Curated with a scientist’s eye: UW biologist gives art collection to MMOCA

Decades before becoming an established molecular biologist, Bill McClain skipped school to feed his art habit. From fourth grade in suburban Chicago until he (just barely) graduated high school, the son of a high-fashion hat designer would cut class, jump on the El and head downtown to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum. McClain, today a professor emeritus at UW-Madison, is also an art donor whose finely honed collection of 130 pieces of Imagist art given to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is the basis of the museum?s current exhibition,