screened across the country. He also works as a commercial editor for companies such as the United Way and Harley-Davidson and managed an art house cinema in Duluth.
Mark Escribano (cinematographer) is an artist, photographer and media producer with more than 20 years of experience working in documentary film, public art and performance. He has directed several art-related films, including The Super Noble Brothers and Civic Art, and served as cinematographer on William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet and festival darling Modus Operandi.
Dr. Charlotte Frost (humanities expert, advising producer) is a leading authority on the changing landscape of visual culture in the digital era and on the history of networked art forms. She is the author of Art Criticism Online: A History, the first book to detail the nearly 40-year history of online arts communities and discourses, as well as countless essays, videos and podcasts on art and technology. Frost is also the executive director of Furtherfield Gallery in London, internationally known as a center for experimentation in networked art making and dialogue. She has been an adviser to the film, the survey and is especially poised to help our team create novel forms of distribution for Out of the Picture.
Portia Cobb (humanities expert, story consultant) is a video artist and producer of short experimental documentary films whose videos and installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work often investigates the politics of place and identity. She is an associate professor of film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
András Szántó (humanities expert, story consultant) was the director of the National Arts Journalism Program and the National Endowment for the Arts Journalism Institute at Columbia University. He has consulted on art-related programming for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Aspen Institute, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, UNESCO and countless other organizations.
Katie Heil (executive producer), is a philanthropist and native Milwaukeean who has worked on behalf of the arts for more than 40 years. She is a member of Milwaukee Film’s board of directors and is president of the Heil Family Foundation. She prefers to work behind the scenes and believes culture can create positive change.
Erin Richards (assistant producer) was a national correspondent for USA TODAY covering politics and education until 2022. Before that, she worked at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for more than a decade as a reporter and editor. During that time, she and Mary Louise developed live journalism events around the arts, architecture and economic development, which Erin often moderated. Erin is now managing editor of the nonprofit Center on Reinventing Public Education.
Andrew Swant (assistant producer) is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has screened at Hot Docs, SXSW, AFI, IFC and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and has been distributed through Epix (Paramount/Lionsgate/MGM), IFC Films and Kino Lorber on platforms such as Netflix, Sundance Now, Amazon and Hulu. His work has been covered by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Vice and Variety. He recently directed Bon Iver: Autumn and co-produced Give me Liberty (Sundance ’19, Cannes, MoMA). He has edited several films, including Civic Art, 30 Seconds Away and Chasing Bubbles.
Cindy Eggert-Johnson (advising producer, assistant editor, camera) is a director, editor and writer. Her second short film, Homecoming, screened at the 2020 Milwaukee Film Festival. She is the owner of Johnson & Johnson Creative, the creative director of Sweet Pea Cinema and a former media executive who has worked on Pulitzer Prize-winning projects.
Katie Avila Loughmiller (coordinating producer) is an interdisciplinary, social-practice artist, writer, educator, curator and activist. She is the co-founder and director of LUNA (Latinas Unidas en las Artes), an arts business that supports Latinx artists. She is also a founding member of Heard Space, a multimedia performing arts collective led by women of color, and Milwaukee Action Intersection, a social justice organization rooted in healing, engagement, resource sharing and education. Avila Loughmiller currently teaches in the theatre department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is the storytelling and content creator for Colorful Connections, a diversity, equity and inclusion firm. She also co-hosts a biweekly comedy radio show/podcast called We Heard We Were Funny that airs live on Riverwest Radio.
Naomi Waxman (director of audience development, administration) is an award-winning journalist and a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where she received a master’s degree in journalism. Her work has recently been recognized by the Milwaukee Press Club and the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Xavier Cousens (camera) is a filmmaker and journalist based in New York City. He has worked on projects such as The Great Hack (Netflix) and The Vow (HBO). His short documentary HUSTLE has screened at the Woods Hole and Buffalo International film festivals.
Jacki Huntington (camera) is a journalist, director, editor and cinematographer. She previously worked as a producer for Refinery29, where she piloted the unapologetically feminist, body-positive video content that continues to influence the brand's video aesthetic.
Dana Shihadah (camera) is a Palestinian-American cinematographer whose work covers a wide range of documentary and narrative films including Pet Names, which premiered at SXSW and was named among the 10 Best Films of the 2018 festival by The Hollywood Reporter. She brings an intimate and intuitive shooting style to our project.
Barry Poltermann, story consultant: Owner and editor, September Club; CEO, About Face Media; editor of films including “American Movie” (Sundance Grand Prize), “The Pool” (Sundance Jury Prize), “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond” (Emmy nominee) and “I Am Not Alone” ( Toronto Film Festival audience award); will provide hands-on post-production feedback.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
Out of the Picture
When Mary Louise Schumacher first set out to make a documentary film about art critics 10 years ago, her motivation was personal. She was one of the last, full-time art critics at a daily newspaper in the country, and she wanted to understand a field that was collapsing as she was coming into it.
Media was in the early days of its massive disruption, and as outlets began to downsize, arts writers were often the first to go.
Mary Louise wanted to explore what it would mean to lose a generation of these witnesses to what artists do. Would anyone care? Does it matter? So she put together a team and began turning her cameras on some of her favorite writers—to see what would unfold.
A PERIOD OF CHANGE
What our team never expected was for our cameras to roll during a time of historic change to both art and media. When we started making this film, the iPhone camera was still new, Twitter was in its infancy, the term “fake news” was not in common usage and no one could have imagined TikTok or NFTs.
Today, the once rare tools of the artist are in all of our hands. Visual culture is pouring out of our screens and devices, and into our streets, too. It is shaping how we see the world and one another in entirely new ways.
Many of the writers in our film are as likely to write about social movements, memes and monuments as they are museums or galleries. They have pioneered a new way of thinking about this work. In a world that is changing rapidly and that can feel so full of peril, their writing on culture is in the very heart of things.
Some of the writers in our film rose to become essential voices for their generation during filming, while others became obsolete, out of the picture.
OUR RESEARCH
While fundamentally about the human stories of these change-making journalists, our film is also rooted in scholarship.
Mary Louise was the Arts & Culture Fellow with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University in 2017. She spent 18 months conducting a national survey of arts journalists. Many of the survey's questions replicated those of a seminal study done 15 years prior by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, which provided a rare opportunity for comparison over a period of dramatic change.
That research revealed a great deal about who holds power, influence and visibility in the art world. Those findings informed our work and strengthened the stories we're telling.
BECOMING PART OF THE STORY
Then, Mary Louise became a part of the story we're telling, when her own job was eliminated. But this also allowed her to become more single-minded about the making of Out of the Picture, which really needed to happen. Since then, and during the pandemic, our team has completed production in 10 cities across the country. Mary Louise camped in her Beetle, showered at truck stops and, along with other members of our team, was trained in Covid safety protocols in order to make it all work during the health crisis.
In addition to final shooting with our primary subjects, we snagged time with well-known art world figures such as Los Angeles-based artist Catherine Opie; author of Seven Days in the Art World Sarah Thornton; art critic Seph Rodney; and technologist An Xiao Mina. We shot perhaps two of the best known art critics in America, art critic couple Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz, of The New York Times and New York magazine, respectively.
OUR PROGRESS
Now, with filming essentially complete, we are putting our film together. We plan to finish the edit by the summer of 2022 and then begin applying to festivals. We have established a core team of experienced professionals and need to add a talented composer, who will help us define the feel of our film, and an animator, who can bring art world terms and histories to life in a lively way. We also need funds to license archival material, to complete payment to our editor and to apply for festivals.
