The Cleveland Museum of Art to Join Association of Art Museum Directors’ Eighth Annual Celebration of Art Museum Day on May 18, 2017

Cleveland (May 16, 2017)—As part of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ (AAMD) Art Museum Day, the Cleveland Museum of Art will offer free admission to Brand-New & Terrific: Alex Katz in the 1950s on Thursday, May 18, 2017, and half-price admission to the exhibition Saturday, May 20, and Sunday, May 21.

The theme of this year’s Art Museum Day is Art Museums Foster Vibrant Communities. AAMD members across the U.S., Canada and Mexico will be offering programs and initiatives to celebrate the arts and the important role art museums play in their communities. In addition to bringing the best of human creativity to people across North America, museums serve as engines for the creative economy, partners with school systems and civic organizations and anchors for public spaces and neighborhoods, making their regions better places for everyone who lives and works there.   

Discounts must be redeemed in person; no online sales.

• WHAT:  Free and half-price admission to Brand-New & Terrific Alex Katz in the 1950s
• WHEN:  FREE: Thursday, May 18, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., HALF-PRICE: Saturday, May 20, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., Sunday, May 21, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
• WHERE:  The Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44106
• HALF-PRICE TICKETS:  Half-price tickets for Brand-New & Terrific: Alex Katz in the 1950s are $6 for adults; seniors and college students $5; children ages 6–17 $3; children 5 and under free. Museum members free; member guests $3.

About Brand-New & Terrific: Alex Katz in the 1950s

Brand-New & Terrific: Alex Katz in the 1950s is the largest museum exhibition to showcase Alex Katz’s (b. 1927) innovative portraits, landscapes and still lifes from this pioneering period. Organized by the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, in close collaboration with Katz, this presentation explores the first decade of the artist’s career, a period characterized by fierce experimentation from which his signature brightly colored figurative paintings emerged. Creating work at a time when abstract painting dominated the art scene, Katz forged an ingenious way to wed abstraction with recognizable imagery by paring down his compositions to their most fundamental elements. In retrospect, these works prefigured the subsequent development of Pop Art. The exhibition includes more than 80 key loans from public and private collections, including many rarely seen works from the artist’s own holdings as well as a sampling of Katz’s works from the CMA collection.

The CMA invites visitors to share their experiences in the exhibition on Art Museum Day via social media, with the hashtags #CMAkatz and #ArtMuseumDay. 

AAMD represents 245 art museums across the United States, Canada, and Mexico—from regional museums in small towns to large museums in major urban centers. International Museum Day is organized annually around the world by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). AAMD’s Art Museum Day is an opportunity to focus attention on the role of art museums in North America, as part of ICOM’s global celebration.