Carl Bogner was a teacher, mentor, curator, writer, actor, a lifelong cinephile and voracious reader. Teaching Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Carl was on the Film faculty at the Peck School of the Arts from 1999 until his retirement in 2022. In honor of his work there and as Director for over twenty years of Milwaukee’s internationally renowned LGBT Film/Video Festival, he was awarded the P.B. Poorman Award for Outstanding Achievement on behalf of the LGBT community in 2023.
Upon receiving his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Virginia in 1984, Carl began his career as a bookseller in Virginia before moving to Madison in 1987. A year later, he relocated to Milwaukee, the city he loved and served from then on, to take up a position with the legendary Harry W. Schwartz Booksellers. From 1994 to 1997, he studied at UWM, beginning his tenure as a faculty member there just two years after earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in film. Attesting to his boundless curiosity and creative energy, he went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2011 from the Bennington Writing Seminars, one of the most distinguished MFA programs in the country.
These outlines of Carl’s career can only begin to suggest its breadth and depth, its intensity and commitment, or the range of communities he impacted. He served in programming or curatorial capacities for virtually every arts institution in the city, from Woodland Pattern to the Milwaukee Art Museum, and many more across the Midwest, the U.S., and internationally, including a period as Director of Exhibitions with Asian Media Access in Minneapolis, serving on juries from the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival to the Ann Arbor Film Festival and Canada’s Media City Film Festival, and guest lecturing at institutions from Ursinus College to the University of Chicago.
