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Photographs in Ink
11/20/2022-04/02/2023
Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Galleries | Gallery 230

Since the invention of the medium, the majority of published photographs have been printed through photomechanical processes—images made in printer’s ink rather than produced in the darkroom or digitally. Photographs in Ink explores how artists have responded to the abundance of published photographic images that have saturated our daily lives from the 1850s through the early 2000s. The exhibition presents two intertwined narratives: the use of these processes to widely disseminate images and the adoption of them as content and aesthetic choice by fine artists. These stories are told through historical and contemporary works of art by artists from Eadweard Muybridge and Alfred Stieglitz to Andy Warhol, Sigmar Polke, Carl Pope Jr., and Lorna Simpson.

In the 19th century, inventors, scientists, publishers, and journalists circulated photographic images in print to an ever-expanding audience. These were utilized for visual communication; as one prominent example, Charles Darwin included Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne’s 1856 photograph in his volume on emotions and evolution. Artists used the same media for creative expression. Pictorialist artists such as Clarence White and Alvin Langdon valued photogravure’s ability to produce soft tonal passages similar to drawing. The exhibition allows visitors to learn about the particular visual fingerprints of the techniques and see how patterns of dots, lines, and grids come together in our eyes and brains to form varying shades of gray. 

While the tools of mass media have transformed over the years, contemporary artists have continued to return to these techniques in their artistic practices but for radically different reasons. Through recent acquisitions and rarely seen works from the museum’s holdings, along with loans from several local collections, this exhibition showcases the strength and flexibility of these subtle but ubiquitous processes. 

All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Principal annual support is provided by Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder. Major annual support is provided by the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, the late Dick Blum and Harriet Warm, Cynthia and Dale Brogan, Dr. Ben and Julia Brouhard, Brenda and Marshall Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., Richard and Dian Disantis, the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Carl T. Jagatich, Cathy Lincoln, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Carl and Lu Anne Morrison, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Henry Ott-Hansen, Michael and Cindy Resch, Margaret and Loyal Wilson, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage.

The Cleveland Museum of Art is funded in part by residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.

This exhibition was supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Medieval Top Seller: The Book of Hours
Through 07/30/2023
Gallery 115

Books of hours were immensely popular devotional books in the later Middle Ages. Meant for laypeople or those not in the clergy, books of hours were at-home companions containing daily prayers as well as prayers for specific occasions, such as death, plague, warfare, travel, or bad weather. Ranging from lavishly decorated by hand with gold leaf to printed on paper with no images, books of hours were customizable and could be highly personalized to an individual’s tastes, budget, and interests. Mostly used by women, these books are estimated to have been owned by every fourth household at the height of their popularity. Such popularity lasted until around the 1550s, when German priest Martin Luther, in his attempts to reform the Catholic Church which led to the Protestant Reformation, declared them full of “un-Christian tomfoolery,” and they fell out of favor. These precious volumes are windows into the medieval world and the lives of their original owners.

Arts of Africa: Gallery Rotation
Through 07/02/2023
Galleries 108A–C

Seventeen rarely seen or newly acquired works have been installed in the African arts galleries. These 19th- to 21st-century works from northern, central, western, and southern Africa support continuing efforts to broaden the scope of African arts on view at the CMA.

Marking the first inclusion of a northern African artist in the CMA’s African arts galleries, digitally carved alabaster tablets by contemporary Algerian artist Rachid Koraïchi make their debut. Carved by acclaimed Yorùbá sculptor Duga of Mẹkọ (c. 1880–1960), twinned Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ society masks with innovative moving parts are on view, while a Yorùbá-style vessel of a goose is displayed with new insights into its painted plumage.

Several works acquired during the CMA’s first 25 years show the long institutional history of African arts. These include a central African elite’s luxurious wooden sandals and a Zimbabwean ceremonial axe with ties to both the historical Great Zimbabwe and modern independence movements. Among these early acquisitions are pieces made by the royal Asante goldsmiths’ guild; these visitor favorites are reinstalled with new texts regarding their spiritual meaning and artists’ techniques.

Modern Japan 近代日本
Through 06/18/2023
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Japanese Art Galleries | Galleries 235A–B

Japanese art underwent major changes with the opening of Japan to international trade in the mid-1800s. Aside from a small number of Chinese residents and a limited trade relationship with the Dutch, Japan had been closed off to interaction with people from other nations since 1639. As a result, its 1854 trade agreement with the United States, rapidly followed by treaties with European nations, generated a seismic shift in Japanese culture. Japan went from being an isolated country operating under a military regime to a country with imperialist ambitions and a representative government almost overnight. Artists who had worked within traditional patronage and workshop systems found themselves competing in a global arena and redefining what it meant to create “Japanese art” in the modern world.

