Asian Art Society members are invited to a virtual talk featuring Clarissa von Spee, James and Donna Reid Curator of Chinese Art and Curator of Korean Art Sooa Im McCormick.

How many stories can a work of art tell?   

The series An Art Anthology accompanies the CMA exhibition Stories from Storage. Developed in collaboration with the creative writing organization Literary Cleveland, the series invites four local storytellers to offer artful interpretations of select objects on view in the show. 

For the fourth and final chapter, poet Kamden Hilliard presents a new work, developed in dialogue with Kara Walker’s monumental collage-drawing The Republic of New Afrika at a Crossroads. Hilliard and curator Key Jo Lee discuss the histories that Walker’s work unearths and the new understandings Hilliard’s poem reveals. 

What value does historical art have for contemporary artists and audiences? 

In his realist paintings, Mario Moore shows how traditional artistic practices can be powerful vehicles for exploring timeless themes and the provocative issues of today.  

Join Moore in conversation with CMA curator Cory Korkow as they discuss Moore’s work, the relevance of historical paintings, and the exhibition Variations: The Reuse of Models in Paintings by Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi.

How many stories can a work of art tell? 

The series An Art Anthology accompanies the CMA exhibition Stories from Storage. Developed in collaboration with the creative writing organization Literary Cleveland, the series invites four local storytellers to offer artful interpretations of select objects on view in the show. 

For the third chapter, musical collective Mourning [A] BLKstar presents a meditative soundscape created in collaboration with multimedia artist Jenn Kidd and inspired by Buddhist and Hindu devotional objects Green Tara, Agni, God of Fire, and Bodhisattva Manjushri: Bodhisattva of Wisdom. Band members RA Washington and Theresa May join curator Sonya Rhie Mace to discuss their distinctive interpretations of these sacred and protective artworks. 

Column & Stripe and Textile Art Alliance members are invited to a virtual talk featuring Susan E. Bergh, Curator of Pre-Columbian and Native North American Art.

Print Club members are invited to join Jane Glaubinger, guest curator and former CMA curator of prints, for an exclusive virtual tour of Gustave Baumann: Colorful Cuts.

How many stories can a work of art tell?  

The series, An Art Anthology accompanies the CMA exhibition Stories from Storage. Developed in collaboration with the creative writing organization Literary Cleveland, the series invites four local storytellers to offer artful interpretations of select objects on view in the show. 

For the second chapter, food writer and culinary historian Sarah Lohman (Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine) brings viewers on a journey through the food, culture, and landscape of the Navajo Nation, beginning with artist Lenore Tawney’s postcard collage Cañon de Chelly. In creating her narrative, Lohman draws on curator Emily Peters’s research into Tawney’s practice and on interdisciplinary artist Zefren Anderson’s deep knowledge of Diné weaving and history. 

Friends of African and African American Art, Contemporary Art Society, and Print Club members are invited to a virtual talk featuring director of academic affairs and associate curator of special projects Key Jo Lee.

Column & Stripe and Friends of Photography members are invited to a virtual talk featuring curator of Korean art Sooa Im McCormick, associate curator of contemporary art Nadiah Rivera Fellah, and curator of photography Barbara Tannenbaum.

Womens Council and Painting and Drawing Society will hear from Mark Cole, Chair of Modern, Contemporary & Decorative Arts and William P. and Amanda C. Madar Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, as he presents the story behind the single painting, Haverstraw Bay, he chose for the Stories from Storage exhibition.

How do you “read” an image? 

Join Andrew Cappetta, curator Sinéad Vilbar, and CMA intern Jeanna Lopez for a close examination of an illustrated handscroll of the family drama The Saltmaker’s Story (Bunshō Zōshi). Vilbar and Lopez reveal the meaning of important narrative details, share their investigative research process, and discuss how mentor-mentee relationships drive innovation in museum scholarship. 

Art museums in the United States follow a prescribed narrative, built upon Eurocentric notions of history and collecting practices informed by legacies of colonialism and social and racial inequality. But is it possible to expand the stories told on their walls and floors? 

