Past Meets Present: Exhibitions by Contemporary Artists in Conversation with Historical Art Define the Cleveland Museum of Art’s 2025 Schedule
- Press Release

Hustle’n’Punch By Kaikai And Kiki, 2009. Takashi Murakami. Acrylic and platinum leaf on canvas mounted on aluminum frame; 118 1/8 x 239 3/8 x 2 in. (300.04 x 608.01 x 5.08 cm). ©2009 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of The Broad
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Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow; Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior; and fashion exhibition Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses adapt historic art within the context of popular culture.
Featured Exhibitions
Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow
May 18–September 7, 2025
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall and Gallery

Discover an incredible new exhibition of works from the Japanese artist known for his unique style that simultaneously honors the rich tradition of Japanese art and deploys the cultural energies of anime, manga, otaku, and kawaii in singular contemporary artworks. Visitors will explore how—after shared historical events and trauma—art can address crisis, healing, outrage, and escapist fantasy. In addition to works more than 30-feet wide on view, the centerpiece of the exhibition is the recreation of the Yumedono or Dream Hall from the Horyuji Temple complex in Nara, Japan, in the CMA’s magnificent atrium space. The museum’s deep holdings of Japanese art lead you even more profoundly into the exhibition’s original themes. Originating at The Broad in Los Angeles, the exhibition, Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, will be presented with expanded scope at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The exhibition is presented by Akron Children’s.
Generous support is provided by the Gottlob family in loving memory of Milford Gottlob, MD. Additional support is provided by Mrs. Viia R. Beechler, Gries Financial Partners, and Frank and Fran Porter.
Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses
November 9, 2025–February 26, 2026
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall

The medium of fashion undeniably addresses ideas that transcend time. Through the majestic creations of more than 100 modern and contemporary Italian fashions and accessories in dialogue with Italian fine, decorative, and textile arts from the 1400s to the early 1600s, Renaissance to Runway examines the art historical inspirations that fuel recent creative Italian lexicon, expanding fantasies of the Renaissance, Mannerist, and early Baroque periods.
More than 500 years ago, families, or “houses,” who ruled the states across the Italian peninsula, such as the Medici of Florence and the Sforza of Milan, used fashion as a form of power and influence, from dictating fashionable styles that were immortalized through painted portraits to controlling textile production as a form of currency. Conversely, since the turn of the 1900s, rising Italian fashion companies, also called “houses,” have been founded by prolific individuals and families who dominate global style with unmatched design craftsmanship, quality fabrics, and enthralling aesthetics. From Versace and Valentino to Ferragamo and Capucci, these houses have interpreted Italian early modern aesthetics to develop fresh perspectives throughout the fashion landscape.
This exhibition illustrates how fashion, in all its change, is a continuous thread that uncovers history’s complexities as it materializes contemporary beauty.
Generous support is provided by Sandra and the late Richey Smith.

Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior
February 14–June 8, 2025
Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery

Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior premiered to international acclaim as a Collateral Event during the 60th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia—a globally significant platform for contemporary art—at the Palazzo Soranzo van Axel. Following this presentation, complementary iterations of the exhibition are on view concurrently in Ohio at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) and Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) beginning on February 14, 2025.
The exhibition, the largest and most comprehensive presentation of the artist’s career, explores Sikander’s role as an American artist, a Pakistani artist, a Muslim artist, a feminist artist, and—perhaps most significantly—a global citizen engaging with a disrupted historical narrative. The CMA presentation of Collective Behavior focuses on Sikander’s art in relation to historical South Asian works from the museum’s collection that have inspired her. It carries forward in time the rich histories that are encompassed in the CMA’s renowned South Asian collection, while situating contemporary artistic practice in relation to the global history that precedes it.
Major support is provided by the Malcolm E. Kenney Curatorial Research Fund. Additional support is provided by the Junaid Family Foundation and Herb and Jody Wainer.
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Newly Announced
Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis
January 26–May 25, 2025
Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Galleries
American photographer Kelli Connell reconsiders the relationship between writer Charis Wilson and photographer Edward Weston by weaving together the story of their romance with that of her own relationship with her partner at the time, Betsy Odom. Weston’s figure studies and landscapes from 1934–45 are juxtaposed with photographs that Connell created with Odom between 2008 and 2022 at sites where Wilson and Weston had lived, made art, and spent time together.
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.
Karamu Artists Inc.: Printmaking, Race, and Community
March 23–August 17, 2025
James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Galleries
Printmaking played a groundbreaking role at Cleveland’s Karamu House, one of the best-known sites for Black American culture. This exhibition brings together more than 50 prints created by Karamu Artists Inc.—including works by Elmer W. Brown, Hughie Lee-Smith, Charles Sallée, and William E. Smith—a group that came together over a shared interest in the democratic possibilities of the graphic arts.
This exhibition is made possible with support from the M. E. and F. J. Callahan Foundation, the Malcolm E. Kenney Curatorial Research Fund, and Anne T. and Donald F. Palmer.
Refocusing Photography: China at the Millennium
June 8–November 16, 2025
Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Galleries
This exhibition presents eight artists who, working in a newly individualistic and consumerist China around 2000, helped bring photography to the foreground in Chinese contemporary art. Dissolving the boundaries between photography, performance art, and conceptual art, they produced artworks that addressed their country’s swift societal transformation and their own resultant shift in identity as Chinese.
This exhibition is made possible with support from the Seven Five Fund.
Rose Iron Works: From Art Nouveau to Art Deco
July 6–October 19, 2025
Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery
In the early 1900s, as Cleveland experienced rapid economic growth and the expansion of its iron and steel industries, Hungarian ornamental blacksmith Martin Rose moved to the city and founded Rose Iron Works. It soon became one of the leading manufacturers of decorative metalwork in the United States. Trained in Budapest and Vienna in the Art Nouveau tradition, Rose was interested in artistic and technological innovations. In 1925, a groundbreaking international exhibition in Paris presented modern decorative arts—a style that later became known as Art Deco. Rose’s compatriot and a designer active in Paris, Paul Feher joined the Rose company in Cleveland a few years later. Their artistic collaboration resulted in some of the best Art Deco ironwork in the country, including the celebrated Muse with Violin Screen (1930), now in the CMA’s collection. This exhibition explores Rose’s transition from Art Nouveau to Art Deco, focuses on his 1930s commissions, and places his work in the European context. It also emphasizes the importance of Rose Iron Works, a family-run Cleveland company that for 120 years has been adorning some of the city’s most notable buildings.
Major support is provided by the Malcolm E. Kenney Curatorial Research Fund.
In Vino Veritas (In Wine, Truth)
September 7–January 11, 2026
James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Galleries
For millennia, wine has played a significant role not only in the human diet but also in cultural myths, rituals, and festivities. As a result, wine—its ingredients, making, drinking, and effects on the human body and mind—has been a constant muse for artistic creation. The exhibition In Vino Veritas (In Wine, Truth), a phrase coined by the Roman polymath Pliny the Elder, celebrates the presence and meaning of wine in prints, drawings, textiles, and objects made in Europe between 1450 and 1800. Drawn from the museum’s collection, more than 70 works by artists from throughout Europe explore wine’s myths, symbols, and stories. These images reveal how diverse cultures and religions ascribed meaning and transformational properties to the so-called nectar of the gods.
Generous support is provided by the Malcolm E. Kenney Curatorial Research Fund.
Filippino Lippi and Rome
November 21, 2025–February 22, 2026
Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery
Filippino Lippi and Rome reconsiders the impact of the painter’s time in the Eternal City, juxtaposing Filippino’s Roman artworks with their Florentine precursors and successors. The exhibition places 20 paintings, drawings, and antiquities in direct conversation. These related artworks are brought together for the first time, and numerous paintings are reunited with their studies. Each object has been carefully selected to elucidate the evolution of Filippino’s artistic practice before, during, and after his Roman period. The Cleveland Museum of Art’s seminal tondo by Filippino, The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret, is the focal point of the exhibition. Likely commissioned by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa while Filippino was frescoing the cardinal’s chapel, this important painting is the only known independent work produced by the artist in Rome. Filippino Lippi and Rome traces the arc of Filippino’s career across time and media, constituting a unique opportunity for scholars and the public alike to discover the artistic processes and iconographic ingenuities of a preeminent Renaissance painter.
