Upcoming Exhibitions
Between about 3000 BCE and the early 1500s CE, ancient Andean weavers created one of the world’s most distinguished textile traditions in both artistic and technical terms. Within this time span, the most impressive group of early textiles to survive was made by the Paracas people of Peru’s south coast. Most artistically elaborate Andean textiles served as garments.
Newly on display from the permanent collection are two Diné (Navajo) textlles from the late 1800s and early 1900s, both of them rugs woven for the collector’s market, modeled on the Diné shoulder blanket. Also new on view is a watercolor from the 1920s by the Pueblo artist Oqwa Pi (Abel Sanchez), who was key to a major development in Southwest Indigenous arts as Natives took control of representing their own cultures after centuries of marginalization.
Some of the paintings and painted ceramics in this gallery show how Japanese artists of the past portrayed two landmarks in Jiangnan, Mount Lu and West Lake, and Xiao-Xiang, a place located physically west of Jiangnan but an important touch point in artistic productions from that region.
Coupled with the digital immersive exhibition Into the Seven Jeweled Mountain in the Arlene M. and Arthur S. Holden Textile Gallery (gallery 234), From Dreaming to Hiking explores the Korean landscape painting tradition wherein nature becomes an important dimension of human experience.
In Korea, mountains known for awe-inspiring topographic features were much beloved among early tourists and pilgrims and soon became the most popular subject of landscape paintings. A 19th-century 10-panel folding screen in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection is the most spectacular example portraying the Seven Jeweled Mountain’s eccentric terrain that was shaped by ancient volcanic eruptions. After the Korean War (1950–53), the Seven Jeweled Mountain became part of North Korea and thus inaccessible to the outside world. This groundbreaking digital immersive exhibition leads you on a hike in this wondrous terrain.
This exhibition of five stellar paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet features three special loans from the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris placed in intriguing conversation with two favorites from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection. Created during the latter half of the artist’s life, these works reveal how fully Monet immersed himself in capturing the momentary effects of light and atmosphere on subjects, at various times of day and under different weather conditions.
Africa & Byzantium considers the complex artistic relationships between northern and eastern African Christian kingdoms and the Byzantine Empire from the fourth century CE and beyond. The first international loan exhibition to treat this subject, the show includes more than 160 works of secular and sacred art from across geographies and faiths, including large-scale frescoes, mosaics, and luxury goods such as metalwork, jewelry, panel paintings, architectural elements, textiles, and illuminated manuscripts. Lent from collections in Africa, Europe, and North America, many works have never been exhibited in the US. Most were made by African artists or imported to the continent at the request of the powerful rulers of precolonial kingdoms and empires.
This exhibition features more than 50 rarely seen artworks related to book illustration from the museum’s holdings and local collections. Included are preparatory sketches, finished drawings and watercolors, printing blocks, limited edition prints, and published books created between 1750 and 1950. These objects show how artists from Jean-Baptiste Oudry to Aubrey Beardsley approached the challenges and opportunities of illustration, navigating the commercial needs of the publishing industry while developing their artistic voices.
Rose B. Simpson (b. 1983) has envisioned a site-specific project for the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Ames Family Atrium titled Strata. Simpson’s installation is the second artwork commissioned specifically for the expansive, light-filled space. According to the artist, Strata is inspired by time spent in Cleveland, “the architecture of the museum, the possibility of the space, tumbled stones from the shores of Lake Erie,” as well as her own Indigenous heritage and the landscape of her ancestral homelands of Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, where she was born and raised and where she lives and works.
Picturing the Border presents photographs of the US-Mexico borderlands from the 1970s to the present taken by both border residents and outsiders. They range in subject matter from intimate domestic portraits, narratives of migration, and political demonstrations to images of border crossings and clashes between migrants and the US border patrol. The earliest images in this exhibition form an origin story for the topicality of the US-Mexico border at present, and demonstrate that the issues of the border have been a critical point of inquiry for artists since the 1970s. Many serve as counternarratives to the derogatory narratives of migration and Latino/as in the US that tend to circulate in the mass media.