CAN’s Most-Read posts of 2024

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It’s become CAN’s holiday tradition in the second half of December to let you know which of our stories were the most-read in the last year.

In 2024, money and the art world version of “hard news” dominate the list. That’s a stark contrast to 2023’s list, when highlights included Erin O’Brien’s report on artists painting recycled wind turbine blades for public art; her account of sitting for the Pretentious Cleveland Portrait Artists, a feature by Indra K. Lacis on Ken Nevadomi, a review of an exhibition at Sixty Bowls Gallery, Christopher Johnston’s report on the collection of Bob and Nancy Roth, Jeff Curtis’s news that the Cleveland Print Room was saying goodbye to its old Artcraft Building location, and Johnston’s story about the regional art collecting / fundraising group, CARTA—the Cleveland Art Association.

In 2024, the most read stories often had to do with grants or contracts for artists, or other big changes in the landscape. Lots happened in the last year.

But even if readership went for the stories about money, it’s notable that in a year when the renewal of the Cuyahoga County cigarette tax in support of the arts was on the ballot, none of those stories landed among the ten most-read. That’s true in spite of some noisy CAC Board meetings we covered. The County’s announcement that Chris Ronayne would nominate Leonard DiCosimo and Gina Vernace to fill board seats came close. And a couple of relevant stories from late 2023 also came close, but were published outside the current calendar year.

As usual, we’ve eliminated from consideration any “Listicles,” which for our purposes are essentially event listings such as for The Art of the Eclipse, and the year’s Holiday Markets.

We’ve also removed CAN’s own announcements, which disqualified our notice that CAN will Re-Focus on Art News and Reviews and Will not produce CAN Triennial 2025.

Having said all that, here are the CAN’s Most Read Posts of 2024:

(Pardon our Dust: A glitch we’re working to solve has switched the name of the person who posted it online in place of the actual author. We’ve noted author names that are different in each paragraph below. Apologies to all, and we’ll get it fixed soon, if we haven’t already.)

10. I’ll Tumble For Ya: Neverending Cycles
Curated by Celeste Stauber, Neverending Cycles was an exhibit about Laundry on view last Winter at E11even2 Gallery at 78th Street Studios. It came right on the heels of Degas and the Laundress (reviewed here by Erin O’Brien) at the Cleveland Museum of Art, but the 21st century show brought contemporary perspectives on laundry. (And about Degas and the Laundress, don’t miss this interview (by Jacqueline Bon) with CMA curator Britany Salsbury about putting together that show.) But in the present tense at E11even2 Gallery, rather than being something hired out to a system of small businesses with women as a class of sexualized laborers doing the work, Neverending Cycles showed laundry with humor as an everyday task shared by just about everyone.

9. From the Heart of Cleveland, Vol. II: The Art Girls
This began as a story about Eileen Dorsey’s portrait of three people in the Cleveland art scene—the original Art Girls, Liz Maugans, Nancy Heaton, and Karen Petkovic. But it became a story about the ecosystem of galleries, artists, and mutual support among people, as embodied by that group of women. Read it on CAN Blog, but also where it first appeared, in Scott Kraynak’s The Heart of Cleveland, Vol. II

8. Power Dynamics: Qian Li at Erie Art Museum
CAN is no longer producing CAN Triennial, but the event’s impact continues – and will continue in 2025—with the CAN Triennial Exhibition Prizes. We’re especially proud that the prizes did something artists have consistently told us they need, which is connections with institutions, and exhibitions outside the immediate area. In this case, Qian Li’s prize took her work to the Erie Art Museum in Erie, Pennsylvania. Jo Steigerwald tells you more.

7. Ingenuity 2024: This is Cleveland?
CAN has followed Ingenuity since before CAN was born, and we’ve seen it soar (like over the Cuyahoga via the Detroit-Superior Bridge) and almost sink. But we were thrilled to report that the creative community Ingenuity has built at its building on Hamilton Avenue has created something necessary and, in Cleveland, unique.

