It’s not the May Show, but the Cleveland Museum of Art did not beat around the bush in announcing Lake Effect—a new juried exhibition of contemporary art of Northeast Ohio, to be produced by the Museum this year at Transformer Station. In fact the Museum says directly, “Drawing inspiration from the museum’s historic May Show—an annual exhibition that for decades […]
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Cleveland State University has taken a significant step toward restoring its place on the Cleveland art scene—both in providing what gallery director Kendall Christian called a “working classroom” for art students, and as a connection to the region’s art community at large: on January 7, the university’s Request for Qualifications for an architect to provide design services for a new […]
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CAN has never done a proper annual report. We’re not starting now. But at the end of the year, it certainly makes sense to reflect a bit on what has happened in the last 12 months—what we’ve done, what we’ve cared about, what we’ve seen. It’s been a year of turning points. We’re not going to talk about the horror […]
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Ephemera is a part of visual culture we often forget in the art world, but which can both evoke and document an era as strongly as music and fashion. Nothing says San Francisco in the ‘60s like a Wes Wilson poster for a concert at the Filmore. Except for what collectors put aside, the overwhelming majority of posters and fliers […]
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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 […]
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The idea that Ohio’s art scene looks to New York for validation has some sad truth, but sometimes Ohio brings both the spark and the fuel, and New York is just the place where they meet. Such was the case for an upcoming exhibition at moCa Cleveland, which was conceived during a conversation at Frieze—the international contemporary art fair that […]
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Sixty years ago, Iran was an ally of the US. The two countries had made deals involving nuclear technology in exchange for access to petroleum, and it was the polite remains of that relationship that led to Andy Warhol’s 1976 trip to Iran to take photos of Empress Farah Pahlavi–wife of the Shah–as reference to make a painting of her. […]
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What are they thinking? That’s what artists wonder when they submit their work to juried shows, and what audiences must often wonder when they go to the openings. The jurors of the 2025 Paul and Norma Tikkanen Prize for Painting, administered by the Ashtabula Arts Center had interesting things to say. The jurors—all based in Florida–were artist and educator Pip […]
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Why do people look at art? What draws them to shows? What do they want from an exhibit experience? Is it as simple as human connection? Is it to see what an artist has to say, or see what a hundred artists have to say, or see their own work in the context of others? Is it to experience fine […]
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Cleveland’s Big Triennial Era reaches the finale of its long denouement in Fall 2025. After announcements early last year that neither the FRONT nor the CAN triennials would proceed for a third iteration, both had unfinished business. CAN Triennial Exhibition Prize shows, for example, continued to roll out, one season following another, with solo exhibitions by selected artists at the […]
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