The Cleveland Museum of Art Appoints Standing and Honorary Trustees

CLEVELAND (July 15, 2025)—The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is pleased to announce Rebecca Carmi and Sally Gries have been elected to five-year terms as standing trustees of the museum, and Howard Freedman has been named as an honorary trustee to the distinguished museum board. 

A diverse group of local and national figures vested in the continued growth of the arts and Northeast Ohio, the CMA’s board of trustees guides the museum in its mission to create transformative experiences through art. Members are elected to positions in accordance with the museum’s charter and play an integral role in the life of the museum.  

Biographies: 

Rebecca Carmi, a lifelong advocate of the CMA, is an accomplished cantor, opera singer, recitalist, and author. She has served as chair of the CMA’s Womens Council and the Womens Council Education Committee, and as chair of ChamberFest Cleveland, and is actively involved in the Cleveland Institute of Music. 

Carmi holds a B.A. from Brown University in comparative literature; a B.A. and a M.A. in voice from the Cleveland Institute of Music; a doctorate in educational leadership and change from Fielding Graduate University; and an M.A. in Sacred Music from the Hebrew Union College in New York. 

After serving as congregational clergy in pulpits in New York, New Jersey and California, Carmi was the director of strategic projects for the Cantors Assembly from 2005 until her retirement in 2015, continuing to this day as a trustee. In 2018, in recognition of her lifetime career in the cantorate, she received an honorary doctorate in Sacred Music from Hebrew Union College. 

Carmi has authored children’s books for Scholastic, Inc. and published several short stories in fiction anthologies. As a performer, Carmi has sung in concerts throughout the USA, Cananda, Europe and Israel and was a featured singer in the CMA’s exhibit Sonic Blossom by Lee Mingwei, in which singers performed one of Schubert’s art songs from Lieder, donning a specially designed “transformation cloak” and engaging patrons in an immersive experience of song. 

Sally Gries is the founder of Gries Financial Partners, a multi-family office and wealth management firm for high net worth clients, foundations, and institutions. She and her associates provide comprehensive, total objective financial and investment advisory services.

An avid reader of the Wall Street Journal as a young teenager, she entered the male-dominated financial field in the late 60’s after graduating from Northwestern University. A decade later she started her own company. She has the distinction of being the founder of the first female-owned registered investment advisory (RIA) firm in Ohio. She is on the advisory board of Citymark Capital.

She has served on PIMCO’s RIA Investment Advisory Board and other corporate boards, both public and private. She serves on the National Advisory Board of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NWA) in Washington D.C. She is President of the Gries Family Foundation and past board chair of The Cleveland Foundation.

She has been dedicated to serving the community through not-for-profit board leadership service over the years. Currently, she is a trustee of Holden Forest and Gardens. She is a Life Trustee of Hawken School and Trustee Emeritus of Case Western Reserve University. She is an active member of the investment committees of several major institutions.

She has been a speaker on investment management and financial planning and had many radio and television appearances.

Sally lives in Shaker Heights.

Howard Freedman, a respected Cleveland attorney for more than five decades, began his professional career at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff.  He has since practiced independently as a business lawyer.  He received his J.D. from CWRU School of Law and B.A. from Tulane University. 

Freedman currently serves on the dean’s advisory council of the Tulane University School of Liberal Arts, on the board of directors of the Friends of the Uffizi Galleries, and on the leadership council of the Kent State University Museum.  He is emeritus trustee of Cleveland Arts Prize, which he previously served as board chair, and emeritus director of the Cleveland advisory board of Facing History and Ourselves, which he previously served as board chair.  In addition, he previously served on the boards of directors of SPACES, including as board president, FRONT, the Cleveland International Film Festival, and the Contemporary Art Society of the CMA. 

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About the Cleveland Museum of Art 

The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is renowned for the quality and breadth of its collection, which includes more than 66,500 artworks and spans 6,000 years of achievement in the arts. The museum is a significant international forum for exhibitions, scholarship, and performing arts and is a leader in digital innovation. One of the foremost encyclopedic art museums in the United States, the CMA is recognized for its award-winning open access program—which provides free digital access to images and information about works in the museum’s collection—and is free of charge to all. The museum is located in the University Circle neighborhood with two satellite locations on Cleveland’s west side: the Community Arts Center and Transformer Station. 

The museum is supported in part by residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture and made possible in part by the Ohio Arts Council (OAC), which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts. The OAC is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally, and economically. For more information about the museum and its holdings, programs, and events, call 888-CMA-0033 or visit cma.org.