Annually Reporting: 2025’s Turning Points in Cleveland Art

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 show going on at the federal level—the NEA, the NEH, the IMLS, the golden baubles attached to the walls, the Kennedy Center, the former East Wing of the White House, the embrace of pale homogeny. We hope those are not points of no return. But we’re here to focus on just the few hundred miles around us.  If our Most-Read list was all about the numbers, this is about what we see as key moments of 2025.

Biennials and Triennials, and Closure: The FRONT Futures Fellows exhibition at Transformer Station, the homecoming of Everlasting Plastics (the show commissioned by SPACES for the Venice Biennale), and the last of the CAN Triennial Exhibition Prize exhibitions all together in 2025 marked an end of an era for Cleveland. CAN covered them extensively, in features as well as reviews.  The FRONT Triennial (which occasioned the Futures Fellows) and SPACES’ selection to commission the exhibition for the US Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale were a time for the city to shine in the international spotlight. What does that mean that both of those international events had closure this year? It is not the end of aspiration.

But here’s hoping this year marks the beginning of a new expression of the region’s aspirations—a shift from big, silver bullet moments to a more grounded approach to building Cleveland’s place in the art landscape. We saw two collaborative exhibitions that give us hope, and which we hope will serve as models for more along these lines:

Collaborations: In 2025, CAN published stories recognizing a key element of two exhibitions which came to fruition during the year: collaboration connecting artists, curators and audiences across the miles. The first was Common Currents, created by Artists Archives of the Western Reserve (Cleveland) and the Burchfield Penney Art Center (Buffalo, NY). The second was Ohio Now: The State of Nature, created by moCa Cleveland and the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati.

What these exhibitions have in common is that they were each created by collaboration of two organizations, representing cities hundreds of miles apart. Because of that they addressed a need that we’ve heard since before CAN Journal launched: Artists, curators, and audiences all want to reach beyond Northeast Ohio, to connect with their counterparts other places.  We hear this all the time: How can we get our work beyond these borders?

Those shows did that: In each case they gathered artists from the regions they call home, and produced an exhibition that traveled from one organization’s city to the other.  This is an important and potent strategy for the region’s artists, and even for the growth of a broad, Great Lakes art sector.  Here’s hoping that idea is not just a one-off, but one that is repeated by those organizations, and with others also taking up that charge.  Detroit … Buffalo … Pittsburgh …  Columbus … Cincinnati …each of these metro areas has more than a million people, within just a couple hundred miles of Cleveland.  Knit together by this kind of collaboration, a Great Lakes arts identity could be truly massive.

Potential Platform for Regional Art: Speaking of elevating regional art, the Cleveland Museum of Art—having taken full charge of Transformer Station early in 2023—opened a new exhibition there early in 2025, the first in two years. Love Is Resistance opened on Valentine’s Day—a collaboration with students, faculty and alumni of the Cleveland Institute of Art responding to works from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection.  The curated exhibition of contemporary art of the region, presented by the Museum, was in itself a milestone. And perhaps the Transformer Station will become an ongoing platform for that. The re-opening and the first year of portends the possibility. On the heels of Love is Resistance came the CMA Staff Show,  followed by New Work—the exhibition of FRONT Triennial Futures Fellows—four African American artists of Cleveland. How will the Museum continue to use the West Side space? We’ll be watching.

Karamu Artists, Inc.: In the Prints and Drawings galleries of the museum itself, CMA presented Karamu Artists, Inc., an historically important look at regional art history—specifically the printmaking studio at Karamu, which was active in the early to mid-twentieth century and was a platform for important artists such as William E. Smith, Elmer Brown, Zell Ingram, Hughie Lee-Smith, and Charles Sallée, among others. This was an important moment not only for the Museum’s all-too-rare curatorial consideration of the region’s art, but also specifically BIPOC artists.  “The exhibition invites us into a profound dialogue with history, where past burdens meet the brilliance of Black artistry, and demands that museums and associated institutions confront their complicity in overlooking these narratives,” wrote Amanda D. King for CAN Journal. “This exhibition underscores the artistic rigor and resilience of Karamu Artists Inc., while critiquing the systemic erasure of Black artists, whose contributions are often only acknowledged posthumously, with many never receiving the recognition they truly deserved. Although Cleveland’s contemporary Black arts scene has gained visibility and influence, it remains precariously situated within and dependent on an institutional framework that continues to undervalue Black artistic production.” Could this be a turning point, on either of those fronts?

