Five months into the pandemic lockdown, it’s natural for arts addicts to be jonesing for landmark experiences. All the familiar festivals have been cancelled, and companies who have not been able to conceive a viable way to deliver performance to audiences can only wait for a vaccine, or herd immunity. Sure, galleries and museums can keep open hours and manage […]
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In the middle of the perfect storm that is the COVID crisis and the reckoning with our history of racism, a number of Cleveland art organizations are facing a crisis of another kind: No less than seven important Northeast Ohio, nonprofit visual arts institutions have recently seen their executive directors resign. Most have appointed interim directors. All of them confront […]
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One of the most encouraging things we’ve seen during the time when COVID 19 has intersected with the horror of police violence directed at people of color–and of course the deep and durable racial inequity that has spotlighted—is the celebration by Deep Roots Experience of its first anniversary. Deep Roots Experience is an art gallery at the corner of East 79th and […]
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Deanna Bremer Fisher–head of the board of the Coventry PEACE Campus in Cleveland Heights, and also executive director of the nonprofit advocacy organization for the city, Future Heights–hopes to temper, perhaps even resolve, a dispute between that arts-and-culture organization and Heights Libraries, the system that continues to serve as landlord to CPC, perhaps against its will. Bremer Fisher will make […]
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CAN Journal has been pleased to partner with Worthington Yards to present Art Made in the Shutdown, an exhibit featuring works of more than 120 artists who have in common this tumultuous moment in history, when a global pandemic intersects with our long-overdue reckoning with racism. In the wake of a recent Zoom dialog among the artists, we continue […]
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If you paid attention to news stories about the protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, you could see politics in the way people describe events. When people took to the streets chanting Black Lives Matter, and the names of Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, and Tamir Rice, and the many others who were killed by police, were those […]
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Back in late March, I had the great pleasure of speaking with artist Matthew Gallagher, whose planned show at HEDGE Gallery was put on hold (“Show Postponed, Artist Matthew Gallagher Grapples with the Impact of COVID-19“). At that time the future was very uncertain, as every arts institution in North-East Ohio began shutting their doors, cancelling programs, and quarantine began. I […]
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I’ve never been as well-informed as I have been this viral year, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing. The confluence of protests following the murder of George Floyd, the coronavirus pandemic, and the Trump pestilence have had the perverse effect of making me even more of a news junkie than I was in less turbulent times. So much […]
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Cleveland’s newest gallery, Abattoir, is named for the meat-industry term, meaning “slaughterhouse,” in honor of the original function of the Hildebrandt sausage-producing complex where the space is located. Making its debut in 2020, a punishing year of pandemic and social upheaval, the name and the place might seem disturbingly appropriate. The gallerist-proprietors, Lisa Kurzner and Rose Burlingham, are curators with […]
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Since the beginning of the COVID Shutdown, CAN has shared virtual gallery tours and studio visits and other updates from artists about how they were impacted, how they were challenged, and how they coped during the isolation. Now more than three months into the crisis, we know artists have not stopped making work, even if they have had to channel […]
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