Modern Impressions—Light and Water in Chinese Prints
Through 05/07/2023
Clara T. Rankin Galleries of Chinese Art | Gallery 240A

Printing was invented around 700 in China, the country with the longest continuous print history in the world. Color printing by pressing separately cut woodblocks for each color (the douban technique) on paper was likewise first developed in China.

Over the last five years, the Cleveland Museum of Art has acquired works by contemporary Chinese printmakers that are on display here for the first time. By bringing diversity in geography and gender to the museum’s prints and drawings collection, these artists demonstrate the exploration of the print medium in new ways and varied formats. This presentation focuses on the visual and atmospheric effects of light and water.

Old and New in Korean Art
Through 04/23/2023
Korea Foundation Gallery | Gallery 236

The current installation looks at the dynamic tension between tradition and innovation in Korean art and this tension’s transformative impacts. The selected paintings illustrate how Korean artists in the early 1900s built on and broke with tradition through new artistic languages and interpretations. Tiger Family (호랑이 가족도), for example, demonstrates how its painter strove to achieve greater realism in traditional subjects in the wake of a growing influx of foreign cultural products and commodities toward the second half of the 1800s. Meanwhile, the understated elegance of traditional Korean ceramic works served as a source of artistic creativity for many contemporary Korean artists to explore the language of abstraction.

Firelei Báez: the vast ocean of all possibilities (19°36'16.9"N 72°13'07.0"W, 41°30'32.3"N 81°36'41.7"W)
Through 01/15/2023
Betty T. and David M. Schneider Gallery of European Sculpture | Gallery 218

Who wrote the history of painting?

Firelei Báez, an American artist of Haitian and Dominican descent based in New York, is known for her large-scale paintings and immersive installations, like the one here. Báez’s work ties together subject matter mined from a wide breadth of diasporic narratives, or stories that evolve and travel like people across the globe. In doing so, Báez positions her work in critical conversation with the history of Western art, seen elsewhere in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

This installation is part of an ongoing series in which the artist reimagines the archaeological ruins of the Sans-Souci Palace in northern Haiti, underscoring its position as an enduring symbol of healing and resistance. The work’s painted surfaces are adorned with reproductions of traditional West African indigo printing (later used in the American South) and marine plants native to Caribbean waters. In this work, the ruins of the San-Souci Palace appear to travel through both time and place to burst through the gallery’s floor, dripping with brightly colored sea life and the pieces of modern urban waste that now carpet our ocean floors.

Commissioned by FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, with support from the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation and James Cohan Gallery, New York.

FRONT exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are presented by Richard and Michelle Jeschelnig, with additional support from the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, Fleischner Family Charitable Foundation, the Louise H. and David S. Ingalls Foundation, and the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York.

The Cleveland Museum of Art is proud to partner with FRONT International. All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Major annual support is provided by the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Dr. Ben H. and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Carl and Lu Anne Morrison, Henry Ott-Hansen, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Mr. and Mrs. Michael F. Resch, Anne H. Weil, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage

Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection
Through 01/08/2023
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall

This exhibition celebrates the extraordinary gift and promised gift of art made by Clevelanders Joseph P. and Nancy F. Keithley to the Cleveland Museum of Art. In March 2020, the Keithleys gave more than 100 works of art to the museum—the most significant gift since the bequest of Leonard C. Hanna Jr. in 1958.  

The Keithleys’ collection focuses on Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern European and American paintings. Among the highlights are five paintings by Pierre Bonnard; four each by Maurice Denis and Édouard Vuillard; two each by Milton Avery, Georges Braque, Gustave Caillebotte, Joan Mitchell, and Félix Vallotton; and individual pictures of outstanding quality by Henri-Edmond Cross, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, and Andrew Wyeth. Among the works on paper are six watercolors by John Marin, five drawings by Bonnard, and a spectacular pastel by Eugène Boudin. Also included in the exhibition is a selection of European and American decorative arts. The Keithleys also collected Chinese and contemporary Japanese ceramics. In the exhibition, Asian ceramics will be shown alongside Western paintings and drawings to echo the harmonies created by the Keithleys, who enjoyed thoughtfully juxtaposing the works in their collection.  