Join Linda C. Harrison, director and CEO of the Newark Museum of Art, Rehema Barber, chief curator of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, and Key Jo Lee, director of academic affairs and associate curator of special projects at the Cleveland Museum of Art, for a conversation on how to build a different and more inclusive future for museums. 

Must an artwork be completely original to have artistic, historical, and educational value? 

Curator Seth Pevnick and conservator Colleen Snyder discuss this question, revealing some of the art historical and scientific investigative research involved in selecting, preparing, and determining the age of ancient Greek and Roman objects on display in the Stories from Storage exhibition.

Womens Council, Print Club, and Textile Art Alliance members are invited to the Womens Council February virtual membership program featuring Emily Peters, curator of prints and drawings. Emily will discuss how she developed her story for the exhibition Stories from Storage centering on 41 collages mailed between 1969 and 1981 by textile artist Lenore Tawney to her friend, the art dealer, curator, and critic Katharine Kuh. These collages will be on view together for the first time since 1982.

Hear from CMA leaders about the museum’s strategy and long-term plans. Director William Griswold also introduces you to the major spring exhibition, Stories from Storage, and Susan E. Bergh, curator of Pre-Columbian and Native North American art, previews her story, one of the 20 included in the exhibition.

A one-night-only screening of The Couple in the Cage: Guatinaui Odyssey by Coco Fusco and Paula Heredia, this virtual event features an introduction by curator Nadiah Rivera Fellah and a live Q&A session with the audience after the film.

Womens Council members are invited to the January virtual membership program featuring Gerhard Lutz, the Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art.

Join program host Key Jo Lee and CMA research fellow Andrea Vazquez de Arthur for a deep and guided exploration of a single mola, made using appliqué and reverse appliqué techniques. Learn about these processes and their complex associations with the Guna understanding of the universe.  

CMA Insider, Leadership Circle, Legacy Society, and Friends of African and African American Art Members are invited to join Kristen Windmuller-Luna to hear the life story of a 20th-century Yorùbá masquerade dance costume (called egúngún), from its origins in Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́, Nigeria, to its current home in the CMA exhibition Second Careers. Created with more than 300 textiles from Africa, Europe, and Asia, this egúngún swirls into motion during festivals honoring departed ancestors. Centuries old, the creation of egúngún is still practiced in Nigeria, the Republic of Benin, and in the Yorùbá diaspora. In the summer of 2018, this egúngún was traced back to its makers, the Lekewọgbẹ family. Though no longer ritually empowered according to its community of origin, it remains a compelling symbol of belief.

All CMA members are invited to celebrate the fall season of exhibitions with curator talks, a behind-the-scenes visit of the museum, and a special musical performance by Chief Ayanda Clarke, Ajibilu Awo of Osogbo, with THE FADARA GROUP. Chief Ayanda is a Babalawo, an Egúngún initiate, and a GRAMMY® Award–winning master percussionist. He is also the founder and CEO of THE FADARA GROUP, a Brooklyn-based company that intertwines music, culture, and spirituality.

In this Close Looking at a Distance session, join us for an interactive, guided look at several works from the CMA’s permanent collection that exemplify artistic strategies that, as a means of catharsis or protection, remove or refuse viewers’ access to a figure.

Can the expressive possibilities of abstract art help one heal from trauma?  

Join visual artist Hernease Davis and host Andrew Capetta for a conversation on Davis’s abstract photo-based images, installations, and weavings, which she describes as surfaces for “expression, meditation, anger, rest” and “quiet spaces of self-care.” Together they also discuss the work of artists that have inspired Davis’s own move from representation to abstraction, including Sam Gilliam, Mark Rothko, and Lorna Simpson. 

What kind of white masculinity is on display in the photographs in the upcoming exhibition Bruce Davidson: Brooklyn Gang? In this CLAD session, we interrogate several photographs from the exhibition together and contemplate what each composition may express about the young men who appear in them. Join host Key Jo Lee for this lively and interactive conversation. 