Through our own hustle, we have raised more than $160,000 for our film from prestigious funders, including the Wisconsin Humanities Council (with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities); the Herzfeld Foundation; the Greater Milwaukee Foundation; the Heil Family Foundation; the Convergence Fund via the Greater Milwaukee Foundation; the Brico Forward Fund; the No Studios/Gener8tor Fellowship; individual donors and others we are not able to name publicly just yet.
DISTRIBUTION PLAN
Our goal is to gain acceptance into at least one reputable festival and also focus on regional festivals, where our film will have special relevance. In addition to screening at festivals, Out of the Picture will be the centerpiece of a national impact campaign we’re developing with dozens of partners across the country. This will include free, community-based screenings and local discussions about sustaining arts journalism. It will also include the production of a newspaper-like publication that will showcase writing by some of our film’s subjects and other essential writers on art. This will allow us to put the work of criticism directly into the hands of our audiences at our events.
MEET OUR TEAM
While a veteran journalist, Mary Louise is also a first-time filmmaker. As such, she knew she had to have a strong team around her, one with expertise and connections in the film industry and the art world. As a team based in the Midwest, we're uniquely qualified to tackle our subject. We are outsiders, who work beyond the dominant structures of the art world, but we also have enough credentials and connections among us to gain unique access. Be sure to check out our team bios.
OUR COVID PLAN
Keeping our team and the subjects of our film safe during the Covid 19 pandemic has been a priority for us. Several members of our team, including Mary Louise, were certified as Covid Compliance Officers. We updated our training and our protocols under the rapidly changing environment of the health crisis, keeping tabs on national and local guidelines prior to every shoot. Our protocols include health screenings on set, pre-production testing, the wearing or protective gear and several other precautions.
JOIN US
So, once again, Out of the Picture is the first documentary film ever made about art critics, a Milwaukee-made film of national significance. It promises to crack open a national conversation about the nature of art, modern life and how meaning gets made in our time.
We are incredibly proud of the work we've done. Please join us in this journey. No gift is too small, and we will meet every kind of support—including simply talking up our project and sharing this campaign—with genuine gratitude.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Composer
Costs $4,000
We will hire a composer to help define the sound and feel of our film.
Animation
Costs $5,000
An animator will help us make sense of art world terms and history in a lively way.
Festival Fees
Costs $2,000
Festival application fees get costly but are essential if our film is to be seen.
Licensing of images
Costs $4,500
In a film about art critics, licensing images of art is essential.
Editing
Costs $6,000
After a decade of shooting, our editor will put the pieces together and help us craft the story.
Final interviews
Costs $3,500
We have just a few interviews left to tie everything together.
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
Mary Louise Schumacher (director, camera) is an award-winning journalist and art critic based in Milwaukee. She was the longtime art and architecture critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. More recently, she was the 2019 Clarice Smith Distinguished Critic at the Smithsonian and also the 2017 Arts & Culture Fellow with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she spent a year studying the history of criticism and documentary film, among other things. Her bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, ARTnews, Hyperallergic, Nieman Reports and Milwaukee Magazine. Out of the Picture is her first film.
Johnathon Olsen (editor) is a filmmaker and commercial editor based in Milwaukee. His debut feature film waltz premiered at the Wisconsin Film Festival in 2009. Today, he splits time between his own projects, including the feature film Corridor, and collaborations that have screened across the country. He also works as a commercial editor for companies such as the United Way and Harley-Davidson and managed an art house cinema in Duluth.
Mark Escribano (cinematographer) is an artist, photographer and media producer with more than 20 years of experience working in documentary film, public art and performance. He has directed several art-related films, including The Super Noble Brothers and Civic Art, and served as cinematographer on William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet and festival darling Modus Operandi.
Dr. Charlotte Frost (humanities expert, advising producer) is a leading authority on the changing landscape of visual culture in the digital era and on the history of networked art forms. She is the author of Art Criticism Online: A History, the first book to detail the nearly 40-year history of online arts communities and discourses, as well as countless essays, videos and podcasts on art and technology. Frost is also the executive director of Furtherfield Gallery in London, internationally known as a center for experimentation in networked art making and dialogue. She has been an adviser to the film, the survey and is especially poised to help our team create novel forms of distribution for Out of the Picture.
