Approaching the Holidays: Shut down, Run out, Bombed, and What’s Next?

The federal government of the United States shut down as I write this, now in the sixth week, and funding for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program has run out, and the president has been bombing small boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, accusing them—so far without evidence—of smuggling fentanyl into the US. Meanwhile Israel says the cease fire in the war in Gaza is holding, though the IDF also just killed more than 100 Palestinians after accusing Hamas of violating the cease-fire deal because the remains of an Israeli hostage recently returned by Hamas were not actually those of a person listed in the cease-fire deal. And Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, approaching four years now, with hundreds of thousands dead. I could go on.

These are the circumstances in which we approach the holiday season. These are the circumstances in which we champion art as free expression, as an economic force, as a great gift for someone you hold dear.

I’ve read several artists’ expressions of odd feelings over promoting their beautiful, handmade wares as holiday gifts under these circumstances, and that perspective surely resonates. Artists, like everyone else, watch the news. But then our contribution to society and the economy is culture, and so after seeing whatever horror the reporters bring to our screens, we then try to make sense of it in an expressive way—not feeding the hungry or taking up arms or running for office, though artists do all those things—but instead by offering hope, insight, even joy: reasons to carry on.

So contrary to the way it feels to post art events on social media while your feed is crammed with the political disfunction of a nation seeming to careen toward dystopia, the world needs artists to do what they do—to inspire, to bring joy, to bring human perspective, to give hope.

With that in mind, we bring you this issue of CAN Journal with a few key points: first, two major exhibits on view now—the FRONT Future Fellows’ show NEW WORK at Transformer Station, and the show commissioned for the 2023 Venice Biennale, Everlasting Plastics at SPACES—are reviewed in this issue, and both beg the question, what’s next? On the FRONT front, Cleveland’s ambitious stab at the international art triennial realm ends with NEW WORK, but this should not be the end of those ambitions. First, Cleveland still punches above its weight (as so many of us are fond of saying) in terms of the depth and quality of its art scene. But what is next in the quest for national or international recognition?

One direction is toward partnerships: This issue of CAN also highlights Ohio Now: The State of Nature—an Ohio-wide exhibition created by moCa Cleveland in collaboration with the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati—which opened in Cincinnati earlier in the year and travels to Cleveland in January. Cleveland is at the center of a web of post-industrial cities and metro areas around the Great Lakes, each with a population in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, each with its own contemporary as well as legacy art scene. Cleveland’s Artists Archives of the Western Reserve collaborated similarly with Buffalo’s Burchfield Penney Art Center earlier this year. What about Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Columbus, and Pittsburgh?

Also, the investment FRONT made to support Black artists was important and significant, and yet that kind of investment is still necessary to continue the progress the art sector is making toward equity. As the protests over the murder of George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter movement move farther into history, artists and organizations should not rest or forget about this work. What’s next on that front?

Finally, to continue doing their work, artists need to make a living. And so we come to the holidays. Every artist is a small business, and every piece they sell is a contribution to the local economy with a ripple effect of food purchased, rent paid, and children kept in shoes and clothes for school. So bear that in mind as you do your holiday shopping. Skip the likes of Amazon and the big box stores. CAN’s annual Holiday Market Guide is here to help. Buy art. Buy Ohio. Shop Small. We look forward to seeing you.

— Michael Gill, Editor / Publisher