Transformative Art Fund: For something to be a turning point, it needs to lead to a new direction. The Transformative Art Fund—a $3 Million infusion of capital into the City of Cleveland’s art sector, fueled by left-over American Re-investment Plan Act (ARPA) funds intended to sustain businesses and economies in the wake of the Covid pandemic—was by any measure a notable moment. Seven individual artist-led proposals were chosen from 103 applications, and the grants ranged from about $300,000 to $482,000. The public art projects will have lasting visual impact in their neighborhoods, and certainly brought needed cash to the associated artists. Is any semblance of a repetition possible, given the one-time nature of the ARPA Funds? Will those enormous grants re-set expectations for awards made to individual artists or projects in the region?

Coming and Going: Also high on our list of turning points in the last year are leadership changes at important institutions.  

Pita Brooks left a leadership position at Akron Soul Train in February to manage operations at SPACES in the wake of the departure of former director Fanna Gebreyesus, who held the role for less than a year. Brooks was subsequently named executive director. In the wake of SPACES role in the Venice Biennale and FRONT Triennial, Brooks—who previously worked at moCa Cleveland and Cleveland Institute of Art—will focus on relationship-building, sustainability, partnerships, and eventually, a new strategic planning process. 

Ingenuity Director Emily Applebaum has left that organization and Cleveland to take a new post in arts planning for the Sonoma County (California) Department of Economic Development. During Appelbaum’s tenure, Ingenuity ended its itinerant days and took up residence in a large, former industrial building on Hamilton Avenue, sub-leasing spaces to other creative endeavors and building with them a team of “Ingeneers,” and year-round activities and programming. Ingenuity’s Board of Directors will announce a transition plan after the holidays.

Beth Milli took the helm at BAYarts, after the long and redefining tenure of Nancy Heaton. Milli began as a volunteer on Saturdays at BAYarts’ Sullivan Gallery. Having worked in a variety of industries, from law to retail to marketing, she worked her way through roles with increasing responsibility at the multi-faceted art center. A key project will be the continuing development of the Playhouse, formerly Huntington Playhouse, as an event space for concerts and other programming.

Courtney Cable left Curated storefronts to become Director of Arts and Communication at Peg’s Foundation, which involves running the newly purpose-built Peg’s Gallery in Hudson. Peg’s has come out of the box with impressive exhibitions, including Dali Beyond Time: Fashioning the Future, which brought to the gallery original Salvador Dali paintings with works by students of the KSU school of fashion. More recently, Peg’s featured ITERATIONS: Rhythm & Reason, which continued building on the relationship with Kent State University, featuring works by Brinsley Tyrrell, Janice Lessman Moss, and Peter Christian Johnson.

Cable’s departure from her previous job left room for former Summit Artspace executive director Heather Meeker to take the helm at Curated Storefronts.  Meeker had led Summit Artspace for four years, which meant leading it out of the pandemic. She doubled the organization’s budget during that time.  She built a quarterly exhibition program, and built up the staff, and worked with Summit County (owner of the former Akron Beacon Journal building that is Summit Artspace’s home) to plan renovations. At Curated Storefronts, she’ll manage some forty exhibition spaces as part of the organization’s effort to revitalize Akron.

