Just in case you missed it, Ohio House Bill 86, as passed by the Ohio Senate, includes a provision for Ohio Counties to offer voters a 3 percent tax on marijuana for the arts. The provision was added by Senator Kent Smith, who saw an opportunity for the arts and culture sector to benefit from the new law—and make up […]
Read more
CAN Journal learns something at the end of every year—something about hot topics and what makes people read, and also something about the challenges inherent to building top ten lists. Year after year, we see that people want to read about injustice and controversy. And 2023 was no different, with posts about the disappearance of a large piece of public […]
Read more
The Cleveland Museum’s current exhibition on China’s Southern Paradise is one of the most ambitious scholarly projects it has staged in some time, and one of the most remarkable gatherings of top notch art. It’s also a show that is bit daunting for the general visitor, and it’s particularly unfortunate that the catalogue will not be available until the final […]
Read more
Cuyahoga Arts and Culture Board President Nancy Mendez apologized to artists present at the CAC Board meeting December 13. An apology was the first priority expressed in the 2023 Support for Artists: Community Engagement and Planning report, commissioned by CAC and delivered a week earlier by a contractor on behalf of Assembly for the Arts. CAC director Jill Paulsen said […]
Read more
Presenting two exhibitions on geometric abstraction, the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve draws attention to both the history of and the continued impact that the style has had on our region. While the companion exhibition Tangents (curated by Jenniffer Omaitz) pushes the boundaries of geometric abstractions, A Hard Line takes on a more Formalist approach utilizing works from the […]
Read more
The arts sector in Cuyahoga County has long sought a way to stabilize the revenue stream for its public support, which since 2006 has been a 30-cent per pack tax on cigarettes. Among many other possibilities discussed by policy makers or suggested (taxing real estate, hotel stays, dine-in restaurant meals, beer and wine, soft drinks) the prospect of a tax […]
Read more
Cuyahoga Arts and Culture’s entire budget for partner organizations making individual artist grants each year–$400,000 –is less than one percent of Deshaun Watson’s annual salary. Indeed, the sum of all grants CAC’s board recently approved for all organizations combined amounts to less than 25 percent of that one football player’s annual salary. This tangential comparison doesn’t just highlight the difference […]
Read more
Cuyahoga Arts and Culture’s Board of Directors meets at 3:30 Wednesday, December 13 in the Louis Stokes Wing of Cleveland Public Library, and if you care about the arts or if you like reality television, you should go. The Board’s public behavior has been an embarrassment to the sector for all of 2023. The good news is that the terms […]
Read more
In speaking with any number of local artists both amateur and professional, there is a shared observation that the juried exhibition ecosystem is not serving the artists. For the uninitiated, the juried ecosystem is a ‘pay to play’ exhibition model, wherein the non- refundable entrance fees (usually about $15 a painting) are aggregated to pay for juror(s) services, award money, […]
Read more
Dual exhibitions at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve explore North East Ohio’s long running interest in geometric abstraction. The first, Tangents, asks the question: “Why is making abstract work still important?” Jenniffer Omaitz’s curatorial debut boasts a serious panel of artists working in abstraction, primarily of the geometric variety, each with unique and individual voices. (A second exhibition, […]
Read more