From Lake to Plate: Local Fishing Families and Foodways – A New Exhibit at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum

 

Who are the people that bring us the fish that we eat?

That is the question that we address in a new photography exhibit at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum entitled “From Lake to Plate: Local Fishing Families and Foodways.” I wrote and co-curated the exhibit along with Kevin Cullen, the executive directive of the museum, who originally hails from Ireland and is also a marine archeologist and scuba diver. Those skills positioned him well to become director, along with his extensive museum experience, since a good portion of the museum is dedicated to shipwrecks of the Great Lakes. This show opens January 17 and runs through October 27, 2025.

From Lake to Plate features the work of two Wisconsin photographers – my dad, Tom Kutchera, and Jim Legault – who captured portraits of Wisconsin’s commercial fishermen, fish cutters, smokehouses, delivery drivers, and retail clerks over the past fifty years. Their images illustrate the evolving “foodways” of how fish are harvested from Lake Michigan, then processed, and eventually arrive on our plates.

 

 

Oral Histories of Fishermen and Family Fish Companies

Interspersed throughout the show are quotes from Wisconsin’s family fish companies and fishermen about their personal and professional experiences. Those quotes were extracted from a 2018 oral history project that I worked on with Shelby Miller, then a student at Alverno College. John C. Savagian, Ph.D., a history professor at Alverno College, advised us in crafting the questions, performing the interviews, and then transcribing and summarizing them. Shelby interviewed family members from Baileys Harbor Fish Company, Hickey Bros Fisheries, Schwarz Fish, Susie-Q Fish Company and Phillip Anderson who once fished Lake Michigan for chubs and yellow perch. Thankfully, the Wisconsin Maritime Museum will finally bring those quotes and stories to the public.

The exhibit concludes by inviting visitors to share impressions and memories about their favorite fish fries, fish boils, and retail stores in Wisconsin. From Lake to Plate brings visitors behind the scenes into Wisconsin’s fishing industry via the photos, videos, oral histories, fishing equipment, and artifacts, which illustrate the enormous amount of work involved in delivering fish to Wisconsinites’ plates. And while fishermen and family fish companies have disappeared from the Southern half of Lake Michigan, this show is a testament to the fishermen and family fish companies in the Lake’s Northern half who have adapted to and sometimes even thrive amidst the onset of invasive species, pollution, and global warming that have transformed the Great Lakes.

 

Here’s a short video preview of the exhibit from NBC 26:

 

Photographer Biographies

Jim Legault began photographing Wisconsin’s fishermen and fishing families in the 1960s and ‘70s and continues documenting Lake Michigan’s commercial fishing industry today. He has come to know many of Wisconsin’s family fishing operations very well over the years.

My dad, Tom Kutchera, grew up working at Empire Fish Company, a wholesaler and retailer of seafood products, that was founded by my great grandfather, Jerry Kutchera, in Milwaukee in 1913. My dad incorporated his love of photography into his work by taking portraits of employees from the 1960s until he retired in 1995, when Neesvig’s Food Service purchased the business. Today, Fortune Fish (based in Chicago) owns Empire Fish, which bought Neesvig’s in 2020. My dad sometimes pressed the shutter after catching employees after telling a joke in his quirky, improvisational style. And other times he asked employees to pose, more thoughtfully, on-the-job while loading trucks or cutting fish. See above for five of his portraits.

 

 

Origins of the Exhibit

I guess you could say that the origins for this show evolved out of my working alongside my dad and grandfather, Harold Kutchera, who worked at Empire Fish until the age of 89. I started working at Empire Fish at the age of 15 picking up cigarette butts in the retail parking lot. I went on to work in the retail store during the busy Christmas and New Year’s holiday seasons. I later learned how to prepare wholesale fish and shellfish orders. And during my high school and college summers, I drove the delivery truck to Milwaukee area restaurants, country clubs, and retail stores. Eventually, after graduating from college, I became a salesman and seafood buyer for the company. Around that time, my Dad’s cousin and business partner (also named Jerry Kutchera) had a stroke and left the company, never to return for health reasons. My Dad felt overwhelmed. And I was far too young and inexperienced to take the company over. That’s when it became clear that the best option was to sell the company. Still, being a fourth-generation fishmonger became forever part of my identity.

Flash forward to 2016: Naomi Shersty attended my Dad’s funeral as a guest of our mutual friend Xav Leplae. She became enamored with two photo albums of employee portraits that we put out at the visitation, featuring portraits of Empire Fish employees over three decades. That discovery led her to turn these portraits of “a work family” into a photo exhibit at the Portrait Society Gallery. She spent 100+ hours that summer scanning, digitizing, editing, cropping and printing the photos with the help of an assistant at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design Milwaukee, where Naomi teaches. I remain amazed that she never met my Dad yet had the dedication to do all of that work. My brother, Andrew, and I then turned the photos and a history of the company into a book. You can read Naomi’s introduction to the book here, describing her impressions of seeing those portraits. After that, I read The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan and Fishing the Great Lakes: An Environmental History by Margaret Beattie Bogue, both of which enlightened me about the ecological catastrophes that the Great Lakes face, as a result poor public policies and commercial exploitation. From Lake to Plate focuses on the people of Wisconsin’s fishing industry, weaving in ecological, culinary, and historical insights. In the end, I guess it was my own experience growing up in a family fish business that made me curious about other Wisconsin fish companies and ultimately put the wind and inspiration into my sails to propose this exhibit to the Wisconsin Maritime Museum.

 

Many Thanks to the Team

I originally pitched this project to the Wisconsin Maritime Museum five years ago in January of 2020. The news about a coronavirus from China spreading throughout the world became more and more ominous by the day. Yet, little did we know that it would shut down the Museum and our entire country for far longer than we ever expected. With heartfelt gratitude, I’d like to thank everyone at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum who took the baton and helped plan and install From Lake to Plate, making it a reality.

Thank you to Titus Seilheimer from Wisconsin Sea Grant for his science-based insights on Lake Michigan’s fishing industry. Titus advised us throughout the development of this project, sharing research, and even his own photos for the exhibit. Thank you to Chloe Eckstein for her outstanding work designing the show, helping us better tell the stories of the fishing families featured here.

And lastly, many thanks to the sponsors of the exhibit, which made it financially possible: Baileys Harbor Fish Company, Empire Fish, Fortune Fish & Gourmet, and the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant.