The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine / 2022'7 ISSUE 2
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Sarah, Lagos, Nigeria (detail) 2015. Namsa Leuba (Swiss, b. 1982). Image courtesy of Aperture, New York, 2019. © Namsa Leuba
Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine
Vol. 62 no. 2, 2022 (ISSN 1554- 2254). Published quarterly by the Cleveland Museum of Art,
11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland,
Ohio 44106-1797.
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2 2022 / Issue 2
FROM THE DIRECTOR
Dear Members,
As the sun rises on another summer in Cleveland, my colleagues and I look forward to welcoming you to several important new exhibitions and exciting public programs at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
In May, we inaugurated the exhilarating and provocative exhibition The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion. Curated by New York City-based art critic and writer Antwaun Sargent, the show spotlights the work of 15 groundbreaking artists, including Tyler Mitchell, the first Black photographer to shoot a cover for Vogue, and Awol Erizku, whose photographs have appeared in Vogue, GQ, and the New York Times. In Cleveland, the exhibition features vignettes with actual outfits, designed by three leading stylists: Arielle Bobb-Willis, Daniel Obasi, and Jermaine Daley.
Later this summer, the museum will present a number of important instal- lations as part of FRONT 2022. FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art is a major festival of contemporary art comprising artist commissions, performances, films, and public programs. These will unfold across Northeast Ohio and may be seen in spaces throughout Cleveland, Akron, and Oberlin, including in several CMA galleries. Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, this year’s iteration of FRONT, will run from July 16 to October 2. Find more on the museum’s role in this groundbreaking international triennial on pages 12 through 14.
Also opening later this year is an exhibition examining the wide scope of the Keithley Collection. In March 2020, Clevelanders Joseph P. and Nancy F. Keithley donated more than 100 works of art to the museum, the most signif- icant single gift we had received since the bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr. in 1958. Their wonderful and wide-ranging collection focuses on Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern European and American paintings. Among the highlights are five paintings by Pierre Bonnard; four each by Maurice Denis and Edouard Vuillard; two each by Milton Avery, Georges Braque, Gustave Caillebotte, Joan Mitchell, and Félix Vallotton; and remarkable in- dividual works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Andrew Wyeth, and others. The Keithley Collection also includes works on paper, European and American decorative arts, and Chinese and contemporary Japanese ceramics. Western and Asian works will be intentionally juxta- posed in the show, in much the way they were when still in the collectors’ home. We are hugely grateful to the Keithleys for their transformative gift, which CMA visitors will have the opportunity to experience in its entirety for the first time in the fall.
Stepping outside the museum, we will present Summer Arts Fest: Dance with Giants on June 11, Solstice on June 25, and our City Stages world music series later this summer. Please watch your email and visit www.cleveland- art.org for details as they are released.
Finally, I want to invite all of you to come visit us soon. Our outdoor spaces—the Smith Family Gateway and the Wade Lagoon and Oval—are in full bloom, and we have much to explore inside the museum’s doors. Once again, thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
Oo Darth William M. Griswold Director and President
IN THIS ISSUE
The New Black Vanguard
Vibrant, genre-breaking images between art and fashion
On, Goar § Dorl ano Sinbows
ded
FRONT at CMA
Eight contemporary international artists animate the museum’s galleries
10 Art Meets Fashion The New Black Vanguard stylists
16
History Painting Discussing Kerry James Marshall’s Bang on loan
from Progressive
26 Impressionism to Why Born Enslaved! Modernism The museum acquires a The Keithley Collection masterpiece Tales of the City 22 Global Feminisms + Video Art 23 Armor Loan Installation 24 Traveling Artworks 32 Supporter Story 36
12 Julie Mehretu: Portals The artist curates an exhibition from the CMA’s collections
18
Exhibition Schedule A helpful list to plan your next visit
Four Favorites Experiencing the CMA’s permanent collection
www.clevelandart.org 3
SPRING EXHIBITION
The New Black Vanguard
Vibrant, genre-breaking images between art and fashion
Barbara Tannenbaum Chair of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs and Curator of Photography
EXHIBITION
The New Black Vanguard:
Photography between Art and Fashion
Through September 11, 2022
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Gallery
OPPOSITE
Adeline in Barrettes 2018.
Micaiah Carter (American, b. 1995). Image courtesy of Aperture, New York, 2019. © Micaiah Carter
4 2022 / Issue 2
“The beauty of photography,” says Ruth Ossai, “is it starts a dialogue about who we are, where we come from, and where we are going.” Ossai is one of 38 photographers in The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, an exhi- bition organized by curator and critic Antwaun Sargent. These artists belong to a new visual vanguard Sargent has identified, a cadre of Black photographers who attempt to answer the above questions. Living and working in Africa and throughout the African diaspora, they use photog- raphy to open conversations about representation of the Black body and Black lives, to challenge the notion that Blackness is homogenous, and to present new perspectives on notions of race and beauty, gender and power.
The work of these artists revolves around fashion—fashion in the largest sense, from cou- ture clothing and accessories to street styles and self-presentation. You may have seen their pho- tographs in lifestyle, fashion, and culture publi- cations; in ad campaigns for couture houses and major fashion brands; on the artists’ individual social media channels; or on the walls of museums around the world. They produce vibrant portraits and conceptual images that fuse fine art photogra- phy and fashion photography, breaking traditional boundaries between those genres and between the fine art and commercial worlds.
Consider Tyler Mitchell, the first Black artist to shoot a cover of Vogue in its 125-year history. This American photographer and filmmaker was 23 years old and had recently received his BFA from New York University when Beyoncé chose him to shoot the cover and accompanying editorial feature for the magazine’s September 2018 issue. That photograph was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 2019, the same year Mitchell had a solo show at an Amsterdam photography museum, which later traveled to the International Center of Photography in New York City. Awol Erizku, an Ethiopian American, has had work published in Vogue, GQ, and the New York Times and exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Swiss Guinean photographer Namsa Leuba has produced fashion series for Edun and Dior and fashion campaigns for Christian Lacroix and has
been in exhibitions at the Guggenheim Bilbao and London’s Tate Modern.
Fifteen artists are featured in the exhibition, each represented by multiple photographs. A salon wall presents a single work each by 23 ad- ditional Black photographers contributing to this movement. The 38 artists are an international set and span the globe from Lagos to London and Johannesburg to New York. The exhibition con- textualizes their artwork through a display of past and present publications. The former chart the history of inclusion and exclusion in the creation of the Black commercial image; the latter propose a reenvisioned future for it. A video viewing area hosts continuous showings of 11 experimental vid- eos and fashion films by artists in the show who have experimented with the moving image.
The photographs and films in The New Black Vanguard put Black bodies—which have heretofore mostly been excluded from fashion magazines and ad campaigns—at the center of fashion images as well as behind the camera, styling the images, and sometimes also designing the clothing. As photog- rapher Campbell Addy notes, “Fashion has always been a barometer for measuring privilege, power, class, and freedom. To play with fashion is to play with one’s representation in the world.”
The artists in the show challenge the notion of beauty as Eurocentric, expanding the canon to represent a dazzling variety of skin tones and body and hair types. Some of the artists in the show, such as Jamal Nxedlana and Addy, have even formed their own casting agencies to encourage other photographers, editors, and casting agents to employ diverse models. There are images in The New Black Vanguard that feature professional models with what seem like impossibly elongated and thin bodies, but there are many photographs showing models with the proportions that we see around us every day.
Some photographers take fashion out of the studio and into their worlds. Quil Lemons, for instance, selected family, friends, and people he encountered as models. Lemons shot a series in South Philadelphia, where he grew up, that depicts his great-grandmother, mother, and sis- ters wearing dresses by Batsheva, who blends
www.clevelandart.org 5
RIGHT
Sarah, Lagos, Nigeria 2015. Namsa Leuba (Swiss, b. 1982). Image courtesy of Aperture, New York, 2019. © Namsa Leuba
OPPOSITE Lagos, Nigeria 2019.
Stephen Tayo (Nigerian, b. 1994). Image courtesy of Aperture, New York, 2019. © Stephen Tayo
6 2022 / Issue 2
Victorian and American prairie style. Erizku, a Los Angeles-based artist born in Ethiopia and raised in the Bronx, has a series called Untitled Heads. These portraits capture the colorful, creative hair- styles currently sported by his male friends from childhood. Nigerian photographer Stephen Tayo captures the exuberant styles of creative young people and elders on the streets of Lagos, which has a burgeoning metropolitan fashion scene. These artists draw our attention to the beauty, en- ergy, and impact of vernacular art and street style.
The Cleveland showing of The New Black Vanguard offers a unique addition to the exhibition: fashion installations of clothing on mannequins created by three of the stylists whose work is fea- tured in the show. Although fashion and fashion photography have not been a major focus at the Cleveland Museum of Art, its collection contains exquisite and important examples of clothing and textiles from numerous countries and many eras. Our photography and drawing collections also con- tain fashion studies. And the museum has mount- ed exhibitions of garments over the years, most recently Opulent Fashion in the Church in 2017 and Fashioning Identity: Mola Textiles of Panama, which closed a few months ago.
In planning the Cleveland installation of The New Black Vanguard, I had a distinct advantage
over the past curators addressing fashion: the chance to collaborate with two new staff members who are experts in the area. Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator Sarah Scaturro came to us from the Costume Institute at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. She founded the Costume Institute’s conservation department and is both a fashion his- torian and conservator. Darnell-Jamal Lisby, the CMA’s new assistant curator, came from Cooper- Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. A fashion historian, he has a thorough understanding of dress from the 14th century onward, but his par- ticular interest is illuminating the intersection of Blackness and fashion studies in the 20th and 21st centuries. I have had great fun working with both.
Scaturro and Lisby were instrumental in the process of choosing the stylists and coordinating their installations. Their awareness of the history of fashion and how the contemporary world of de- signers and stylists functions has been incredibly beneficial in preparing for this exhibition. The stylists we chose are accustomed to dressing live models and arranging clothes for the motion of the model and the singular brief moments when the shutter snaps. Installing fashion on mannequins that will stand in a gallery for several months re- quires different approaches, all of which are quite familiar to Scaturro. She helped guide the stylists through the process of selecting a mannequin that would work well with their desired look (from a panoply of different manufacturers and styles). As only one of the stylists could be present in person for installation, the other two sent images of how they wanted their installation to look and watched virtually as Scaturro dressed their mannequins, a skill at which she is exceedingly proficient. A Zhuzh (slight adjustment) here, a zhuzh there can make the difference between blah and brilliant in fashion.
Scaturro’s and Lisby’s specialized knowledge have also deepened our understanding of the photographs in The New Black Vanguard. Lisby explicated some of the meaning behind the cloth- ing adorning the model in Leuba’s vividly colored and patterned photograph Sarah, Lagos, Nigeria (reproduced on this page and on the magazine’s cover). The image belongs to a 2015 series called NGL or Next Generation Lagos. It attempts to capture, says the artist, “the energy of the city of Lagos—its chaos, vibrancy, and determination— and seeks to translate that spirit into a unique
www.clevelandart.org 7
8 2022 / Issue 2
OPPOSITE
Fire on the Beach 2019. Dana Scruggs (American). Image courtesy of Aperture, New York, 2019. © Dana Scruggs
BELOW
Late Leisure 2019. Jamal Nxedlana (South African, b. 1985). Image courtesy of Aperture, New York, 2019. © Jamal Nxedlana
visual language.” The series features the clothing of young, cutting-edge Nigerian designers. The jacket in Sarah, by Ituen Basi Torlowei, integrates wax print fabrics, which derived from Dutch co- lonial trade, with Indigenous textiles like Akwete (a Nigerian handwoven fabric). Torlowei and other young African designers sometimes subvert tech- niques that arose through colonialism, converting them to their own, post-colonial vocabulary.
Those designers, Leuba’s photographs of their work, and all the works in The New Black Vanguard could be described as visual activism, a term used by Sargent. While the photographs and installa- tions in the exhibition explore fashion, it becomes a vehicle through which to address issues of race and beauty, gender and power. As Mitchell declares, “To convey Black beauty is an act of justice.”
The exhibition is organized by Aperture, New York, and Is curated by Antwaun Sargent.
The New Black Vanguard is made possible in part by A/rbnb Magazine.
Major support Is provided by PNC Bank. Generous support Is provided by Donald F. and Anne T. Palmer.
© PNC
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Dr. Ben H. and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam
J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Anne H. Well, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage.
www.clevelandart.org 9
SUMMER EXHIBITION
Art Meets Fashion
Darnell-Jamal Lisby Assistant Curator
EXHIBITION
The New Black Vanguard:
Photography between Art and Fashion
Through September 11, 2022
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Gallery
LEFT Magic Hour (sketch of
installation) 2022. Jermaine Daley (American, b. 1990). Courtesy of Jermaine Daley
RIGHT
To Be with You, Sucha View (sketch of installation) 2022. Arielle Bobb-Willis (American, b. 1994). Courtesy of Arielle Bobb- Willis
10 2022 / Issue 2
The New Black Vanguard stylists
From dressing celebrities for red carpets and music videos to developing the creative direction for fashion magazine editorials and fashion cam- paigns, it is the stylist who assembles compelling outfits that enthrall audiences. A stylist’s role is to choose and assemble all the garments and acces- sories that speak to a story and, most importantly, determine how those elements are placed onto the body. Their choices of an item of clothing or how they arrange an outfit can spark an international trend. To illuminate the essential role of the stylist in fashion photography, as the CMA’s assistant curator with a focus in fashion, along with a cu- ratorial team, | invited three stylists to add their creativity to The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion. Each was tasked with de- veloping an ensemble of clothing to be displayed on a mannequin in the galleries in conjunction with the photographs that compose the main portion of the exhibition.
Arielle Bobb-Willis and Daniel Obasi both work as stylists and photographers, and Jermaine Daley is a stylist who collaborates with photographers. Their ensembles reveal the stylists’ individual per- spectives on how fashion can express a range of Black experiences and encourage viewers to com- pare the experience of viewing fashion in person versus through a photographer’s lens.
Fashion is a remarkable medium that emotional- ly connects with audiences; many communities see it as a vehicle for self-expression and identity. For Bobb-Willis, Obasi, and Daley, these installations
W 5ft
spark an important conversation about how Blackness is a dynamic umbrella where style is a form of unity as well as a platform to voice diverse perspectives vital to the community’s existence.
Daley is a stylist centering his practice on mens- wear. His installation, Magic Hour, was inspired by the colorful sunsets he saw while visiting the Seychelles. The Plexiglas background, designed by sculptor Marcus Manganni, shines with a prism- like effect, evoking the hues of those singular mo- ments. Daley’s choices convey a fresh take on the traditional men’s suit, illuminating stability and tranquility in this time of turmoil.
Obasi is a Nigerian artist who works in multiple roles across fashion, photography, and film. His installation, At last... Love! arose from his inter- est in confronting the regulation of queer love by Nigerian religious and political systems. The celes- tial elements of the ensemble reflect some of Obasi’s artistic influences, including Afrofuturism, which is the reimagination of Black experiences through their intersection with science, technology, and art.
Like Obasi, Bobb-Willis is both a stylist and pho- tographer. Her installation, Jo Be with You, Such a View, draws inspiration from the endless forms created by treating the human body as sculpture. Her process includes modifying thrift-store cloth- ing to complement the contorted shapes created by the body. She says, “Reality is great, but it could be more fun.” Similarly, she wants people to feel a sense of joy when they see her work.
At last . . . Love (sketch of installation) 2022. Daniel Obasi (Nigerian, b. 1994). Courtesy of Daniel Obasi
The exhibition is organized by Aperture, New York, and is curated by Antwaun Sargent.
The New Black Vanguard is made possible in part by A/rbnb Magazine.
Major support is provided by PNC Bank. Generous support is provided by Donald F. and Anne T. Palmer.
@©PNC
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Dr. Ben H. and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and
Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr.,
the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust
in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Tim O'Brien and Breck Platner, Anne H. Weil, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage.
www.clevelandart.org 11
SUMMER EXHIBITION
Julie Mehretu: Portals
Internationally renowned contemporary artist curates an exhibition from
Emily Liebert Curator of Contemporary Art
EXHIBITION
FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art
July 16-October 2, 2022
CMA galleries; see exhibitions listing
EFT Julie Mehretu. hoto: Julie Mehretu Studio
is}
RIGHT
Seated Buddha AD 400— 430. Northern India, Uttar Pradesh, Mathura, Gupta period (c. AD 320-550). Red mottled sandstone; h. 82 cm.
Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, 1973.214
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Dr. Ben H. and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Anne H. Weil, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage.
12 2022 / Issue 2
the CMA’s collections
On the occasion of FRONT 2022, Julie Mehretu: Portals offers a fresh perspective on the Cleveland Museum of Art’s encyclopedic collections through an artist’s eyes. This exhibition, the first ofits kind at the CMA, integrates paintings by Julie Mehretu with works from the museum’s collections that Mehretu has selected and curated within the gal- lery. Spanning a range of cultures, histories, and mediums, the works she has chosen reflect images and ideas that inspire her own artistic practice and process.
Mehretu is one of the leading artists of her generation. Born in Ethiopia in 1970, she grew up in Michigan and now lives in New York. Her art is abstract, but it is always firmly rooted in the recognizable world. Each work—whether a paint- ing, a drawing, or a print—stems from her deep engagement with history, politics, and the social life unfolding outside her studio walls.
Mehretu’s early paintings explore architec- tural structures and systems of mapping. In her recent work, regard for the body—its forms and passages through the world—resides at the cen- ter. Throughout, her work is distinguished by a density created through overlapping layers of ideas, source materials, and varied modes of mark making. These characteristics of Mehretu’s art are amplified throughout this exhibition.
Julie Mehretu: Portals was developed through research and discussions that took place over a yearlong period between Mehretu and curators at the Cleveland Museum of Art and FRONT International. It marks the start of a long-term engagement between Mehretu and Cleveland: the artist will debut an outdoor mural in downtown Cleveland in 2023.
Visitors to Julie Mehretu: Portals will be greeted by Seated Buddha (AD 400-430) from the CMA’s collection of Indian art. This work signals the importance of the figure to Mehretu’s visual thinking, demonstrated throughout this exhibition in her selection of figurative works that span civ- ilizations, geographies, and media. Mehretu ob- serves how Seated Buddha and the other figurative sculptures she has selected—such as the Roman Torso of Apollo (AD 100-200) and the Congolese Male Figure (1880)—bear physical traces of having traveled from their original cultural contexts to the CMA where they live as museum objects.
An interest in bodies moving through space is at the core of Mehretu’s own work as well. In her Untitled (brigade) (2005), one of the works featured in this show, layered architectural drawings of a military-industrial city structure the painting’s abstract composition. During the period when Mehretu made this work, she often used maps,
TOP
The Cave Door of Spring 1825. Totoya Hokkei (Japanese, 1780-1850). Pentaptych of woodblock
prints; ink and color on paper;
each: 18.8 x 21.4 cm. Bequest of James Parmelee, 1940.990
BOTTOM LEFT
Untitled, or the Burning Pin 1990. Louise Bourgeois (American, 1911-2010). Drypoint; 49.3 x 56.2 cm. John L. Severance Fund, 1991.229. © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
BOTTOM RIGHT
Rho I 1977. Jack Whitten (American, 1939-2018). Acrylic on canvas; 182.8 x 213.2 cm. Gift of Scott C. Mueller and Margaret Fulton Mueller, 2010.1. © Jack Whitten
wayfinding signage, and architectural imagery to explore the impact of these and related sys- tems of physical organization on individuals and communities.
The relationship in Untitled (brigade) between the body, architecture, and abstraction also comes to the fore in works from the CMA’s collection se- lected by Mehretu for this exhibition, such as Jack Whitten’s Rho I (1977) and Isamu Noguchi’s Model for Portal (1977). The latter work, to which the exhibition refers in its title, is a small-scale repre- sentation of Noguchi’s Portal, a 36-foot-tall outdoor sculpture in downtown Cleveland. Fabricated lo- cally, Portal is made of a single continuous black steel pipe whose elegant abstract form offers a visual threshold between the city and its Justice Center, for which the sculpture was commissioned. Portal is located near the site of Mehretu’s forth- coming outdoor mural.
Untitled (brigade) is built primarily from a dense accumulation of dashes, a repetitive and or- dered system of mark making that differs from the looser gestures of Mehretu’s later works, such as eye of (Thoth) (2021), also on view in the exhibition. In this work, translucent layers of luminous color hover over a dense array of gestural marks, both handmade and digitally created. The frenetic qual- ity of the marks is enhanced by their dispersal all
over the painting’s composition, which never yields a place for the viewer’s eye to rest. Conjuring the ever-moving hand of its maker, the vibrant energy of this abstraction appears to be barely contained by its frame. The dynamism of abstract gestures in eye of (Thoth) is found elsewhere throughout the exhibition in works such as an untitled drawing by Norman Lewis from 1960 and Louise Bourgeois’s Untitled, or the Burning Pin (1990).
The visual rhythms of Mehretu’s work are often informed by music and sound. This connection becomes more vivid through her inclusion in the exhibition of works such as Arthur Dove’s Spiral Sketchbook No. VI (c. 1938-44), in which he ex- plored the ways certain combinations of form, color, and line can evoke the same emotional and physical responses as the harmonies of musical sound, and the Japanese woodblock print series The Cave Door of Spring (1825), which is filled with images of music making and dancing.
Through Julie Mehretu: Portals, the CMA looks forward to inviting its audiences to experience novel encounters with historical and contempo- rary art alike.
www.clevelandart.org 13
SUMMER -EXFIBITION
FRONT International 2022 at CMA
Eight contemporary international artists animate
Emily Liebert Curator of Contemporary Art
Barbara Tannenbaum Chair of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs and Curator of Photography
Nadiah Rivera Fellah Associate Curator of Contemporary Art
Britany Salsbury Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings
EXHIBITION
FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art
July 16-October 2, 2022
CMA galleries; see exhibitions listing
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten
by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions.
Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Dr. Ben H. and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and
Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr.,
the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust
in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Anne H. Weil, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage.
14 2022 / Issue 2
the museum’s galleries
Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, the second iter- ation of FRONT International, is a multi-venue exhibition that embraces art as an agent of trans- formation, a mode of healing, and a therapeutic process. The title is an homage to the 1957 poem “Two Somewhat Different Epigrams” by Langston Hughes. A tender, brutal, and provocative prayer, the poem meditates on the inseparability of joy and suffering. Expanding on Hughes’s invocation, FRONT 2022 explores how art making offers the possibility to transform and heal people—as indi- viduals, as groups, and as a society. The triennial also demonstrates how aesthetic pleasure—shar- ing joy through movement, music, craft, and color—can bridge differences between people to bring them together. Finally, the exhibition sug- gests ways that art making can speak with power, showing people how to recognize and reimagine the invisible structures that govern contemporary life.
The CMA is a presenting partner of FRONT International. As part of the multi-venue exhibition, CMA curators Emily Liebert, Nadiah Rivera Fellah, Britany Salsbury, and Barbara Tannenbaum and Tom Welsh, director of performing arts, have organized seven exhibitions with eight artists throughout the museum’s galleries. These pre- sentations reflect and amplify different aspects of FRONT International 2022’s primary interests and curatorial considerations.
Julie Mehretu: Portals will be on view in the Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery. For this exhibition, works by the internationally renowned artist Julie Mehretu (American, born 1970) will be in conversation with works from the CMA’s encyclopedic collection that Mehretu has selected because of their affinities with her own artistic practice. For more information on this exhibition, see page 12 in this issue.
At the opening and closing of FRONT, Michele Rizzo (Italian, born 1984) and Maria Hassabi (Greek, born 1973), respectively, will give dance performances in the Ames Family Atrium. Newly adapted for the CMA, Rizzo’s choreographic work HIGHER xtn (2018) considers the unique spaces of nightclubs and the ways they afford both self- expression and community for the dancers who
frequent them. Throughout the piece, a group of trained dancers perform minimal, repetitive movements to a hypnotic electronic soundtrack.
Making its debut at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Hassabi’s work CANCELLED (2022) considers womanhood from perspectives that cross gener- ations. Four female performers’ choreography is composed of individual solos that display poses historically associated with women based on everyday mannerisms throughout history and rooted in Hassabi’s signature style of stillness and deceleration.
Nicole Eisenman: A Decade of Printing will be presented in the James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Gallery. A prolific and highly in- fluential painter and sculptor, Nicole Eisenman (French American, born 1965) recasts art histori- cal tropes in contemporary settings, often explor- ing experiences of community and isolation in today’s world. The works on view reveal how print- making has emerged over the past ten years as a primary vehicle for Eisenman to consider these themes, translating them across media through close collaborations with three master printers.
In Toby’s Gallery for Contemporary Art, two new works by Yoshitomo Nara (Japanese, born 1959) will be integrated into the CMA’s display of its permanent collection. That of one of the most celebrated contemporary Japanese artists, Nara’s work across mediums draws on a range of sources, including music, literature, and childhood memo- ries. This presentation will include a painting of a child from a series for which the artist is best known and a ceramic vessel in which he brings to- gether his interests in painted imagery, sculptural form, and language.
FRONT. Matt Eich and Tyler Mitchell, in the Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Gallery, will bring together work by Matt Eich (American, born 1986) and Tyler Mitchell (American, born 1995), artists who share an interest in belong- ing, transformation, and the American South. The works in this exhibition set joyful scenes of leisure, languor, and personal contentment into the Southern landscape. Both artists use photog- raphy, most often associated with recording fact, to suggest the possibilities of transformation, a
On,
delight in the senses, and the engaging mystery of the transitory.
A newly commissioned installation by Firelei Baez (Dominican American, born 1981) will be fea- tured in the museum’s east wing glass box gallery. Known for large-scale paintings and immersive installations that conjure lavish fictional picto- rial worlds, Baez will create an installation that integrates narratives of colonized cultures often overlooked in Western art history. In particular, the painting and sculpture on view are rooted in
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Baez’s ongoing consideration of the ciguapa: a bold and alluring female creature found throughout Dominican folklore.
“The FRONT presentation at the CMA is an opportunity to play with different timeframes for art and art making,” says Prem Krishnamurthy, FRONT’s artistic director. “When art spans this spectrum, I believe it can begin to tweak our ev- eryday experience and expectations of the world in transformative ways.”
www.clevelandart.org 15
INTERVIEW
History Painting as a Slow Read
Discussing Kerry James Marshall’s Bang on loan from Progressive
Nadiah Rivera Fellah Associate Curator of Contemporary Art
ON VIEW Bang
Toby’s Gallery for Contemporary Art | Gallery 229A
16 2022 / Issue 2
On April 1, a major installation of artworks was unveiled in the contemporary galleries. A center- piece of the rotation is the new addition of Kerry James Marshall’s Bang (1994), which came to the museum through a generous loan from the Progressive Insurance Corporation. Nadiah Rivera Fellah, associate curator of contemporary art, spoke with H. Scott Westover, Progressive’s cura- tor, about the history and imagery of the painting.
Nadiah Rivera Fellah (NRF): How did this work come to be in Cleveland?
H. Scott Westover (HSW): Progressive Corporation acquired this artwork in 1994, and at that time, the piece was purchased by Toby Devan Lewis [Progressive’s founding curator], expressly for the grand opening of the new Progressive head- quarters in Mayfield Village, Ohio. She had done a walkthrough of the building as it was being con- structed, and the building was designed in part to house an art collection. Kerry James Marshall also had a solo show at the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art [now MOCA Cleveland] in 1994, so his work was featured in Cleveland the same year.
NRF: Of Kerry James Marshall’s paintings, why was Bang chosen for Progressive’s collection?
HSW: Our audience [at Progressive] is impressed by the transformative capacity that artworks have. They become new again in each era or in each sociopolitical circumstance, so that history, in a real-time way, updates the artworks. An artwork that is questioning patriotism or taking an incisive look at patriotic behavior by a group of children has the potential to do that. In a sense, children are in a vulnerable position when we are intro- ducing them to social patterns and norms that we want them to follow because they’re often expected to do things or perform behaviors before they fully understand them. We know these young children of color [in the painting] are marginalized in other ways, so their performance of patriotism becomes especially unsettling. Marshall’s depiction of the hyper-synthetic suburban environment almost seems unreal. When you look at the painting, you wonder, do they live there, or are they visiting? I
imagine the artist is pleased with that ambiguity. So we understood that these are concepts that are going to recur time and again, and that as history plays out, this painting will continue to be reborn.
NRF: So there’s a timelessness to the work, in that the painting is continually activated by historical circumstances and contemporary conversations?
HSW: Yes. What is it to show solemn patriotism, and can you show respect around the flag with- out saluting it? Because it’s not clear who among the children is the most fervent and who among them is merely performing patriotism. It’s possible that even one or two of them are not interested at all, or don’t know enough to care. Their facial expressions and body language are super rich and complex in this way.
Within the first year of Progressive acquiring Bang, Marshall visited [Progressive headquarters] for a site visit. His best statement during that visit, and a quote that we continue to reference, was: “Art is a slow read.” He talked about himself as a history painter, and history painting in general, and how large-scale canvases capture many facets and senses of a period within one grand scene. He challenged us to explore the painting for all its nuances to get a fuller picture, kind of like reading a book. And he said do it slowly.
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Bang 1994. Kerry James Marshall (American, b. 1955). Acrylic and collage on canvas; 261.5 x 289.4 cm. Courtesy of The Progressive Corporation, 3.2022
www.clevelandart.org 17
EXHIBITIONS
Exhibitions through August 2022
MEMBERS SEE ALL TICKETED EXHIBITIONS FOR FREE
Alberto Giacometti: Toward the Ultimate Figure
Through June 12, 2022
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall
This exhibition of Alberto Giacometti’s masterpieces from the postwar years (1945-66) examines
a central, animating aspect of his oeuvre: his extraordinary, singular concern for the human figure. Co-organized by the Fondation Giacometti in Paris and the Cleveland Museum of Art, the exhibition will also be presented at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston;
the Seattle Art Museum; and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.
Women in Print: Recent Acquisitions Through June 19, 2022
James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Gallery | Gallery 101
Featured are approximately 30 works by contemporary women printmakers who have experimented with an array of techniques over the past several decades to explore subjects ranging from identity and social issues to the creative process itself.
Currents and Constellations: Black Art in Focus
Through June 26, 2022
Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery | Gallery 010
This exhibition puts art from the CMA’s permanent collection
18 2022 / Issue 2
in conversation with a vanguard of emerging and mid-career Black artists, as each explores the fundamentals of art making, embracing and challenging art history.
Medieval Treasures from Minster Cathedral Through August 14, 2022
Gallery 115
This exhibition presents seven of the most spectacular treasures and reliquaries from the 1000s to the 1500s kept in the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Munster.
The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion
Through September 11, 2022
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Gallery
Young Black artists from Africa and the African diaspora explore the cross-pollination of art, fashion, and culture. Their photographs, videos, and publications present new perspectives on photography and notions of race and beauty, gender and power. Installations of fashion elucidate the art of the stylist.
Cycles of Life: The Four Seasons Tapestries Through February 19, 2023
Arlene M. and Arthur S. Holden Textile Gallery | Gallery 234
Last displayed in 1953, this rare set of four late 17th- or early 18th-century French tapestries from the CMA’s collection is examined through four themes—their initial design and production, subsequent reproduction
and alteration, later acquisition by the museum, and recent conservation treatment.
FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art
July 16-October 2, 2022
Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows is a multi-venue exhibition embracing
art as an agent of transformation, a mode of healing, and a therapeutic process. CMA-based projects for the festival include: Firelei Bdez, Betty T. and David M. Schneider Gallery (218, east glass box); Nicole Eisenman, James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Gallery (101); Matt Eich and Tyler Mitchell, Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Gallery (230); Maria Hassabi, Ames Family Atrium; Julie Mehretu, Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery (010); Yoshitomo Nara, Toby’s Gallery for Contemporary Art (229C); and Michele Rizzo, Ames Family Atrium.
Spiral Jetty Through August 7, 2022
Video Project Room | Gallery 224B
Spiral Jetty serves as a companion to Robert Smithson’s iconic, monumental earthwork of the same name, which he constructed in 1970 at Rozel Point on the northeastern shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. The film documents the siting and making of the work, interspersing imagery of maps, aerial views of the lake, and footage of Smithson driving through the landscape.
Global Feminisms + Video Art
August 7-December 4, 2022
Video Project Room | Gallery 224B
Global Feminisms features three video works from the 1970s through the 1990s from global artists who have significantly impacted the video art medium and contemporary art. In each video, artists use the human body to gesture to social, political, and psychological dissonance in ways that are shocking,
unnerving, and humorous.
The exhibition features work by American artist Patty Chang, Brazilian artist Lygia Pape, and Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist.
PERMANENT COLLECTION INSTALLATIONS
Martial Art of India Through August 21, 2022
Indian Painting Gallery | Gallery 242B
Scenes of battles and portraits of soldiers
in Indian painting
include both historical and mythical, real and idealized images—and often in combination. This selection of paintings from the museum’s permanent collection reveals a range of depictions, from historical documents to illustrations of epic tales.
Contemporary Installation
Through September 25, 2022
Toby’s Galleries for Contemporary Art; Paula and Eugene Stevens Gallery | Galleries 229A-C
A new installation in the contemporary
galleries features recent acquisitions, including Rashid Johnson’s Standing Broken Men and Kambui Olujimi’s /ta/o as well as works by Chris Ofili, Olga de Amaral, and Elias Sime, among others.
Japan’s Floating World BAO Through October 2, 2022
Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Japanese Art Galleries | Galleries 235A-B
A significant share of paintings, prints, and decorative arts made in Japan from the mid-1700s to mid-1800s captured artists’ responses to urban sex and entertainment districts unofficially known as the ukiyo G#t#), or “floating world.” Images of courtesans and musicians vie with those of Kabuki actors and a sumo wrestler for attention in the spring installation (through
July 10), while prints of boating parties on the Sumida River feature in the summer installation July 12-October 2).
Creating Urgency: Modern and Contemporary Korean Art
Through October 23, 2022
Korea Foundation Gallery | Gallery 236
The selected works on view inspire a stimulating conversation about Korean artists and their expressive urgency of defining and shaping their diasporic artistic identity. Two recent CMA acquisitions, Suh Se Ok’s Person and Haegue Yang’s The Intermediate— Naturalized Klangkoerper, make their debut.
Escaping to a Better World: Eccentrics and Immortals in Chinese Art Through November 6, 2022
Clara T. Rankin Galleries of Chinese Art | Gallery 240A
These works narrate stories through paintings, porcelain, and metalwork of legendary figures
who exhibit otherworldly behavior and appearances and embody our human longing to escape this world.
Ancient Andean Textiles Through December 4, 2022
Jon A. Lindseth and Virginia M. Lindseth, PhD, Galleries of the Ancient Americas | Gallery 232
Textiles from several different civilizations that flourished in the ancient Andes, today mainly Peru, are unified through their uniqueness, whether
their rarity, complexity
of execution, or luxuriousness of materials.
Native North America Through December 4, 2022
Sarah P. and William R. Robertson Gallery | Gallery 231
This display features a group of objects from the Great Plains, including
a child’s beaded cradle, several beaded or painted bags, and a woman’s hairpipe necklace, one of the most memorable of Plains ornaments.
Arts of Africa Through December 18, 2022
Galleries 1O8A-C
Seventeen rarely seen or newly acquired 19th- to 20th-century works from northern, southern, and western Africa have been installed, supporting continuing efforts to broaden the scope of African arts on view at the CMA. Marking the first inclusion of a northern African artist in this space, digitally carved alabaster tablets by contemporary Algerian artist Rachid Koraichi make their debut.
Text and Image in Southern Asia
August 26, 2022-March 5, 2023
Gallery 242B
IIluminated manuscripts made for Jain and Buddhist communities include examples from India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Myanmar (Burma), ranging from the 1100s to 1800s. Complementing them are Buddhist and Jain paintings, votive sculptures, and vintage photographs of temples and sites that are major repositories of medieval manuscripts.
The Medieval Top Seller: The Book of Hours August 26, 2022-July 30, 2023
Gallery 115
Devotional books containing daily and special occasion prayers, books of hours were extremely popular in the Middle Ages. As they were intended primarily for lay people, these precious volumes are windows into the medieval world and the lives of their original owners.
. FZ
Adut Akech 2019. Campbell Addy (British, b. 1993). Image courtesy of Aperture, New York, 2019. © Campbell Addy
The Cleveland Museum of Art is funded in part by residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.
These exhibitions were supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Dr. Ben
H. and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of
Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Anne H. Weil, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage.
www.clevelandart.org 19
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Impressionism to Modernism
Heather Lemonedes Brown Virginia N. and Randall J. Barbato Deputy Director and Chief Curator
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection
September 11, 2022- January 8, 2023
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Dr. Ben H. and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and
Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr.,
the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust
in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage.
The Cleveland Museum of Art
is funded in part by residents
of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.
This exhibition was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.
20 2022 / Issue 2
The Keithley Collection
Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection, one of this fall’s exhibitions, will cele- brate the extraordinary gift and promised gift of art from Clevelanders Joseph P. and Nancy F. Keithley to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Announced in March 2020, the gift of more than 100 works of art is the most significant since the bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr. in 1958. The exhibition, which will take place in the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall, will include the Keithley’s gift and promised gift, allowing visitors for the first time to enjoy the richness and breadth of this collection in its entirety.
The Keithley’s collection focuses on Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern European and American paintings. Among the highlights are five paintings by Pierre Bonnard; four each by Maurice Denis and Edouard Vuillard; two each by Milton Avery, Georges Braque, Gustave Caillebotte, Joan Mitchell, and Félix Vallotton; and individual pictures of outstanding quality by Henri-Edmond Cross, Vilhelm Hammershgi, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, and Andrew Wyeth. The Keithleys also collected works on paper; among the drawings are six watercolors of Maine by American modernist John Marin, five drawings by Nabi artist Bonnard, and a seascape in pastel by Eugéne Boudin, whose work inspired the Impressionists. Also in the gift is a group of highly realized 17th-century Dutch drawings and watercolors depicting landscapes and flowers.
Additionally, the Keithleys collected Chinese ce- ramics. Visitors will discover teaware and storage vessels from the Southern Song dynasty as well as majestic porcelains from the Yuan dynasty and Ming dynasty. The Keithleys also had sustained interest in contemporary Japanese ceramics and collected examples by the finest potters of the 2oth century. In the exhibition, Asian ceramics will be shown with Western paintings, drawings, and prints to echo the harmonies created by the Keithleys, who enjoyed juxtaposing works of art in their collection through their Shaker Heights home.
From two decades of collecting, the works of art selected by the Keithleys will complement and enrich the museum’s collection. Guided by their tastes and the advice of directors, curators, and
conservators at the CMA, the Keithleys acquired works that build on strengths in the CMA’s col- lection. This autumn’s exhibition will be supple- mented by 25 works from the museum’s permanent collection, inviting visitors to discover connections between familiar works and objects on view for the first time. For example, the Keithley’s gift includes a landscape depicting Trouville, a town on the coast of Normandy, by Impressionist Caillebotte. This coastal view complements Portrait of a Man by Caillebotte, a bequest from Clevelander Muriel Butkin received in 2009. In addition, the Keithleys have promised to give a still life of chicken, game birds, and hares by the same artist. The three paintings together—portrait, landscape, and still life—compose the most fulsome representation of the Impressionist’s work at any museum in the United States.
Another of my favorite juxtapositions in the exhibition is of two dining scenes by Bonnard. The Dessert (1921), a gift of the Hanna Fund in 1949, shows the artist’s companion Marthe listlessly gazing out a window, accompanied by a young man, Ari Redon, the son of the artist Odilon Redon, and the family pet, a dachshund. In the Keithleys’ Fruit and Fruit Dishes (c. 1930), Bonnard once again painted a dining room table set with a white tablecloth that reflects a kaleidoscope of shimmer- ing colors. This dining scene is absent of human figures, but a cat and dog can be glimpsed at the lower corners of the composition, animating the afternoon meal.
The Keithleys’ gift has also vastly enriched the museum’s holdings of works by Abstract Expressionist Mitchell. Alongside her early paint- ing Metro, given to the museum by Clevelander Mrs. John B. Dempsey in 1969, visitors will discover two later, monumental paintings by the artist: Gouise (1966) and Some More (1980). The three works together demonstrate Mitchell’s artistic evolution and the ways in which her painting style became increasingly vibrant, tactile, and bold. We invite visitors to select their favorite works of art from the Keithleys’ generous gift and to discover poetic conversations between recent additions to the mu- seum’s collection and familiar favorites.
Villas at Trouville 1884. Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848-1894). Oil on canvas; 66 x 81.3 cm. Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift, 2020.105
www.clevelandart.org 21
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Tales of the City
Emily J. Peters
Curator of Prints and Drawings
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel
October 9, 2022-January 8, 2023
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Gallery
Desidia (Sloth) 1557. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlandish, 1526/27— 1569). Pen and brown ink on paper; 21.4 x 29.6 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna
The exhibition catalogue for Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel was produced with the generous support of the Tavolozza Foundation.
Generous support is provided by Randall J. and Virginia N. Barbato.
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Mr. and
Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr.,
the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust
in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage.
22 2022 / Issue 2
Dm».
y
During the Northern Renaissance, cities of the Low Countries (present-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) offered vibrant and fertile settings for all types of art making. Growing urban populations, enriched by international trade, attracted artists to Antwerp, Brussels, Haarlem, and other cities starting around 1500 to provide decoration for civic, religious, and domestic spaces. These artists created large paintings or sculptures but also played multifaceted roles as designers of tapestries, stained glass, silverware, prints, and even theatrical tableaux, relying on drawing to facilitate many artistic endeavors. Tales of the City presents the breadth and mastery of Netherlandish drawing with over 80 works from the Albertina Museum in Vienna, one of the world’s finest drawing collections.
At the end of the 15th century, drawing was an occasionally used medium, but around 1500, Hieronymus Bosch and others began to draw to prepare their commissions, provide records of designs, and make autonomous sheets. Soon,
Works from one of the world’s finest drawing collections
artists developed new techniques using pen and ink, colored chalks, and colored ink washes and watercolors. An emerging class of wealthy, middle- class urbanites began to appreciate drawings that could be displayed in their homes. These changes to the way drawings were made and utilized resulted in an extreme diversity of experimental types and techniques—from sketches to precious works embellished with gold—all of which will be displayed in the exhibition.
Changes also emerged in subject matter. As the Protestant Reformation took hold in northern Europe, artists sought alternatives to traditional religious imagery. After 1550, in Antwerp, Pieter Bruegel the Elder designed prints with a precise pen and ink technique that met the demand for innovative subject matter, often moralizing in tone. Beautiful, intricate, at times bizarre or comical, Netherlandish drawings offer a glimpse into the working methods and innovations that led to the adornment of important European Renaissance cities.
VIDEO PROJECT RQOM
Global Feminisms + Video Art
Nadiah Rivera Fellah Associate Curator of Contemporary Art
INSTALLATION
Global Feminisms + Video Art
August 7-December 4, 2022
Video Project Room | Gallery 224B
(Entlastungen) Pippilottis Fehler / (Absolutions) Pipilotti’s Mistakes (installation view) 1988. Pipilotti Rist (Swiss, b. 1962). Video, color, sound; 11:17 min. Louis D. Kacalieff, MD, Fund, 2020.272
Gestures of dissonance
Video art emerged in the 1960s as an open-ended form of art making that was an alternative to traditional media. Feeling unconstrained, artists experimented with this time-based medium alone in their studios, out in the world, or through crit- ical reconfigurations of archival footage. Global Feminisms + Video Art, on view in the CMA’s Video Project Room from August 7 to December 4, 2022, features three global, feminist artists’ work from the 1970s through the 1990s who have had signif- icant historical impact on the video art medium and contemporary art in general. In each of the videos, artists use the human body to gesture to social, political, and psychological dissonance in ways that are at once shocking, unnerving, and humorous.
Brazilian artist Lygia Pape’s 1975 Eat Me references the Brazilian cultural metaphor of anthropophagy, or cannibalism of the “other” to gain energy, and uses this as a metaphor for Brazilians’ ability to digest European culture and transform it into something original and new. The video features a close-up of a man’s mouth, eating, chewing, and spitting out fragmented ob- jects. Both mesmerizing and repulsive, the video is a commentary on the violence of the Brazilian dictatorship at the time of its creation.
Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s 1988 Absolutions, Pipilotti’s Mistakes juxtaposes images of the artist collapsing to the ground with bursts of scrambled electronic distortion, a common glitch in analog TV. The piece explores the imperfections of the video machine and fuses it with Rist’s own per- sonal mistakes, creating a captivating, rhythmic work of art on screen.
Lastly, American artist Patty Chang’s 1998 Melons (At a Loss) shows the artist mutilating and eating a melon as a surrogate breast while discussing the death of her aunt, a performance that is both absurd and subverts expectations of exoticized female bodies. Her performance for the camera transgresses familiar expressions of grief and the expected language of television. Through her actions and speech, viewers encounter a de- scriptive narrative and experimental performance of endurance that, in under four minutes, abruptly ends.
Each artist explores history, contemporary issues, and cultural identities from a feminist perspective. These three short videos capture the experimental approaches to the video medium across three decades that have continued to shape the multimedia landscape of contemporary art.
www.clevelandart.org 23
IS THE GALLERIES NOW
Armor Loan Installation
Gerhard Lutz Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art
Amanda Mikolic Curatorial Assistant
INSTALLATION Riistkammer Armor Loans Through 2024
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Armor Court | Galleries 210A-C
Light Armor of Alfonso II d’Este (1533-1597)
c. 1550-60. Northern
Italy, Milan? Steel, etched with gold. Lent by the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Hofjagd- und Rustkammer, Vienna.
© Hofjagd- und Rustkammer, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
24 2022 / Issue 2
Four significant suits from Vienna
In May, the museum was pleased to welcome four historically important suits of armor from the Ristkammer collection at the Imperial Habsburg Armouries, now part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, on a long-term loan to our Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Armor Court. This collaboration has been ongoing since 2014, thanks to the generous support of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation. The main works
of the collections of the Riistkammer date back to the 1500s, when the Habsburgs were at the peak of their power. Not only had they held the throne of the Holy Roman Empire without interruption since 1440, but they also had successively taken over the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, as well as the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal and their colonies in the New World. During this period, one of the most important collections of armor in the world developed, which has been preserved in Vienna to this day. The quality of our gallery is increased by these pieces of exceptional and rare armor, which are no longer available on today’s art market. In addition, our audience is offered insight into the special qualities of the Viennese collections.
One of the suits on loan was made for the personal use of Maximilian I (1459-1519), one of the most famous members of the Habsburg family and a great enthusiast of knightly skills. He sponsored some of the most ex- travagant tournaments of his era and was a noted patron of fine armor. The suit, likely made for the festivities surrounding his coronation as King of the Romans in 1486, bears the mark of Lorenz Helmschmied, a member of one of the foremost families of armor- ers in late medieval Europe. Known as a Stechzeug, this highly specialized suit was fashioned for a specific ver- sion of the joust known as the Stechen, or joust of peace, which used a blunt- ed lance. Some versions of the Stechen eliminated the tilt barrier, the wall separating two mounted combatants. Without this barrier, the possibility of dangerous collisions between rid- ers necessitated the development of specialized heavy armor to protect the contestants. A blind shaffron was needed to make sure the horse did not deviate from its course out of fear of colliding with the oncoming opponent.
cas
*” 3
The armor also features a “frog-mouthed” helmet, inside of which would have been an additional padded helmet to help further protect and immo- bilize the wearer’s head.
Another suit was once worn by Alfonso II d’Este (1533-1597), the last duke of Ferrara and brother-in-law to the Habsburg collector Archduke Ferdinand II. It was likely commissioned for a spe- cial ceremonial occasion and is a superb example of Italian craftsmanship. Armor followed the fash- ion trends of clothing, so, at that time, rounded forms were favored, mimicking puffed and slashed britches and hose. Also popular was a high-cut neckline that gently flared at the base, a feature that can be seen in this suit in steel. Although the use of armor in the battlefield was waning in the 1500s, the prestige connected with wearing it continued. Highly decorated suits such as this one for the duke with a great deal of surface ornamen- tation were intended principally to convey rank and authority as well as personal artistic taste. The duke even had his portrait done while wearing this suit of armor.
These extraordinary suits of armor as well as heavy jousting armor (Rennzeug) for King Philip I of Castile (1478-1506) and a child’s suit that once belonged to a young Andreas of Austria (1558- 1600) are on view now through 2024. We would like to thank the Mandel Foundation for generously supporting these loans and hope you stop in the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Armor Court to admire them on your next museum visit.
Jousting Armor (Stechzeug) of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519) c. 1485. Workshop of Lorenz Helmschmied (German, active Augsburg, 1477— 1515). Steel and leather. Lent by the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Hofjagd- und Rustkammer, Vienna.
© Hofjagd- und Rustkammer, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
www.clevelandart.org 25
NEW ACQUISITION
Why Born Enslaved!
William H. Robinson Senior Curator of Modern Art
Key Jo Lee
Director of Academic Affairs and Associate Curator of Special Projects
ON VIEW Why Born Enslaved!
Sarah S. and Alexander M. Cutler Gallery | Gallery 201
1. Théophile Gautier, “Salon de 1869: Sculpture,” Journal Officiel de l’Empire Francais (1869).
The exact version discussed by Gautier is unclear. The foremost French sculptor of the Second Empire (1852-1870), Carpeaux received major commissions from Emperor Napoleon Ill and the French government. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts in Paris and won the Prix de Rome in 1854. He is best known for his sculpture The Dance, commissioned in 1868 for the facade of the Paris opera.
2. Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast, exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, March 10, 2022-March 24, 2023.
3. Carpeaux’s views on race and abolition were likely influenced by his friendship with author Alexandre Dumas. Dumas
was a vociferous abolitionist and advocate for women’s emancipation. It was widely known that Dumas’s great- grandmother was a former African slave from Haiti. Slavery was the subject of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference of 1889-90 and remained an issue in the early 20th century.
26 2022 / Issue 2
The museum acquires a masterpiece
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s stunning sculpture Why Born Enslaved! (1868) is one of the most powerful expressions of abolitionist sentiment in the visual arts. It depicts a woman of African descent bound by ropes and looking defiantly upward. The ropes press into her breasts, and her torn blouse alludes to the violence responsible for her condition. After viewing a version of the work at the Paris Salon of 1869, art critic Théophile Gautier wrote:
The African woman, with the rope that ties her arms at the back and crushes her breasts, raises to the sky the only thing that is left free to a slave, the eyes, with a look of despair and silent rebuke, a hopeless cry of vindication, a dismal protest against destiny. This is a work of rare vigor, in which ethnographic precision is dramatized through a profound painful feeling.!
Carpeaux conceived the sculpture around the same time as his large fountain sculpture, Four Corners of the World Holding the Celestial Sphere (1872), commissioned by Baron Haussmann for the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. Carpeaux used the same model for the allegorical figure of Africa in the fountain as for Why Born Enslaved! but with an important difference: the broken shackle around her ankle in the fountain sculpture indicates that she is a former slave released from bondage. While the woman’s identity is unknown, archival notes suggest she may have been a former slave from the Antilles who migrated to France after emancipa- tion; a recent study speculates that she may have been Louise Kuling, a free woman originally from Virginia.
Why Born Enslaved! is presented with explosive shapes and dramatic silhouettes. The original poly- chromed surfaces are covered with complex, nu- anced hatchings and subtle modeling that enhance the figure’s expressive power. While museums in the United States and Europe own other versions, surface marks and provenance history indicate the CMA’s is the master model from which others were produced. The sharp details and complex polychromed surface, skillfully patinated to con- vey the model’s ethnicity, support the view that the museum’s recently acquired sculpture is the finest known version of the subject.
Why Born Enslaved! was praised by contem- poraries for addressing one of the most pressing issues of its era. Although slavery was abolished in France in 1848, it remained a hotly contested issue in Carpeaux’s time as France expanded its colonies into North Africa, where the practice continued, just as slavery remained legal or tolerated in Brazil and elsewhere in the world. The American Civil War gave additional inspiration to the abolitionist struggle to eradicate the brutal practice.’
With the acquisition of Why Born Enslaved! we have a unique opportunity to recenter Carpeaux’s subject through interpretation and new scholar- ship. The unnamed model who became the living embodiment of enslavement and whose history and voice are largely lost to the archival record should be the locus of our attention. One way to broaden the context for Carpeaux’s depiction is by looking to other period portraits of Black women to which Carpeaux would certainly have been privy, such as Portrait of Madeleine, originally Portrait d’une femme noire (1800), by Marie-Guillemine Benoist. The change in title is especially notable because it demonstrates the work in progress to identify or otherwise bring to bear the stories of unnamed sit- ters in the histories we narrate. Through archival research, it was found that Madeleine was a freed woman painted between the first abolition of slav- ery in the French colonies in 1794 and Napoleon’s reinstatement of it in 1804. Why Born Enslaved! provides the CMA an opportunity to bring schol- ars on the cutting edge of archival research for discussions on the challenges and rewards of such research.
By highlighting Portrait of Madeleine’s place in a lineage of images of Black women, in contem- porary scholarship, and in museum practices that seek to name or otherwise identify sitters like her, and by providing a forum for complex conversa- tions on artworks that provoke painful histories, we will show that we understand the importance of featuring challenging artworks of great historical relevance to reimagine how we see today.
Why Born Enslaved! 1868. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, 1827— 1875). Plaster, original polychromed surface; h. 67 cm. Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, 2022.2
www.clevelandart.org 27
COLLECTION
Four Curators, Four Favorites
Experiencing the CMA’s permanent collection
ON VIEW Sleep and Death Cista Handle
Barbara S. Robinson Gallery | Gallery 102D
Sleep and Death Cista Handle 400-375 BC. Italy, Etruscan. Bronze; 14 x 17.4
cm. Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1945.13
28 2022 / Issue 2
It isn’t difficult to find a favorite object within the CMA’s collection. Artworks stand out to us in unique ways for their place in history, their ideas, or their colors and forms, and each new season can change what draws our attention. Explore how four CMA curators are currently experiencing their favorite pieces from our collection in the brief
meditations below.
SETH PEVNICK CURATOR OF GREEK AND ROMAN ART
This small bronze sculpture stands out for its del- icate form and somber message. Cast in several pieces, then joined together and placed atop a curved rectangular base, it comprises two winged, helmeted figures carrying the limp, nude body ofa third. Functionally, these figures once served as a handle on the lid of a cista, a type of sheet-bronze container often decorated with incised figures and separately cast feet.
But even as we wonder about a potentially larger decorative program, this sculptural group stands nearly complete, lacking just one thumb of the fall- en figure. The composition calls to mind the main scene on a famous Greek red-figure vase painted by Euphronios, the so-called Sarpedon krater. There, and likely here, the winged figures, clad in armor, represent Sleep and Death (or Hypnos and
Thanatos), conveying a corpse from the battlefield toward proper burial. The body probably belongs to either Sarpedon or Memnon, two great warriors slain at Troy (by the Greek fighters Patroklos and Achilles, respectively).
Such questions of identity, however, may matter less than the pathos of this figure. For this is an Etruscan object, created in ancient Italy rather than Greece, several generations after the afore- mentioned vase. And just as the tales now thought of as Greek (from Homer and others) also reso- nated elsewhere in the ancient world, so too do they retain their relevance today. Sadly—but also eloquently and timelessly—this dramatic figural group still speaks to the gravity and inevitable losses of war.
ON VIEW Gray and Gold
Hammond Hemmelgarn Family Gallery | Gallery 226B
Gray and Gold 1942. John Rogers Cox (American, 1915-1990). Oil on canvas; 116x162 %12.5:om. Mr.
and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund, 1943.60
CORY KORKOW CURATOR OF EUROPEAN PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURE, 1500-1800
John Rogers Cox’s Gray and Gold (1942) reflects the artist’s hometown, Terre Haute, Indiana, and alludes to fascism’s threat to American democracy during World War II. It’s one of my favorites, how- ever, because it feels like home. Among his earliest works in oil, the painting shows Cox steeped in the visual vocabulary of the rural Midwest, conveying its peculiar desolate beauty like a seasoned land- scape painter. Gray and Gold transports me to an intersection of country road on the great plains of South Dakota dividing the prairie into culti- vated fields and rolling hills for grazing livestock. Stepping into the painting and continuing down the central road would lead to my parents’ home. Mesmerized by fields of swaying grain, I
understand the artist’s motivation: “I simply wanted to paint a lot of wheat.” Cox didn’t paint the wheat in uniform yellow blocks but noticed the way the wind moves its golden stalks in undulating waves that gleam and darken with the changing light. The artist described the soft, graded edge of a dirt road whose loose gravel median is echoed in the raised, impastoed surface. I imagine cattle escaping through broken fence, grazing in ditch- es along miles of barbed wire, and fence posts bleached silvery gray by the sun. Cox captured the awe-inspiring sensation of watching a storm rollin on the prairie, when wide open spaces allow one to observe vast swaths of cloud, wind, and thunder, as bolts of lightning advance in slow motion.
www.clevelandart.org 29
Mirrors & Eyes 1994. John L. Moore (American, b. 1939). Oil on canvas; 203.2 x
172.7 cm. Gift of Jane Farver,
2009.437. © John L. Moore
30 2022 / Issue 2
ON VIEW Mirrors & Eyes
Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery | Gallery 010
KEY JO LEE DIRECTOR OF ACADEMIC AFFAIRS
AND ASSOCIATE CURATOR OF SPECIAL PROJECTS
As an interdisciplinary scholar of art history and African American studies, I have given consider- able thought to how artists and writers visualize and historians contextualize the transatlantic slave trade, or Middle Passage. Therefore, Mirrors & Eyes (1994) by Cleveland-born John L. Moore, with its moody, reflective approach to the history, memory, and materiality of the Middle Passage, is one of my favorite works on view. Three ovoid shapes, two framed in gold, float atop a dusky cur- rent, disturbing the nearly black horizontal ripples that cascade across a murky sea as a fall of bright blue arches from the upper center of the compo- sition. The gold-framed ovals can be interpreted as mirrors or other reflective surfaces, while the dark oval at the bottom of the canvas might more readily be interpreted as a portal.
The artist has said that “all of my work is in- formed by memories. Memories of things that I have experienced or were told to me; things that I have read or dreamed.”! America’s devastating history of enslavement isn’t easily remembered or told. This large-scale painting of oil on canvas vi- sualizes the mechanics of personal and collective memory and its attendant forgetting and creative imaginings so beautifully that I had to include it in my first exhibition at the CMA, Currents and Constellations: Black Art in Focus, on view through June 26, 2022.
1.Don Desmett, “In the Shadows,” in /n the Shadows: Contemporary Artists and Obsessive Memory, exh. cat. (Kalamazoo, MI: James W. and Lois |. Richmond Center for Visual Arts at Western Michigan University and Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery, 2014).
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
China through the Magnifying Glass: Masterpieces in Miniature and Detail
December 4, 2022- February 6, 2023
Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery | Gallery 010
Figure of a Daoist Immortal 1700s. China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Boxwood with colored ivory base; h. 13.5 cm. Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund, 1976.60
CLARISSA VON SPEE CHAIR OF ASIAN ART, JAMES AND DONNA REID CURATOR OF CHINESE ART, AND INTERIM CURATOR OF ISLAMIC ART
The CMA’s Chinese collection has many small- scale objects and miniatures. This finely carved sculpture is made of precious boxwood, a hard wood with a fine, even texture that comes from small and slow-growing evergreen trees found in southeast China and as far as Europe. The Western term boxwood (huangyang mu) probably derives from the fact that this wood would have mostly been used for making small boxes but rarely for large-scale furniture.
The figure presumably depicts Daoist Immortal He Xiangu, one of the Eight Immortals. Legend has it that she lived during the Tang dynasty (618-906) and eventually ascended to heaven as an immortal. Here, she has her hair tied in a chignon. Sitting ina log raft, she floats swiftly through water, the swirl- ing waves made from carved ivory dyed green. He
Xiangu holds a ruyi scepter—symbolizing wisdom and good fortune. The bamboo basket in front of her contains stalks of bamboo and mushrooms, and behind her sits a double gourd, all attributes of an immortal.
I discovered the little, shiny, caramel-brown boxwood sculpture in storage when I was hunting for objects for my next exhibition. Its small size and exquisite craftsmanship mesmerized me. It will be a highlight in the upcoming exhibition, China through the Magnifying Glass: Masterpieces in Miniature and Detail (December 4, 2022—February 26, 2023) on view in the Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery.
www.clevelandart.org 31
Traveling Artworks
Follow the CMA's collection around the world over the past year
32 2022 / Issue 2
The museum community was no stranger to pandemic-required adaptations beginning in 2020. Doors closed, exhibitions were canceled or delayed, and international and domestic art ship- ments came to a halt. Many anticipated loans from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection that had been approved for exhibitions around the world were withdrawn or postponed. But museums are resilient. Exhibitions were rescheduled, museums reopened, and the international museum commu- nity figured out ways to continue sharing our col- lections despite shipping and travel restrictions. As demonstrated by the statistics below and map on the following pages, fiscal year 2022 Vuly I, 2021-June 30, 2022) was a very active time for the CMA’s collection, and we are back to pre-pan- demic levels of participation in exhibitions around the world. Last year, the CMA’s artworks traveled to Europe and Asia as well as extensively through- out the US. We participated in major blockbuster exhibitions and smaller scholarly projects. A wide variety of the CMA’s collection was represented through loans of paintings, sculptures, hanging scrolls, portrait miniatures, decorative arts, tex- tiles, and works on paper. We had a remarkably busy year of sharing these pieces, and it has been a great pleasure to offer our terrific collection with museum audiences worldwide once again.
INTERNATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
The CMA sent 130 artworks in 6 exhibitions to 47 cities, 9 countries (including the US), and 20 states.
1. London, United Kingdom, in Fabergé: Romance to Revolution at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Nov 20, 2021- May 8, 2022).
Imperial Red Cross Easter Egg 1915. Peter Carl Fabergé (Russian), Henrik Wigstrém (Russian), House of Fabergé (Russian). Gold, silver gilt, enamel, glass, ivory. The India Early Minshall Collection, 1963.673
2. Seoul, South Korea, in Monk Artisans of the Joseon Dynasty at the National Museum of Korea (Dec 6, 2021—Mar 6, 2022).
The Eight Hosts of Deva, Naga, and Yakshi 1454. China, Ming dynasty. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk. John L. Severance Fund, 1973.70.2
1. London, United Kingdom
2. Seoul, South Korea
3. Paris, France, in At the Source of Monet's Water Lilies: The Impressionists and Decoration at the Musée de 1'Orangerie (Mar 3—Jul 11, 2022).
Spring Flowers 1864. Claude Monet (French). Oil on fabric. Gift of the Hanna Fund, 1953.155
4. Lausanne, Switzerland, in TRAIN. ZUG, TRENO. TREN: At the Intersection of Painting, Photography, and Design at the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts (Jun 17-Sep 25, 2022).
Hills, South Truro 1930. Edward Hopper (American). Oil on canvas. Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection, 1931.2647. © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
6. Amsterdam, Netherlands
5. Urbino, Italy, in Francesco di Giorgio e Federico da Montefeltro: Urbino, Crossroads of the Arts (1475-1490) at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche (Jun 23-Oct 9, 2022).
Portrait of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere early 1500s. Attributed to Pedro Berruguete (Castilian). Oil on wood, transferred to canvas. Holden Collection, 1916.815
6. Amsterdam, Netherlands, in Forget Me Not at the Rijksmuseum (Sep 30, 2021—Jan 16, 2022).
Portrait of Machtelt Suijs c. 1540-45. Maerten van
Heemskerck (Dutch). Oil on wood. Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund,
1987.136
4. Lausanne, Switzerland
7. Toronto, Ontario
5. Urbino, Italy
8. Madrid, Spain
7. Toronto, Ontario, in Picasso: Painting the Blue Period at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Oct 9, 2021-Jan 5, 2022).
Nude Woman Standing, Drying Herself 1891-92. Edgar Degas (French). Lithograph. Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1954.361
8. Madrid, Spain, in The Magritte Machine at the Thyssen- Bornemisza National Museum (Sep 14, 2021—Jan 30, 2022).
The Secret Life 1928. René Magritte (Belgian). Oil on canvas. Bequest of Lockwood Thompson, 1992.298. © C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
www.clevelandart.org 33
1. London, United Kingdom, in Fabergé: Romance to Revolution at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Imperial Red Cross Easter Egg 1915. Peter Carl Fabergé, Henrik Wigstrém, House of Fabergé. The India Early Minshall Collection, 1963.673
2. Seoul, South Korea, in Monk Artisans of the Joseon Dynasty at the National Museum of Korea.
The Eight Hosts of Deva, Naga, and Yakshi 1454. China, Ming dynasty. John L. Severance Fund, 1973.70.2
3. Paris, France, in At the Source of Monet's Water Lilies: The Impressionists and Decoration at the Musée de !'Orangerie.