6. Future / Past: A Reflection on Friendship with Arabella Proffer
Cleveland’s art world lost a great painter and person with Arabella Proffer’s passing in 2024, but Shannon Okey lost a friend. Proffer’s tenacity as a creator was inspiring. As Okey wrote, “She really hated the “warrior” terminology that a lot of cancer patients embrace. It wasn’t a battle. For Arabella, cancer was more of an annoyance, something that was getting in the way of what she wanted to do. So she wasn’t going to let it… and she didn’t, for almost a decade and a half.” Read her reflection on their years sharing a studio and ideas, on CAN Blog.

5. A Beginning: Cleveland’s Transformative Art Fund
The announcement that Cleveland would make a series of grants to “artist-led” projects in the city, with each grant being in the range of $250,000 to $500,000 was sure to get attention. It was also the first major initiative by Cleveland mayor Justin Bib’s Chief Strategist for the Arts, Culture and Creative Economy, Rhonda Brown. This is one of the stories that gives cause to look ahead into the new year:

“When Rhonda Brown returned to Cleveland to serve as Chief Strategist for the Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy in the administration of Mayor Justin Bibb, it was not entirely clear what the role would mean. It was a new position. Cleveland is a city with enormous depth of arts activity in the shadow of its famous major institutions, and yet artists struggle—along with the entire population—to make ends meet. With the convoluted web of permits and regulations, it’s difficult for artists to figure out how to engage. As result, Cleveland also has major, un-tapped artistic resources, especially in its neglected minority communities which continue to struggle against the enduring effects of redlining and a history of segregation. It was hoped that the cabinet level position in the Mayor’s office would help to change that.”

4. Coventry Peace Campus Faces Shaky Future: Short Term leases Threaten Artist Community in Cleveland Heights
Alas, we know now that all our coverage of the long-running enigma that has been Cleveland Heights-University Heights’ library’s board’s treatment of the artist and nonprofit tenants of the former Coventry School has been for naught. Most of them have to vacate the premises. But Carlo Wolff followed the drama literally for years, and sorted out the details as they developed. Watch for updates in the new year as the artists, individually and collectively, find new spaces either in Cleveland Heights or elsewhere.

3. FRONT will Cancel its Planned 2025 Edition and permanently wind down operations
It came as a surprise, but then suddenly made sense: In the face of a changing arts funding landscape, FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art announced early in the year that it would pull the plug. To some, this was a blow to Cleveland’s art ego: no longer would this city with such magnificent legacy institutions have this spot on the international art calendar. Independently, and for similar reasons, the Collective Arts Network board of directors had made the same decision, not to proceed with CAN Triennial in 2025. Artists response? Some shrugged their shoulders. Some set to work in their own Quest for the Fest. The artists who had been selected as FRONT Futures Fellows are still hoping forward to big exhibitions.

2. City of Cleveland Announces Transformative Art Fund Awardees
Is it surprising that a major grantmaking program—offering grants of $250 to Half a million dollars–would announce winners in the same year as the grant program itself? Perhaps: turnaround time for artists and their partner organizations to put together applications after the grants were first announced was very brief. Nonetheless, the program resulted in seven awards ranging from $312,000 to $482,000, which together at nearly $3 million represent one of the city’s largest-ever investments directly into the local arts community. Lead artists are Malena Grigoli, LaTecia Delores Wilson Stone, Jordan Wong, Ariel Vergez, Jameelah Rahman, Robin Robinson, and Kumar Arora. Watch for updates on their projects and progress.

And #1. Chuck Karnak’s Go Dream on the Detroit Superior Bridge
CAN Journal’s most-read story of 2024 combined news of a major contract for an artist, an extremely prominent project, and support for someone who has worked behind the scenes to elevate countless arts events in the city. After providing production support, including equipment and technical knowledge that enabled Ingenuity in all its locations including the iconic Detroit Superior Bridge, Cleveland Public Theatre’s Pandemonium, and events for countless other organizations, and after producing his own multi-media All Go Signs warehouse events, Chuck Karnak got the County’s contract to create a “walk through” event on that same bridge, where he alone has ever done such a thing before.