The holiday break in the art schedule gives us a minute to reflect on what’s been going on for the last year. While I would never sum up 2019 by saying it was the year of this or that, many of the year’s most significant exhibits and events in Cleveland point to big picture evolution in the art world. […]
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In no particular order, here is a list of my ten favorite exhibitions, artists, performances, etc. in the North East Ohio arts scene during 2019. 1. CHARLES BURCHFIELD AT THE CMA: THE OHIO LANDSCAPES Early last year at the Cleveland Museum of Art in the Focus Gallery, Charles Burchfield: The Ohio Landscapes, 1915–1920 was a truly magnificent glimpse into the formative […]
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It’s rare these days for Cleveland galleries to publish catalogs with their exhibits. And while catalogs are very much not the point of art exhibits, they are excellent documents: they capture slices of history, collections of work and their relationships to the times. What happened on Waterloo in North Collinwood Friday, December 6, 2019, was one of those times. A […]
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“Identity” is taking an increasingly central stage in U.S. political discourse. The “intersectional” paradigm lets us speak of the diversity within demographics which had previously been treated as homogenous. Progressives and conservatives alike are more likely to acknowledge that right-wing contrasts between “coastal elites” and “real Americans” amount to valorization of white Christian identity. “Nationalists” of lesser and greater degrees […]
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Are video games art? Back in 2012, The Museum of Modern Art in New York purchased 14 video games for their permanent collection, and several museums have shown video games on their walls, including a major exhibition earlier this year at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and last year at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Video games are […]
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On this, a day of giving thanks, I am thankful for Samaria Rice. Thrust into the spotlight five years ago when her son Tamir was gunned down by the Cleveland police, Ms. Rice has turned this tragedy into action – and a week ago on the occasion of memorializing this horrible date, she presented the plans for a Afrocentric Cultural […]
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It’s true with voices in a duet, with food on a plate, and certainly in a two-person exhibit: When two things are presented together, the way they relate (or don’t) is a make-or-break factor. Cleveland Print Room makes good on this front with Rebekah Ann Wilhelm and Steven Mastroianni’s exhibit, Lines and Shadows, on view November 8 – 30. The […]
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Walking in to the Transformer Station’s current exhibition, Surface Tension, you will quickly notice that all of Tabitha Soren’s photographs appear hazy and out of focus. Upon closer inspection, you might notice that all-too-familiar pattern of smudge marks and fingerprints, a texture that is now a recognizable aspect of modern technological life, as our fingers swipe the various screens of […]
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With the weather changing here in North East Ohio, may I suggest a trip to Massillon Museum’s Studio M to look at the mood-altering drawings of Sandra Benny? The gallery is an explosion of color like a tropical botanical garden. The drawings fill the room with marriages between feathers and flowers. It is the first time that I noticed […]
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Last weekend at the Cleveland Cinematheque the makers of The Foreigner’s Home, a documentary about acclaimed writer and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, presented the film for the first time since Morrison’s death last summer. This somber fact made the film all the more powerful, as much of it features Morrison speaking directly to the camera, her words potent, compelling, urgent, and prescient. […]
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