May 2021 On-Site Exhibitions and Virtual Event Listings for the Cleveland Museum of Art

On-Site Exhibitions

Final Weeks! Closing This Month
Stories from Storage
Through May 16, 2021
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall and Gallery

Through 20 personal stories told by the CMA’s curators, this exhibition offers a thoughtful and focused examination of multiple important themes through seldom seen works of art.

Tickets
Adults $12; seniors and adult groups $9; students and children ages 5 to 17 $6; children 5 and under and CMA members FREE. Tickets can be reserved online at cma.org, at the ticket center or by calling 216-421-7350. FREE general admission tickets are also required.

Share your Stories from Storage experience with #withlovefromCMA and #ourcma.

Download the free ArtLens App to access a special Stories from Storage audio guide featuring insights about each of the 20 stories. The ArtLens App (ArtLens download instructions) is available to download to iOS9 or higher and to Android devices (5.0+).

Major support is provided by the Sandy and Sally Cutler Strategic Opportunities Fund and Malcolm Kenney. Additional support is provided by Astri Seidenfeld. Generous support is provided by Russell Benz, in memory of Helen M. DeGulis, by Carl M. Jenks, and by Robin and Andrew Schachat.

Opening This Month
Art of the Islamic World
Opening May 21, 2021
Gallery 116

Artwork from the Islamic world is as diverse and vibrant as the peoples who produced it. The objects presented in this gallery were created during the 8th through 19th centuries, a period of great cultural and geographic expansion. As a result, these works represent a vast area including Spain, North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. While these pieces originate within the Islamic world, they reflect the unique artistic and cultural traditions of disparate regions.

Opening This Month
Medieval Treasures from Münster Cathedral
May 22, 2021, to August 14, 2022
Gallery 115
 

Gold and silver reliquaries, jeweled crosses, liturgical garments and illuminated manuscripts are among the rare treasures kept in the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Münster, in northwestern Germany. Because the cathedral was the heart of both the diocese and the secular territory of the bishop, many art objects were commissioned for, or gifted to, the cathedral. For the medieval Christian, collections of relics and reliquaries held spiritual power and political clout. Many of Münster’s reliquaries, created between the 1000s and 1500s, were permanently displayed on the altar, while others were brought out only during liturgical celebrations. Medieval Treasures includes eight of these reliquaries.

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

 
Bruce Davidson: Brooklyn Gang
Through June 13, 2021
Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Gallery

Bruce Davidson’s 1959 series Brooklyn Gang—his first major project—was the fruit of several months spent photographing the daily lives of the Jokers, one of the many teenage street gangs worrying New York City officials at the time. Bruce Davidson features 50 photographs from that series, which are part of a recent anonymous gift to the museum of extensive selections from the artist’s archives. Included are several sets of variant images, affording a rare glimpse into Davidson’s working process.

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.

Gustave Baumann: Colorful Cuts
Through June 27, 2021
James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Gallery
 

The exhibition celebrates the 2005 gift to the CMA of 65 color woodcuts and 26 drawings by the artist. It illustrates how Baumann worked and features his color woodcuts and drawings inspired by the landscapes, architecture and cultures of Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, New Mexico and New York.

Principal support is provided by Kenneth F. and Betsy Bryan Hegyes, Leon* and Gloria Plevin and Family, and the Print Club of Cleveland. Major support is provided by the Ann Baumann Trust.

*deceased

 
Variations: The Reuse of Models in Paintings by Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi
Through August 22, 2021
Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery
 

Recent conservation of the CMA’s Italian Baroque painting Danaë by Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639) has revealed a more vibrant and refined painting than has hitherto been possible to perceive. It is an extraordinary work now conveying the artist’s trademark virtuosity in painting drapery and flesh tones. Danaë is the second version of a picture painted in Genoa around 1621–22 by Orazio, who often copied his own works; these subsequent versions can rival the original in quality. In the exhibition, Danaë is at the center of an intimate group of paintings by Orazio and his daughter, Artemisia, that beautifully distill the artists’ capacity to modify and manipulate forms across subjects.

