One Critic Takes a Look at the Year’s Best

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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Cai Guo-Qiang: Last Carnival and the Cuyahoga

The Trump EPA’s rollback of Obama-era rules protecting US waterways should have a special resonance in Cleveland, including in the art world here. Having just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the big fire on the Cuyahoga—an event which helped to inspire creation of the EPA—we know that humans and their industry can do profound damage to our waterways, and that […]

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Gunpowder Artist Cai Guo-Qiang Draws the Cuyahoga River with Fire

Last year in his New Jersey studio, Cai Guo-Qiang ignited the gunpowder for his work Cuyahoga River Lightning: Drawing for the Cleveland Museum of Art. Stretching nearly forty feet long, the artist traced the familiar curving path of Cleveland’s famous river—from the site of the historic fire in the summer of 1969 to the mouth at Lake Erie—using explosions. The […]

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