Principal support is provided by the Malcolm E. Kenney Curatorial Research Fund. Major support is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation.
Expressively American: Printed Silks 1927 to 1947
November 2, 2025–November 8, 2026
Arlene M. and Arthur S. Holden Gallery – Gallery 234
Between the late 1920s and late 1940s, the US was a leader in printed silk. This exhibition showcases printed silks in the CMA’s collection from four American companies—Stehli Silks, H. R. Mallinson & Co., Silks Beau Monde, and Onondaga Silk Company.
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.
Ann Hamilton: The Tactile Image
December 14, 2025–March 29, 2026
Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz Photography Galleries
Internationally renowned artist Ann Hamilton is best known for large-scale ephemeral installations, performances, and civic monuments, but the use of photography and video runs throughout her 35-year career and has become increasingly important to her practice over the past decade. This exhibition juxtaposes past works with new creations, including some related to the museum and its collections. Explored in all this work is the relationship between touch, sight, and language. Hamilton’s interest in tactility recalls her origins as a textile artist. A central theme of her practice is the connection between feeling, understanding, and sensory experience, especially touch.
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.
Continuing Exhibitions
Imagination in the Age of Reason
Through March 2, 2025
James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Galleries
Pulled from the CMA’s rich holdings of 18th-century European prints and drawings, Imagination in the Age of Reason explores the complex relationship between imagination and the Enlightenment’s ideals of truth and knowledge. During this unprecedented time, artists used their imaginations in multifaceted ways to depict, understand, and critique the world around them. The exhibition presents an exceptional opportunity to see exciting recent acquisitions on view for the first time as well as rarely shown collection highlights, including prints and drawings by Canaletto and Francisco de Goya and a pastel portrait by Swiss artist Jean-Étienne Liotard.
This exhibition is made possible with support from the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, Case Western Reserve University.
Picasso and Paper
Through March 23, 2025
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall and Gallery
Pablo Picasso’s prolonged engagement with paper is the subject of the groundbreaking exhibition Picasso and Paper, organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in partnership with the Musée national Picasso, Paris. Showcasing nearly 300 works spanning the artist’s career, the exhibition highlights Picasso’s relentless exploration of paper. His appreciation of and experimentation with the material is revealed in the works ranging from collages of cut-and-pasted papers to sculptures from pieces of torn and burnt paper, manipulated photographs, drawings in virtually all available media, and prints in an array of techniques.
This exhibition is organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris.
This exhibition is presented by CIBC.
Major support is provided by the Malcolm E. Kenney Curatorial Research Fund and Anne H. Weil. Generous support is provided by Martin Kline and the Carol Yellig Family Fund. Additional support is provided by Carl M. Jenks, Frank and Fran Porter, and Robert G. Simon.
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Rose B. Simpson: Strata
Through April 13, 2025
Ames Family Atrium
Rose B. Simpson (b. 1983) envisioned a site-specific installation for the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Ames Family Atrium titled Strata, 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.
Major support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Arts of the Maghreb: North African Textiles and Jewelry
Through October 12, 2025
Arlene M. and Arthur S. Holden Gallery – Gallery 234
This exhibition spotlights the rich artistic traditions of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia during the late 1800s–early 1900s, through a display of elaborate textiles and fine jewelry in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. These works introduce the specialized skills of North African artists, both Amazigh (Berber) and Arab, Muslim, and Jewish, and the diverse aesthetics of their multifaceted communities. The family of CMA founder J. H. Wade II began forming the collection during his personal travels across the region, and many works are on view for the very first time.
This exhibition is made possible with support from the Malcolm E. Kenney Curatorial Research Fund and Anne T. and Donald F. Palmer.
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Principal annual support is provided by Michael Frank and the late Pat Snyder, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, the John and Jeanette Walton Exhibition Fund, and Margaret and Loyal Wilson. Major annual support is provided by the late Dick Blum and Harriet Warm and the Frankino-Dodero Family Fund for Exhibitions Endowment. Generous annual support is provided by two anonymous donors, Gini and Randy Barbato, Gary and Katy Brahler, Cynthia and Dale Brogan, Dr. Ben and Julia Brouhard, Brenda and Marshall Brown, Gail and Bill Calfee, Dr. William A. Chilcote Jr. and Dr. Barbara S. Kaplan, Joseph and Susan Corsaro, Richard and Dian Disantis, the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, Florence Kahane Goodman, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Robin Heiser, the late Marta and the late Donald M. Jack Jr., the estate of Walter and Jean Kalberer, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, the William S. Lipscomb Fund, Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Roy Minoff Family Fund, Lu Anne and the late Carl Morrison, Jeffrey Mostade and Eric Nilson and Varun Shetty, Sarah Nash, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, Henry Ott-Hansen, Christine Fae Powell, Peter and Julie Raskin, Michael and Cindy Resch, William Roj and Mary Lynn Durham, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, Saundra K. Stemen, Paula and Eugene Stevens, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia Woods and David Osage.
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About the Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art 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 innovations. One of the top comprehensive art museums in the nation, recognized for its award-winning open access program and free of charge to all, the Cleveland Museum of Art is located in the University Circle neighborhood.
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.