Lego Milwaukee Art Museum won't become an official set, but here's how you can still build it
Another attempt to bring a Lego Milwaukee Art Museum set to the masses has been halted.
Former Milwaukee resident Todd Elliott's art museum design wasn't selected as one of the five finalists in BrickLink's Designer Program Series 7 competition. That means Elliott's creation won't be considered for production as a limited-edition Lego set in early 2026. However, the Philadelphia father and Army veteran doesn't plan on giving up.
Elliott said he may enter BrickLink's next competition this spring and, in the meantime, has made his original art museum instructions available online for a low cost.
BrickLink is a Lego Group-owned online community, marketplace and design software popular with adult fans of the toy brand. In January, Elliott's museum design was accepted to BrickLink's Designer Program competition. Through the Designer Program, anyone with a free BrickLink account can vote for their favorite fan-made designs.
Elliott said he will likely re-enter the museum into BrickLink's Series 8 competition in April.
"I'll decide based on the feedback from BrickLink and if I can possibly make contact with Vida Andras," the Hungarian artist whose much-celebrated 2019 Milwaukee Art Museum Lego set design greatly inspired Elliott's.
If Elliott's design is selected for Series 8, BrickLink users will be able to vote for it between May 5 and May 16. The five Series 8 winners will be announced June 14.
After Elliott's design didn't move forward in Series 7, he posted the instructions for the 1,184-piece museum to Rebrickable ― a website that lets Lego enthusiasts share their designs and connects users with resellers, allowing them to smoothly obtain the necessary bricks to re-create designs that aren't official Lego sets. Anyone can purchase the art museum instructions for $1.
Elliott began workshopping a Lego model of the Milwaukee Art Museum's Quadracci Pavilion and Calatrava-designed "wings" a few years ago. He was inspired by fellow designer Andras' model, which received local media attention and nearly became an official Lego set.
Andras posted his creation to Lego Ideas, a Lego-run online community where users can share their ideas and potentially have them turned into official sets. It's similar to BrickLink's Designer Program, but the sets aren't sold on a limited-edition basis. If a design receives 10,000 votes from Lego Ideas users, Lego reviews it for consideration as an official product. Andras' art museum hit 10,000 votes, but, in 2021, Lego announced it wouldn't produce the set.
"I was really bummed because I wanted to buy one," Elliott told the Journal Sentinel in December. "So, a couple of years ago, I sat down and tried to figure out how he built it based on the pictures he had submitted. I kind of reverse-engineered it" using Studio by BrickLink ― a software that allows LEGO fans to virtually design almost anything using unlimited brick styles and colors.
Andras' design was about two feet long and 1½ feet wide, Elliott said. He's unsure if Andras built that model in real life or only rendered it virtually, but, when Elliott attempted to build it, the wings were "so heavy that they drooped and sagged, so it didn't look good," he said.
Elliott said he attempted to reach out to Andras on social media but received no response, so he went "back to the drawing board" and developed another version of the museum that's about half the size of Andras' model.
In November, Elliott posted the step-by-step instructions for that 775-piece museum to Rebrickable. Elliott said he posted the instructions for free because the design was "heavily influenced" by Andras', and he felt it wouldn't be fair to profit from it.
Elliott continued tweaking his design before submitting it to BrickLink's Designer Program Series 7 and told the Journal Sentinel in February that he now feels it's sufficiently different from Andras'.
With his latest model, Elliott said he focused on ensuring that both the wings and the base of the structure were more stable. In addition to rendering the model online, he tested out the wings in the real world.
"I built it with actual Legos to see that the wings would be supported and were still movable," he said. "You can put the wings up or down, like what happens with the actual museum."
Overall, Elliott said his new museum is "just a much better-looking design."
"The other thing I changed ... internally there's a much stronger support, so you can pick up the model without worrying about it falling apart. Lastly, on the back of the museum where the window panes are, there is this slight curve to the building that kind of melts into the foundation. That's really tricky to do with Legos, but I found a way."
In addition to his museum, Elliott is known for his viral Brewers Famous Racing Sausages Lego set idea, which is currently up for vote on Lego Ideas.
Over the summer, Elliott designed Lego replicas of the five iconic Famous Racing Sausages, as well as mascot Bernie Brewer. Each figurine is comprised of about 500 Lego bricks and is about nine inches high and four inches wide. Elliott also designed miniature, square versions of each of the sausages. They're about half the size of his original figurines and fit into Lego's BrickHeadz line.
The sausages ― which Elliott posted on Lego Ideas in August ― have 3,436 votes as of Thursday. They have just over 400 days to get 10,000 votes. If they hit that milestone, Lego will consider them for production. Elliott said it would be up to the toy brand whether the sausages are sold as a set or separately.
With MLB Opening Day on the horizon, Elliott is working toward the necessary vote total by publicizing the sausages in the media. He said he also plans to come to Milwaukee this summer, catch a few Brewers games and encourage fans to vote.
"I'm thinking of doing is maybe ― myself and my son come back to Milwaukee this summer and attend some Brewers games and walk around the parking lot as people tailgate with a big sign saying, 'Please vote,'" Elliott said. "I'll bring the actual models with so people can see and touch them, and that'll hopefully get people interested."
More: Lego set of Racing Sausage built by reporter in time-lapse video
More: Building Bratwurst: Brewers racing sausages Lego set enters its next phase of development
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Lego Milwaukee Art Museum won't be official set, but you can build it
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