Milwaukee’s Marcus Center is one of the most colorful venues on the U.S. performing arts center circuit. It is home to many of Wisconsin’s premiere arts companies, including the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Ballet Company, Florentine Opera Company, First Stage Milwaukee, and the United Performing Arts Fund.

In its forty-year history, the Marcus Center has hosted a diversity of events, including 25 tubists in Santa Claus garb, the largest assembly of clowns and mimes in United States history, and the only recorded occasion of dancer Rudolf Nureyev being streaked onstage.  Also interesting is the Center’s Exterior Illumination Project, which employs a state-of-the-art LED configuration that has transformed Milwaukee’s nighttime skyline since April 2009.

The Marcus Center is devoted to its community, and hosts a number of diversity and educational initiatives, including KIDZ Days at the Center, WICKED Community Day, the city’s Martin Luther King Day Celebration, and Cantos, a youth-oriented celebration of Milwaukee’s cultural diversity through song.