Spring Flowers 1864. Claude Monet. Gift of the Hanna Fund, 1953.155
4. Lausanne, Switzerland, in TRAIN. ZUG. TRENO. TREN: At the Intersection of Painting, Photography, and Design at the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts.
Hills, South Truro 1930. Edward Hopper. Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection, 1931.2647. © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
5. Urbino, Italy, in Francesco di Giorgio e Federico da Montefeltro: Urbino, Crossroads of the Arts (1475-1490) at the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche.
Portrait of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere early 1500s. Attributed to Pedro Berruguete. Holden Collection, 1916.815
6. Amsterdam, Netherlands, in Forget Me Not at the Rijksmuseum.
Portrait of Machtelt Suijs c. 1540-45. Maerten van Heemskerck. Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, 1987.136
7. Toronto, Ontario, in Picasso: Painting the Blue Period at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Nude Woman Standing, Drying Herself 1891-92. Edgar Degas. Dudley P. Allen Fund, 1954.361
8. Madrid, Spain, in The Magritte Machine at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum.
The Secret Life 1928. René Magritte. Bequest of Lockwood Thompson, 1992.298. © C. Herscovici/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
34 2022 / Issue 2
SUPPORTER STORY
Katharine Lee Reid
36 2022 / Issue 2
You have a unique legacy of supporting the CMA as former director (2000-2005), following your father, Sherman Lee (1958-1983). Why do you support the institution as generously as you do?
The CMA represents an outstanding example of American generosity and philanthropy. Art museums in the US are unusual, as they result from the focused vision of communities like Cleveland. Individuals give art, funds, or both to make a meaningful place for fellow citizens. Importantly, the CMA, like public libraries, has always been free. From the beginning, the founders wanted to make the best works of art from a broad range of cultures available for all to see, learn from, and enjoy. That focus, strengthened with years of generosity, has resulted in a singular art museum notable for the quality of its holdings and respected around the world. Further, the museum is the creation not of the state or an aristocracy but of people who have lived and live now in Cleveland.
Considering your early experiences at art museums, how did the CMA shape your interest in art as a child and your future career?
Although my first museum experiences were in Detroit, Seattle, and Japan, in Cleveland in 1952, the institution's full embrace came over me. I remember seeing the Guelph Treasure—European bejeweled objects from the Middle Ages—in the basement’s hushed galleries, protected in case of a WWII attack. Through my childhood, my sister and I took Saturday classes at the CMA, which my father taught in the 1990s as a first paying art job during graduate school at Western Reserve University. Those Saturdays made a vivid impression.
I remember trying to copy Peter Paul Rubens’s portrait of his wife, Isabella Brant, and realizing her “knowing look” could only have been a wife's. My sister, Margaret Bachenheimer, now a respected artist in North Carolina, remembers learning to paint skies with watercolors. A show of Vassily Kandinsky paintings blew my mind in seventh grade. Responding on paper to those brilliant abstractions was humbling and inspiring.
We often followed our father around as he showed us what he was considering adding to the collection or what was being treated in conservation. The museum was not work but an endless series of interests and events, We learned from his pronouncements about professional museum behavior: In adding to the collection, look for the best. Don’t settle for a lesser example to represent a movement or a culture. Buy ahead of the market what is not yet fashionable. Consult every expert and specialist possible. If it is stolen, don’t buy it.
I remember wonderful art dealers visiting and treating us to marvelous feasts at the Wade Park Manor. One dealer had an uncanny knowledge of when to call Dad—whenever we were sitting down to dinner. Dad always took the call as dinner cooled, but he got many great Asian pieces from that man, including the CMA’s Northern Song dynasty Streams and Mountains without End.
As director, you launched the building project and capital campaign. Ground was broken under your tenure to transform the museum into a place of and for the community. Why was this important to you? What was it like to finally see the museum transformed?
The raising of interest and funds to add to the CMA was started under my predecessor, Bob Bergman, and it was part of why the role appealed to me. Completing an expansion plan at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts made the possibility of doing so at the CMA an extraordinary opportunity. The existing buildings had housed the collection, but navigating exhibits was a challenge. Planning for the visitor experience had been a focus in the art museum field since the 1980s, when I participated in building planning at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Cleveland’s advantage was a collection of remarkable masterworks, like an executive summary of world culture relevant to a broad public. But we needed a less academic spirit and a bit more comfort. With architect Rafael Vinoly, a highly engaged senior staff, and the enthusiastic support of trustees, we planned to meet that goal, though we struggled to believe sacrificing an earlier building would serve the collection and visitor experience. To everyone’s credit, after months of visiting other museums and countless meetings, the trustees made the brave decision to go forward, the first $100 million was raised, and ground was broken. I retired in 2005, and the following years saw final planning and construction.
The ultimate result was remarkable. The atrium felt like a grand Italian piazza with activities all around: special exhibitions, galleries, dining, shopping, audio tours. The museum’s interior amid the parkland and surrounding neighborhood helped me concentrate and feel comfortable while looking at art. The galleries of the original classical building felt right for their collections. The remarkable Maltz Family Foundation ARTLENS Gallery made the CMA a leader in technology for accessible lessons about the collection and exhibitions.
The building adapts as use and activities evolve. The memory of the old interior garden court (the European baroque gallery now) signifies how the museum has changed in scale and activity. On Sundays, one could once hear organ music from the plant-filled court through the galleries. The museum, its collections, and its audience have grown and evolved. It is fascinating, exciting, sobering, and ever changing.
Your expertise as an art historian includes 17th-century European paintings, 2oth-century painting and sculpture, and late r9th- and 2oth- century American and European decorative arts. What are your favorite works in the collection?
I still go back to Rubens’s Portrait of Isabella Brant like a good book to which one returns from time to time. But this is hardly a fair question, when everything at the CMA is so good! I love the early Christian galleries and the Coptic textile /con of the Virgin and Child. The colors of that sixth-century
marvel are as vivid as centuries ago, and, the last time I saw it, I found expressions on the apostles I’d not seen before. I also have favorite drawings, such as the sheets by Jasper Johns among works in many media called Numerals. which capture his painterly, rich style in a varied and humorous way that transcends what might appear an exercise. Portrait of Hott6 Enmyo Kokushi and Portrait of the Mother of Hotto Kokushi, those sobering wood sculptures, have also stopped me in my tracks many times.
You have worked at other esteemed institutions in your career. What makes the CMA special?
The noble classical building overlooking Wade Lagoon signals the caring and entrepreneurial dedication of a range of people—founders, curators, staff, directors—who have “kept their eye on the ball,” as we say in tennis. They have grown the institution with creativity and consistency for over a century. Such American art museums are reflections of their communities—collections formed by community members, products of state funding, reflections of a major donor’s interests, or specialists in the art world. Cleveland’s is a comprehensive art museum, distinctive from much larger encyclopedic museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Across the board, Cleveland’s works can stand toe-to-toe with the best of other art museums.
You are a member of the Leadership Circle, though based in North Carolina. What makes your membership with the CMA important to you despite the distance?
It is important to me and my family to feel connected to the museum that formed our lives, important to receive publications and keep up with exhibitions, achievements of staff, and the remarkable generosity of donors and patrons. The distance doesn’t matter much! Works of art are ingrained in our thinking and fantasies. The CMA is the kind of wonderful thing that can happen when the American art museum serves as a model of and for its communities.
www.clevelandart.org 37
SAVE THE DATE
Summer Arts Fest: Dance with Giants will include larger-than-life art installations by local artists. Attendees can join a host of hands-on activities: oOush a 10-foot-tall rhi- noceros onto a printing press to create a commemorative poster, add a suction cup to an oversize orange octopus, dance with magical mushroom performers, and take photos with a giant inflatable robot puppy. There is something for everyone in the family. Live music will be featured on the Kulas Community Stage, and food and bev- erages will be available for purchase.
SAVE THE DATE
funy aha. Sunday, September 25, 2022, 2:00 p.m. Pino ts, Bote, Photo © Gartner Auditorium 2022 Museum ofFine Ars, FREE; ticket required
Boston
Phoebe Segal Mary Bryce Comstock Curator of Greek and Roman Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Phoebe Segal, the Mary Bryce Comstock Curator of Greek and Roman Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presents the museum's newly renovated gallery devoted to early Greek art, one of the greatest strengths of its world-renowned antiquities collection. Step back in time to the days of the emergence of the Greek city-state, and discover the innovation and creativity of early Greek artists responding to local traditions and new ideas from abroad. Learn about the design strategy and digital media assets that transport visitors to ancient Greece and make the past present.
www.clevelandart.org 39
EDUCATION
Play at CMA!
Family resources and activities for an art-filled summer
Sydney Kreuzmann Manager of Youth and Family Engagement
WHAT ARE FIVE THINGS YOU SEE?
NAME FOUR THINGS YOU CAN TOUCH.
WHAT THREE THINGS CAN YOU HEAR?
ARE THERE TWO THINGS YOU CAN SMELL?
WHAT ONE THING MIGHT YOU TASTE?
All education programs at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Education. Generous annual support is provided by Gail Bowen in memory of Richard
L. Bowen, Cynthia and Dale Brogan, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in Memory of Lloyd
H. Ellis Jr, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Florence Kahane Goodman, Janice Hammond
and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, Pamela Mascio, Sally and Larry Sears, the Thompson Family Foundation, and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
40 2022 / Issue 2
Are you looking for fun, engaging activities to do with your family this summer? The museum is excited to offer a fresh series of free in-gallery re- sources, tips, and tricks for talking with kids about art.
Kick off your visit by picking up your family dis- covery pack at the ticketing or information desks. These “tool kits,” generously supported by the Reinberger Foundation, are designed to encourage children’s curiosity and to empower caregivers to feel confident in initiating great art experiences with their children. Each wearable pack is filled with collectible art cards that spotlight exciting themes and artworks to visit throughout the mu- seum, along with playful, hands-on supplies for tactile learners. Materials may include notebooks, pencils, a magnifying glass, colorful pipe cleaners, and more. On each art card, you'll find creative questions and activity prompts to try together as a family.
For example, a card featuring the landscape Vale of Kashmir by Robert S. Duncanson asks you to imagine you've been transported inside the paint- ing, inviting you to use all your senses to take in the surrounding world. Prompts include the questions at the left of this page.
Once you go through each step, you are invited to use all the aspects named to create your own story. For example, Duncanson’s works were often inspired by stories, poems, and faraway places.
Vale of Kashmir shows a Persian princess’s journey to be married, based on the poem Lalla Rookh by Thomas Moore. Maybe your family’s story features a prince or princess, too!
The 5-4-3-2-1 technique highlights one capacity we hope every visitor experiences while they’re in the museum: attention. The ability to practice mindfulness through close looking and slowing your thoughts to focus on one sensation at a time is a great way to ground yourself in stressful situations.
Discovery packs and art cards are refreshed quarterly around new themes. The current theme is adventure. What does adventure mean to you? While you explore this question in the galleries, tune into the ArtLens App for a brand-new audio tour experience. In our Family Adventure tour, you will hear exciting new voices—the children of our own museum staff members—share where they see adventure in the museum’s collection. Curators, conservators, and educators will model different questions and approaches you can try with your family.
Finally, if you bring your packs back on your next visit, you can collect an art explorer patch for new themes and new items to add to your tool kit. Join us at the CMA this summer, and embark on your own art adventure. Explore the galleries, create new Stories, and discover new treasures together!
Tom Welsh Director of Performing Arts
This summer, as we hope to emerge further into a post-pandemic world, City Stages returns for a month of free outdoor concerts at Transformer Station. The popular series of weekly performanc- es by artists from around the globe has become a cornerstone event in Ohio City, attended by several thousand people each week and beloved by all.
In the upcoming season, we will present these concerts on Wednesdays in August, to dovetail with FRONT 2022. We look forward with great
enthusiasm to welcoming to Cleveland extraor- dinary artists from all the corners of the globe in a series unlike any other in Northeast Ohio, and to reconnecting with our many friends and partners on the near west side. Ten years ago, we started City Stages at the corner of 29th and Church. Amazingly, the first concert in August will be our 29th! We hope you will join us at Transformer Station this summer. Visit cma.org for more details.
www.clevelandart.org 41
MEMBERSHIP
Upcoming Member and Supporter Events
Annual CMA Fund for Education Cocktail Party
Thursday, August 4, 5:30-7:00 p.m.
For CMA Fund for Education supporters Annual CMA Fund for Exhibitions Cocktail Party
Wednesday, August 17, 5:30-7:00 p.m.
For CMA Fund for Exhibitions supporters VIP Member Preview for Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection Friday, September 9, 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. Includes a private preview of the exhibition and a reception in Provenance restaurant For Leadership Circle members at the $2,500 level and above
Member Preview Day for Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection Saturday, September 10, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Be among first to see exhibition before public opening September 11
For members, all levels
LEADERSHIP CIRCLE
Leadership Circle Lunch and Learn Wednesday, September 28, noon
Lunch at a local restaurant for a deep dive into a CMA-related topic with a museum leader
For Leadership Circle members at the $5,000 level and above
EVEN MORE PROGRAMMING IS AVAILABLE TO YOU IF YOU JOIN AN AFFINITY GROUP
Asian Art Society
Column & Stripe (Young Professionals Group) Contemporary Art Society
Friends of African and African American Art Friends of Photography
Textile Art Alliance
Affinity groups offer members exclusive opportunities for deeper engagement with the museum’s collection through special tours and lectures by curators at the CMA,
as well as unique programs, including visits to local venues, private collections, and artist studios. Each group has a distinct identity with programs designed especially for its members. Those at the Associate level ($250) or above can join at least one group for free.
To join or learn more, contact memberprograms@clevelandart.org.
Join the Leadership Circle Membership Program Today!
Become a part of a community of annual art supporters (for educational, conservational, and curatorial projects) dedicated to helping
the CMA provide free admission and excellent
programs to our community.
Opportunities for this unmatched museum experience start at the $2,500 donor level.
For more information, contact Allison Tillinger, program director, Leadership Circle, at 216-707-6832 or atillinger@clevelandart.org.
42 2022 / Issue 2
15% discount for CMA members
J
Ine New black anguard $42.50 members
$50 nonmembers
In The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, curator and
critic Antwaun Sargent addresses a radical transformation taking place in fashion and art today. The featuring of the Black figure and Black runway and cover models in media and art has been one marker of increasingly inclusive fashion and art communities.
More critically, however, the contemporary visual vocabulary around beauty and the body has been reinfused with new vitality and substance, thanks to an increase in powerful images authored by an international community of Black photographers.
SHOP ONLINE AT SHOP.CLEVELANDART.ORG
CURBSIDE PICKUP IS AVAILABLE!
\rtdoration Jewelry by the Nadira Collection
The Nadira Collection is from creative, “dare to be rare” couturier and artist Stephanie Nunn. While bringing awareness to the visually impaired and blind community, Nunn’s motto is to “change the world one vision at
a time.” This array of handmade artifacts
are accessories to enlighten your attire with originality, style, and artisan aesthetics.
Artdoration includes timeless, authentic pieces of wearable art. These majestic pieces of jewelry are created with a variety of semiprecious and glass beads. They are created to inspire the person wearing each while showcasing the collection.
aperture
$38.25 members $45 nonmembers
pany the exhibition Currents ana
Perceptual Drift: Black Art and an Ethics of Looking offers a new interpretive model drawing on four key works of Black art in the CMA’s collection. Each chapter is a case study in which leading Black scholars from multiple disciplines challenge the limits of canonic art history rooted as it is in social and racial inequities. Each approach seeks to transform how art history is written, introduce readers to complex objects and theoretical frameworks, illuminate meanings and untold histories, open new entry points into Black art, and publicize content on Black art acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Nristcuf
$127.50 members $150 nonmembers
onversation Ring
$85 members $100 nonmembers
www.clevelandart.org 43
MEMBERSHIP
A Snapshot of Supporter Events
44 2022 / Issue 2
Alberto Giacometti Lender and Funder Celebration on March 10
1. CMA Honorary Trustee Robert P. Madison with Gwendolyn Johnson
2. CMA Fund for Exhibitions supporters Leigh and Andy Fabens with CMA Trustee Gini Barbato
3. Column & Stripe President and CMA Ex Officio Trustee Mark Deeter with Column & Stripe Vice President Sarah Royer
4. CMA Fund for Exhibitions supporter Joyce Litzler
Alberto Giacometti VIP Preview for members of the Leadership Circle and other upper-level donors on March 10
5. Leadership Circle members Josie Anderson and Amy Viny
6. Leadership Circle member Braeden Quast (right) with guest
7. Leadership Circle member David Anthony (right) with guests
Leadership Circle Giving Lunch and
Learn for Currents and Constellations on March 29 at Blu Restaurant in Beachwood
8. Jeanne Madison (left), CMA Deputy Director and Chief Philanthropy Officer Colleen Russell Criste, and Leadership Circle members Laura Bauschard and Lisa Kurzner
9. CMA Director of Academic Affairs and Associate Curator of Special Projects Key
Jo Lee (left), CMA Trustee Emeritus Elliott Schlang, and Leadership Circle member Barbara Lederman
PHOTOS THE DARK ROOM COMPANY 2022
www.clevelandart.org 45
LEGACY SOCIETY
Leave a Legacy
Carry forward our founders’ vision for a cultural wellspring of art for the benefit of all the people forever
Low Tide at Pourville, near Dieppe, 1882 1882. Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926). Oil on fabric; 59.9 x 81.3 cm. Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon, 1947.196
Share your love of art and leave a legacy for the benefit of all the people forever.
A gift to the Cleveland Museum of Art will ensure its future for generations to come. Make a gift— make a difference. Share your intentions for a legacy gift and celebrate your commitment as you join the members of our Legacy Society.
Contact the Office of Major and Strategic Giving to discuss the many ways you can make an estate, life-income, or other gift: legacygiving@clevelandart.org or 216-707-2588.
46 2022 / Issue 2
Museum Hours Tuesday-Thursday, Saturday, Sunday 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Friday 10:00 a.m.-9:00 p.m.
Closed Monday
Telephone 216-421-7340 or 1-877-262-4748 Website www.clevelandart.org
ArtLens App Wi-Fi network “ArtLens”
Membership 216-707-2268 membership@clevelandart.org
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Officers
Scott C. Mueller, Chair
Ellen Stirn Mavec, First Vice Chair Dr. William M. Griswold,
President, Director, and CEO
Virginia N. Barbato, Vice Chair
James A. Ratner, Vice Chair
Michelle Jeschelnig, Secretary
Annapurna Valluri, Treasurer
Standing Trustees Stephen W. Bailey Virginia N. Barbato Frederick E. Bidwell Leigh H. Carter
Reverend Dr. Jawanza K. Colvin
Sarah S. Cutler Richard H. Fearon Helen Forbes Fields Lauren Rich Fine Charlotte Fowler Christopher Gorman Agnes Gund
Provenance Restaurant and Café 216-707-2600
Museum Store 216-707-2333
Ingalls Library Tuesday-Friday
10:00 a.m.-4:50 p.m. Reference desk: 216-707-2530
Ticket Center
216-421-7350 or 1-888-CMA-0033
Fax: 216-707-6659 Nonrefundable service fees apply for phone and internet orders.
Parking Garage The museum recommends pay- ing parking fees in advance.
Members: $6 flat rate Public: $12 flat rate
Rebecca Heller Edward Hemmelgarn Michelle Jeschelnig Nancy F. Keithley Douglas Kern
R. Steven Kestner William Litzler William P. Madar Milton Maltz
Ellen Stirn Mavec Scott C. Mueller Stephen E. Myers Katherine Templeton O'Neill
Jon H. Outcalt Dominic L. Ozanne Julia Pollock
Peter E. Raskind James A. Ratner John Sauerland Manisha Sethi Kashim Skeete Richard P. Stovsky Felton Thomas Daniel P. Walsh Jr. John Walton
Paul E. Westlake Loyal W. Wilson
Magazine Staff Project manager: Annaliese Johns
Editor: Aumaine Rose Smith Designer: John Brown VI
Director of Publications: Thomas Barnard
CMA collection photography: Howard T. Agriesti,
David Brichford, and
Gary Kirchenbauer
Editorial photography as noted Printed in Cleveland by Consolidated Solutions Inc. Questions? Comments? magazine@clevelandart.org
Emeritus Leadership
James T. Bartlett, Chair Emeritus
Michael J. Horvitz, Chair Emeritus
Alfred M. Rankin Jr., Chair Emeritus
Trustees Emeriti James T. Bartlett James S. Berkman Charles P. Bolton Terrance C. Z. Egger Robert W. Gillespie Michael J. Horvitz Susan Kaesgen Robert M. Kaye
Toby Devan Lewis Alex Machaskee
S. Sterling McMillan III Reverend Dr. Otis Moss Jr. William R. Robertson Elliott L. Schlang David M. Schneider Eugene Stevens
Exhibition Support
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are under- written by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Dr. Ben H. and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Anne H. Weil, and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Life Trustees
Jon A. Lindseth
Mrs. Alfred M. Rankin Donna S. Reid
Ex Officio Trustees
Susan Larson, Womens Council
Mark Deeter, Column & Stripe
Honorary Trustees Helen Collis Robert D. Gries Joseph P. Keithley Malcolm Kenney Robert P. Madison Tamar Maltz
John C. Morley Jane Nord
Barbara S. Robinson Iris Wolstein
Education Support
All education programs at
the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Education. Generous annual support is provided
by Gail Bowen in memory of Richard L. Bowen, Cynthia
and Dale Brogan, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in Memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Florence Kahane Goodman, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, Pamela Mascio, Sally and Larry Sears, the Thompson Family Foundation, and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Ohio Arts 5
www.clevelandart.org 47
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Cleveland, Ohio 44106-1797
Dated Material—Do Not Delay