Back at Summit Artspace, Natalie Patrick—formerly in charge of the organization’s galleries and artist-facing programs—has taken the role of executive director. Patrick worked with her predecessor on strategic planning, relationship building, and revenue generation, and previously was Gallery Director at Praxis Fiber Workshop, Donor & Member Program Manager at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Arts & Programming Manager at Akron Soul Train. She’s currently leading the organization through Summit County’s renovation of the building that the organization calls home–the Akron Beacon Journal’s former offices—which will re-open in 2026

Earlier in the year, DJ Hellerman returned from Philadelphia to become curator deputy director at moCa Cleveland, kicking off his tenure with an exhibition of Harminder Judge. He had left a role as registrar at the Progressive Collection in 2012, taking a series of curatorial positions beginning in Burlington, Vermont, then most recently as chief curator & director of curatorial affairs at the Fabric Workshop & Museum in Philadelphia. “I never thought I would get to come back here,” he told Lyz Bly.

And we just learned that Allison Lukacsy‑Love –who we know as creator of the Phone Gallery on Waterloo, and who is also is an accomplished architect and city planner – has taken the role of director of the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) at Kent State University. That’s the organization that has animated the subway level of the Detroit Superior Bridge with art installations through the years, including that legendary collaboration with Ingenuity.  Previously, Lucasy-Love was Managing Director of Major Projects at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, and prior to that Director of Planning and Development for the City of Euclid. All that bodes well for arts-engaged place-making in the region.

Finally, not in Northeast Ohio, but relevant nonetheless, Christina Vasssallo–former director of SPACES and current executive director of Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center–will leave Cincinnati to take a grantmaking role in Philadelphia. That especially relates to Cleveland because we’re optimistic about a new relationship between moCa Cleveland and Cincinnati CAC, forged by the relationship between Vassallo and moCa executive director Megan Reich. Vassallo’s departure leaves Reich and a new leader in Cincinnati to continue developing the idea of Ohio-wide, traveling shows such as Ohio Now: The State of Nature, which opens at moCa Cleveland in January after its run earlier in 2025 in Cincinnati.

New Voices: While experience is invaluable for writers on art, so is the continual introduction of new voices. How else does the next generation get that experience, that depth of knowledge and confidence that makes a voice powerful? It’s a fairly limited number of people who write publicly about art, and in Cleveland most of them are more than 50 years old. So in 2025, CAN debuted a program we are calling Broadening the Conversation. It’s a mentorship and fellowship program for college and graduate level writers.  In collaboration with faculty members at Cleveland State University and Case Western Reserve University, which were soon joined by Kent State University, Broadening the Conversation offers two categories of opportunity. First, any interested student can work with their professor to pitch ideas for exhibition review on a freelance basis. They get feedback at every stage, from the idea to the execution, and are paid for published reviews. The second opportunity is a selective fellowship with specific expectations for reviews to be published online, and a feature story to appear in print. Broadening the Conversation fellows are paid a stipend for the semester. CAN is currently offering two such fellowships each term. Deadline for the next round of applications is Friday, January 16. At the time of this writing, results are beginning to show in exhibition reviews published by seven student writers, and more coming—including the Spring print debut of Fall fellows Olivia Began (CSU) and Sarah Frisbie (CWRU). The launch of this project was made possible by a visionary gift from Wally Lanci, and with support from the George Gund Foundation and the Cleveland Foundation.

Standard Operating Procedure: Of course all this is in addition to CAN’s very existence, which creates a gathered, public face for the region’s art sector, and a platform to tell its stories. As readers know, the bedrock of this is the service role we play as communications infrastructure, providing both an occasion and an outlet for the region’s galleries, museums, and schools to report on what they are doing. And that provides the platform for many of the region’s most accomplished writers on art, including Indra K. Lacis, PhD, Henry Adams, PhD, Lyz Bly, PhD, Douglas Max Utter, Jeff Hagan, William Busta, and more than 40 other contributors. In 2025 and over the years, CAN has been the most comprehensive source of information about visual art activity in the region.  With the support of readers, the work of writers, the brilliance of artists, the generosity of patrons and the participation of all those galleries, museums, studios and schools, we’re honored to embrace this role again as we enter CAN’s fifteenth year.