Portia Cobb (humanities expert, story consultant) is a video artist and producer of short experimental documentary films whose videos and installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work often investigates the politics of place and identity. She is an associate professor of film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
András Szántó (humanities expert, story consultant) was the director of the National Arts Journalism Program and the National Endowment for the Arts Journalism Institute at Columbia University. He has consulted on art-related programming for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Aspen Institute, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, UNESCO and countless other organizations.
Katie Heil (executive producer), is a philanthropist and native Milwaukeean who has worked on behalf of the arts for more than 40 years. She is a member of Milwaukee Film’s board of directors and is president of the Heil Family Foundation. She prefers to work behind the scenes and believes culture can create positive change.
Erin Richards (assistant producer) was a national correspondent for USA TODAY covering politics and education until 2022. Before that, she worked at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for more than a decade as a reporter and editor. During that time, she and Mary Louise developed live journalism events around the arts, architecture and economic development, which Erin often moderated. Erin is now managing editor of the nonprofit Center on Reinventing Public Education.
Andrew Swant (assistant producer) is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has screened at Hot Docs, SXSW, AFI, IFC and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and has been distributed through Epix (Paramount/Lionsgate/MGM), IFC Films and Kino Lorber on platforms such as Netflix, Sundance Now, Amazon and Hulu. His work has been covered by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Vice and Variety. He recently directed Bon Iver: Autumn and co-produced Give me Liberty (Sundance ’19, Cannes, MoMA). He has edited several films, including Civic Art, 30 Seconds Away and Chasing Bubbles.
Cindy Eggert-Johnson (advising producer, assistant editor, camera) is a director, editor and writer. Her second short film, Homecoming, screened at the 2020 Milwaukee Film Festival. She is the owner of Johnson & Johnson Creative, the creative director of Sweet Pea Cinema and a former media executive who has worked on Pulitzer Prize-winning projects.
Katie Avila Loughmiller (coordinating producer) is an interdisciplinary, social-practice artist, writer, educator, curator and activist. She is the co-founder and director of LUNA (Latinas Unidas en las Artes), an arts business that supports Latinx artists. She is also a founding member of Heard Space, a multimedia performing arts collective led by women of color, and Milwaukee Action Intersection, a social justice organization rooted in healing, engagement, resource sharing and education. Avila Loughmiller currently teaches in the theatre department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is the storytelling and content creator for Colorful Connections, a diversity, equity and inclusion firm. She also co-hosts a biweekly comedy radio show/podcast called We Heard We Were Funny that airs live on Riverwest Radio.
Naomi Waxman (director of audience development, administration) is an award-winning journalist and a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where she received a master’s degree in journalism. Her work has recently been recognized by the Milwaukee Press Club and the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
Xavier Cousens (camera) is a filmmaker and journalist based in New York City. He has worked on projects such as The Great Hack (Netflix) and The Vow (HBO). His short documentary HUSTLE has screened at the Woods Hole and Buffalo International film festivals.
Jacki Huntington (camera) is a journalist, director, editor and cinematographer. She previously worked as a producer for Refinery29, where she piloted the unapologetically feminist, body-positive video content that continues to influence the brand's video aesthetic.
Dana Shihadah (camera) is a Palestinian-American cinematographer whose work covers a wide range of documentary and narrative films including Pet Names, which premiered at SXSW and was named among the 10 Best Films of the 2018 festival by The Hollywood Reporter. She brings an intimate and intuitive shooting style to our project.
Barry Poltermann, story consultant: Owner and editor, September Club; CEO, About Face Media; editor of films including “American Movie” (Sundance Grand Prize), “The Pool” (Sundance Jury Prize), “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond” (Emmy nominee) and “I Am Not Alone” ( Toronto Film Festival audience award); will provide hands-on post-production feedback.