The CMA on the World Stage

Great museums are places where ideas circulate alongside objects. They bring together collectors, artists, curators, conservators, and experts from across the museum field to deepen understanding, exchange perspectives, and shape the conversations that define the cultural landscape. The Cleveland Museum of Art occupies just such a place in the international art world. Few initiatives embody that role more fully than the museum’s International Council of Collectors (ICC).

Established in 2019, the ICC was created to extend the museum’s national and international standing by engaging a distinguished group of the world’s most prominent art collectors. Today, the council includes 70 members from 11 countries across four continents. Each year, members gather at the CMA to hear from curators, conservators, and other museum professionals about recent acquisitions, major conservation projects, strategic priorities, and institutional initiatives while offering counsel on acquisitions and other matters central to the museum’s mission.

Drawing on their expertise as collectors, and as founders, trustees, and supporters of museums and foundations all around the world, ICC members provide valuable insight into the opportunities and challenges that shape museums today. Their experience helps to inform acquisitions, exhibitions, scholarship, conservation, and long-term institutional priorities. They serve as trusted advisors and ambassadors to the CMA, helping to strengthen the museum’s visibility, cultivate 
relationships, and create opportunities that might not otherwise emerge.

The annual gathering of the council also provides an opportunity for the museum’s curators, conservators, and other staff to share their own expertise. Through direct engagement with CMA staff, council members gain uncommon insight into the research, stewardship, and connoisseurship that shape one of the world’s great collections, while staff benefit from the perspectives of
individuals who have built remarkable collections and support leading cultural institutions around the globe. Together, these conversations become a forum for thoughtful dialogue among people who share a profound commitment to art and preservation, as well as to engaging audiences with the cultural legacy of humankind. By bringing together many of the world’s foremost collectors with some of the museum profession’s leading experts, the ICC creates an intellectual exchange that enriches every participant while advancing the broader conversation about art.

Just as important is the spirit in which those conversations unfold. The ICC has become a community whose members genuinely enjoy one another’s company. Professional respect has developed into lasting friendships, and the exchange of ideas continues as readily over gallery visits and shared meals as it does in formal sessions. That combination of intellectual rigor and camaraderie has become one of the council’s greatest strengths.

Those relationships frequently translate into meaningful opportunities for the museum. The CMA director William Griswold and ICC member Abhishek Poddar, for example, have recently signed a memorandum of understanding between the CMA and the Museum of Art and Photography, in Bangalore—a museum Poddar founded—laying the foundation for loans, scholarly exchange, and future cooperation.

The council has also strengthened the museum’s 
collection through the generosity of its members. The Gracious Pine Studio Collection recently donated Retreat on an Autumn Day (1523), a magnificent handscroll by Ming dynasty calligrapher Zhu Yunming (1460–1527), together with a work by Wu Hufan (1894–1968), enhancing the CMA’s ability to tell the story of Chinese art and culture. ICC members Marc and Elizabeth Wilson have demonstrated their support through a $10 million estate commitment that establishes the Marc F. and Elizabeth F. Wilson Fund for the Acquisition of Works of Art. Over the past few years, ICC members have lent more than one hundred works from their collections to the CMA's exhibitions and for installations in our permanent collection galleries.

These gifts, coupled with the experience, enthusiasm, and support that the members of this convivial group bring to their involvement with the CMA, contribute immeasurably to our success. Beyond helping to build the museum’s collection, their support and connections create opportunities for collaboration with cultural institutions in many countries. The ICC’s impact is a testament to the professionalism of the staff of the museum, as well as to the dedication of the CMA trustees who serve on the steering committee of the International Council, and who have been essential to the initiative’s continued vitality and great success.