Generous support is provided by an anonymous gift in honor of Professor Edward J. Olszewski.

Generous support for public programs related to this exhibition is provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

Fashioning Identity: Mola Textiles of Panamá
Through January 9, 2022
Arlene M. and Arthur S. Holden Textile Gallery

The exhibition explores the mola, a hand-sewn cotton blouse and a key component of traditional dress among the Guna women of Panamá, as both a cultural marker and the product of an artistic tradition. It demonstrates the important role women artists play in the construction of social identity.

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.

Contemporary Art Reinstallation
Betty and Max Ratner Gallery | Contemporary Corridor 224A
Toby’s Gallery for Contemporary Art | Galleries 229A, 229C
Paula and Eugene Stevens Gallery |Gallery 229B
These galleries fall within the S. Mueller Family Galleries of Contemporary Art.

The reimagined galleries focus on the careers of women artists and artists of color and present fresh conversations among artworks. Spanning the past six decades, the contemporary reinstallation carries forward in time stories whose beginnings are told throughout the CMA’s collection.

The reinstallation of these galleries is made possible with principal support provided by the Sandy and Sally Cutler Strategic Opportunities Fund.

Closing This Month!
Laura Owens: Rerun
CMA at Transformer Station
Through May 30, 2021

Organized by the CMA, the exhibition is a collaboration with high school students participating in the museum’s Arts Mastery program, Currently Under Curation (CUC). It features new and existing works by Laura Owens that the CUC teens have selected to explore the theme of time travel. Laura Owens: Rerun is on view at Transformer Station, the CMA’s sister contemporary art museum.

Major support is provided in memory of Myrlin von Glahn.

Transformer Station
1460 West 29th Street
Cleveland, OH 44113

For hours and other information, visit transformerstation.org.

Virtual Events

The following events are part of the museum’s free, dynamic digital initiative Home Is Where the Art Is, which showcases the CMA’s globally recognized digital resources and offers a variety of newly created fun and engaging programs for people of all ages. These sustainable digital experiences continue to complement the in-person museum experience now that the CMA has reopened. Visit cma.org/digital to access all of the available programming.

Education Series: Desktop Dialogues

Every first and third Wednesday at noon, listen as curators, educators, community leaders, artists and others offer new ways to look at and understand artworks, special exhibitions and museum-specific issues. Past Desktop Dialogue programs are available at cma.org. 

Desktop Dialogues: An Art Anthology. For this special series of Desktop Dialogues, organized in collaboration with Literary Cleveland, four local storytellers offer a creative interpretation of select works from the special exhibition Stories from Storage.

Final Chapter
Chapter Four
Wednesday, May 5, 2021, noon, EDT, FREE

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. 

Past Recordings:

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three

Desktop Dialogues: Rethinking Artistic Traditions
Wednesday, May 19, 2021, noon, EDT, FREE

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 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.

Special Members-Only Event
Virtual CMA Spring Members Party
Thursday, May 6, 2021, 6 p.m.
All CMA members are invited to “This Spring at the CMA.”
Visit cma.org to become a member.

 William M. Griswold, director and president, introduces a variety of news and insights about what has been happening at the CMA.

 Learn firsthand how Mark Cole, the William P. and Amanda C. Madar Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, developed his experiential story featured in the exhibition Stories from Storage.

 Cory Korkow, curator of European paintings and sculpture, 1500–1800, introduces the new exhibition Variations: The Reuse of Models in Paintings by Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi and welcomes Miho Hashizume, a violinist with the Cleveland Orchestra, for a performance in the Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery.

Be the first to preview two upcoming exhibitions: New Histories, New Futures, opening June 26; and Private Lives: Home and Family in the Art of the Nabis, Paris, 1889–1900, opening July 1.

To reserve free, general admission tickets, or for more information about the museum’s new safety procedures, visit cma.org.

The Cleveland Museum of Art is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The museum is closed Mondays.

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

All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Major annual support is provided by the Estate of Dolores B. Comey and Bill and Joyce Litzler, with generous annual funding from Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Ms. Arlene Monroe Holden, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia Woods and David Osage.