The Grohmann Museum, at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, houses an art collection dedicated to the evolution of human work.

Later images show tradespeople engaged in their work, such as blacksmiths, chemists, cobblers, cork makers, glass blowers, or taxidermists.

The most recent works are images of machines and men embodying the paradoxes of industrialism of the mid-18th century to post-World War II.

Most of the works in the Grohmann Museum collection are by German and Dutch artists, although others were created by American, Austrian, Belgian, Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, English, Hungarian, Flemish, French and Spanish artists Artists include Flemish painter Marten van Valckenborch (1535–1612); Dutch artists Pieter Brueghel the Younger(1564–1638) and Jan Josefsz van Goyen (1596–1656); German painters Carl Spitzweg (1808–1885), Ludwig Knaus (1829–1910), Max Liebermann (1847–1935) and Erich Mercker (1891–1973); American painters J. G. Brown (1831–1913) and F. A. Bridgman (1847–1928); and French painter Julien Dupré (1851–1910).

The inaugural special exhibition Physicians, Quacks, and Alchemists, showed 17th century medical paintings and ran from October 27, 2007 to April 14, 2008, followed by:[citation needed]