Throughout two decades of collecting, the Keithleys selected works of art to complement and enrich the CMA’s collection. At times, the Keithleys built upon a strength in the museum’s collection; on other occasions, they acquired a work of art that would bring something entirely new to the collection. Certain works of art in the Keithleys’ gift and promised gift will be shown alongside paintings, drawings, or objects from the CMA’s collection, inviting visitors to discover connections, contrasts, and poetic conversations between familiar, favorite works of art and new objects from the Keithleys’ collection. 

Cycles of Life: The Four Seasons Tapestries
Throough 02/19/2023
Arlene M. and Arthur S. Holden Textile Gallery | Gallery 234
Artworks

Cycles of Life: The Four Seasons Tapestries offers visitors an in-depth look at a rare, complete set of tapestries in the museum’s collection that has not been displayed since 1953 because of the tapestries’ fragile condition. Each tapestry depicts seasonal activities: fishing and gardening (Spring), grain harvesting (Summer), wine making (Autumn), and ice skating (Winter). When viewed together, the tapestries represent a full cycle of life. Taking the “four seasons” motif as inspiration, this exhibition tells the story of the life of the tapestries through four themes—their initial design and production, subsequent reproduction and alteration, later acquisition by the museum, and recent conservation treatment by tapestry conservation specialists in Belgium, at Royal Manufacturers De Wit, under the supervision of the CMA’s textile conservator. The exhibition also offers an in-depth look at the difficult craft of tapestry conservation, including its ethics, techniques, and concerns.

The video below, created for the exhibition, explores how the Four Seasons tapestries were cleaned and restored at Royal Manufacturers De Wit., a tapestry conservation studio in Belgium. 

Cycles of Life: The Four Seasons Tapestries: How to Conserve a Tapestry

Art historical research for this exhibition was a collaboration with Case Western Reserve University graduate students in the museum's joint art history graduate program.

Generous support is provided by the Thompson Family Foundation.

All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum* and Harriet Warm, Dr. Ben H. and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Anne H. Weil, and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The conservation of the Four Seasons tapestries was made possible with support from Emma Lincoln.*

*Deceased

Nicole Eisenman: A Decade of Printing
Thorugh 12/31/2022
James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Gallery | Gallery 101

How is one person’s artwork fueled by their communities?

In 2012, Nicole Eisenman embarked on an intensive venture into printmaking. A prolific and highly influential painter and sculptor, the artist recasts art historical motifs in contemporary settings, often exploring experiences of community and isolation in today’s world. Over the past ten years, Eisenman has immersed themselves in the expansive possibilities offered by the graphic arts alongside their work in other media. 

This exhibition presents more than 50 works made by Eisenman at three New York–based printshops: 10 Grand Press, Harlan & Weaver, and Jungle Press. In close collaboration with master printers there, the artist has experimented with a range of printmaking techniques—including monotype, etching, woodcut, and lithography—exploring the unique traits of each. Drawn from the collections of Eisenman and their collaborators, the works on view reveal how printmaking has emerged as a primary vehicle for this important contemporary artist to explore foundational themes and ideas central to their work, translating them inventively across media.

FRONT exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are presented by Richard and Michelle Jeschelnig, with additional support from the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, Fleischner Family Charitable Foundation, the Louise H. and David S. Ingalls Foundation, and the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York.

The Cleveland Museum of Art is proud to partner with FRONT International. All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Major annual support is provided by the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Dr. Ben H. and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Carl and Lu Anne Morrison, Henry Ott-Hansen, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, Mr. and Mrs. Michael F. Resch, Anne H. Weil, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage.

Native North America
Through 12/04/2022
Sarah P. and William R. Robertson Gallery | Gallery 231
Artworks

Works from the permanent collection newly on display in the Native North American gallery include a group of objects from the Great Plains—a child’s beaded cradle; a woman’s hair-pipe necklace, one of the most memorable of Plains ornaments; and several beaded or painted bags that served varied purposes. A basket rotation features creations that Timbisha Shoshone (Panamint) weavers of California’s Death Valley made for the early 20th-century collector’s market; most dramatic are three fine, large presentation bowls modeled on Native food service bowls. Finally, for the first time in at least 20 years, two works by contemporary Inuit artists of the Canadian Arctic make an appearance. One is a 1972 stonecut print by Alec (Peter) Aliknak Banksland, a founding member of the Holman Eskimo Arts Cooperative, now the Ulukhaktok Arts Centre in Ulukhaktok, Canada.

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