In conjunction with the upcoming exhibition Bruce Davidson: Brooklyn Gang, join curator Barbara Tannenbaum and photographer Vincent Cianni as they explore the roles and responsibilities of the documentary photographer. In his projects We Skate Hardcore, Gays in the Military, and the Newburgh Community Photo Project, Cianni has explored issues of community, memory, and social justice. 

What impact do gender constructs have on artists and art history? Is there greater gender equity in today’s art world?

New York–based artist Maria Yoon and curator Sooa McCormick explore the pressing issue of gender inequality, past and present, through their shared experience as Korean women and discuss how notions of gender play a role in their artistic and curatorial practices. 

Join Emily Peters, curator of prints and drawings, as she presents highlights of recent acquisitions made by the Department of Prints and Drawings. Emily will touch upon a variety of acquisitions in various media throughout the centuries, ending with a focus on contemporary prints and a discussion of how she and colleague Britany Salsbury, associate curator of prints and drawings, are thinking about growing the collection in this area.

Join Andrew Cappetta and curator Seth Pevnick as they discuss ancient Greek and Roman representations of leadership through both ancient and modern lenses. How have surviving images of ancient leaders conditioned our present understanding of them? And how have interpretations of these ancient images helped shape historical images of American authority, allowing certain archetypes of leadership to persist?

Internationally renowned Cleveland photographer Abe Frajndlich speaks with curator Barbara Tannenbaum about his collaborations with fellow German immigrant Ilse Bing in the 1980s and 1990s, which included remaking her iconic self-portrait 55 years later and printing for her. 

Reserve a free ticket online to join the event.

Curators from two disparate disciplines make connections across the CMA collection. In the first program of this new series for CMA Insider members and above, curators discuss how the areas of Indian painting and photography intersect in a special piece from the CMA collection.

How do you define the word “care” and how does it relate to curatorial practice?  

Scholar, curator, and cultural organizer La Tanya Autry discusses her innovative approach to creating exhibitions that focus on collective community care, including recent projects Temporary Spaces of Joy and Freedom (moCa Cleveland, 2020), Let Us March On: Lee Friedlander and the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom (Yale University Art Gallery, 2017), and The Art of Black Dissent (various sites, 2016–).  

Art is both a window to and a mirror of the world. It can hide as much as it reveals, often disguising or erasing inconvenient truths. Museums work to divulge art’s secrets, but every story told conceals others. So how might we better sense the other stories waiting to be witnessed? 

This week, Andrew Cappetta and Key Jo Lee lead the audience in viewing two unique portrait miniatures to show how active noticing can lead to discovering or recovering ideas, histories, and people who might have otherwise remained obscure. 

At this moment, engaged citizens across the world are questioning the systems, structures, and values that museums are built upon. Join Andrew Cappetta and Key Jo Lee to discuss how these much-needed critiques will inform CMA programs like Desktop Dialogues and Close Looking at a Distance, explore objects that reshape what we know about art and museums including Fred Wilson’s To Die upon a Kiss, and learn the value of adopting multiple perspectives to understand works of art. 

Starting at 12:30 p.m., all participants are welcome to continue the conversation and interact in an informal, live Zoom video conference meeting. A link to join this additional discussion will be provided during the program.

Dance your way into spring and join us for MIX: Bloom, featuring a live DJ set from JonDoeTho1  (pop, hip-hop, soul, and future beats) alongside  remixed  animated visuals  of florals from  the CMA’s collection by motion graphics artist  Jessica Williams. 

Are you feeling overwhelmed? Join curator Sonya Rhie Mace and meditation instructor Jennifer Bochik as they look closely at examples of Buddhist art and demonstrate how traditional mindfulness practices can help us manage the challenges we are facing today.

Have you found yourself developing hacks and work-arounds to put dinner on the table or celebrate a holiday? Join curator Nadiah Rivera Fellah and artist-educator Robin Heinrich to discuss how limitations helped artists Sanford Biggers, Louisa Joiner, and Robert Rauschenberg become resourceful and arrive at new creative solutions.