Connections Across Time: A Look at CMA’s Recent Acquisitions 2014–2017
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Thanks to the generosity of our founders and donors, the Cleveland Museum of Art is able to add to its collection each year. Our goal is to acquire exceptional objects that help convey the stories of cultural achievement through time and across the globe in order to provide visitors with a more complete picture of our shared heritage.

Since 2014, the CMA has acquired more than four thousand objects by purchase, gift, and bequest. In considering what objects to include in Recent Acquisitions 2014–2017, on view in the Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery (Through June 6, 2018), our goal was to suggest the breadth of the museum’s encyclopedic collection in terms of history and geography, and to pique our visitors’ curiosity and stimulate their imaginations.

In addition to breadth and range, I was eager for Recent Acquisitions 2014–2017 to suggest common themes across cultures and time periods. When devising the list of twenty-nine objects that would be included in the exhibition, I considered possible juxtapositions not typical in our galleries, where objects are arranged chronologically and by culture. I wanted to show objects next to one another that seem to speak to each other even though they were made at very different times, for different purposes, by artists who wouldn’t have known or been influenced by one another.
I wanted to show objects next to one another that seem to speak to each other even though they were made at very different times, for different purposes, by artists who wouldn’t have known or been influenced by one another. — Heather Lemonedes, Deputy Director and Chief Curator

The juxtaposition of Carlo Maratti’s Portrait of Francesca Gommi Maratti (1701) with Julia Margaret Cameron’s photograph Julia Jackson (1867) is such a pairing. Although created 166 years apart in different mediums, the painting and photograph have much in common. Both depict women around the time of their marriages. The artists who created both works of art knew and loved the sitter in each portrait. Perhaps most of all, each work suggests something of the inner life of the woman portrayed.

Commissioned by wealthy patrons throughout Europe, Carlo Maratti was considered the leading painter in Rome by the end of the 1660s. His religious and mythological subjects and his portraits combined classical ideals of beauty with a sensitive description of light and movement celebrated during the Baroque period. The artist’s portrait of Francesca Gommi Maratti is an intensely personal work of art. In 1700, Maratti’s wife — from whom he had been legally separated since 1659 — died, enabling him to marry Francesca Gommi, his longtime mistress and the mother of his only child, Faustina. The painting was likely made by the artist to celebrate his marriage on December 20, 1700, to the celebrated beauty, who began modeling for him during the 1670s. In the portrait, the voluptuous and mature Gommi is swathed in blue drapery, her hair adorned with ribbons and jewels. She gestures toward a drawing that depicts Venus, the goddess of love, forging the arrows of her son, Cupid. The “picture-within-a-picture” lends an allegorical — and highly personal — element to the portrait, suggesting that the power of love will conquer all.

In the exhibition, Maratti’s portrait of his wife hangs beside Julia Margaret Cameron’s photograph of Julia Jackson, the artist’s niece, namesake, and goddaughter. One of the most important portrait photographers of Victorian England, Cameron transcended mere representation of her sitters’ features by implying the private thoughts and spirit of her subjects. This photograph was taken in April 1867, just weeks before twenty-one-year-old Jackson wed barrister Herbert Duckworth. Marriage was understood by the Victorians to represent a woman’s transition from girlhood to womanhood, but rather than staging a scene that suggested marital status, Cameron concentrated solely on the young woman’s searching gaze. Jackson seems to ponder her future. Of course she would have been unaware that her soon-to-be-husband would die within three years of their marriage, leaving her alone with three young children. In 1878, the widow married the historian and author Leslie Stephen, with whom she had four children, the third of which was Virginia Woolf, one of the most important writers of the twentieth century.
Maratti’s painting and Cameron’s photograph depict two women around the time of their marriages, reflecting on what has come before and all that remains to be. With their pairing in the exhibition, each accentuates the power of the other.
Maratti’s painting and Cameron’s photograph depict two women around the time of their marriages, reflecting on what has come before and all that remains to be. With their pairing in the exhibition, each accentuates the power of the other. — Heather Lemonedes, Deputy Director and Chief Curator

Another poignant juxtaposition is the male figure (ofika) made by the Mbole people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with Pieter Hugo’s photograph Portrait #16, South Africa (2016) from the series 1994. The sculpture and the photograph suggest the darkness of the past, while looking toward the next generation and to an alternative future.
The sculpture and the photograph suggest the darkness of the past, while looking toward the next generation and to an alternative future. — Heather Lemonedes, Deputy Director and Chief Curator

Ofika figures were central to the enforcement of laws among the all-male Lilwa association, a hierarchical organization that serves educational, judicial, political, economic, and ritual functions among the Mbole. Such sculptures are believed to represent criminals who were ritually hanged for transgressions against Lilwa laws. Charged with power, ofika were affixed to wooden stretchers and carried throughout the Mbole people’s villages with the aim of chasing away misfortune and calamity. As important as the role they played in the enforcement of Lilwa law, ofika figures also functioned as cautionary symbols during the lengthy initiation process for Lilwa novices. A physical reminder of the danger that accompanies the transgression of rules, ofika play an important role in instilling a moral code among the young Lilwa.

On view beside the ofika sculpture is a photograph from Hugo’s series 1994 that depicts Rwandan and South African children born after 1994, a year marked by Rwandan genocide and the end of apartheid in South Africa. In each of the photographs in the series, Hugo questioned: “Without direct experience of the horrors of their countries’ recent tragic histories, can these children escape past hatreds and build a better world?” In Portrait #16, South Africa, an older boy cradles a younger child in his arms in a pose reminiscent of the Pietà. Both children look directly at the viewer as if to ask, will we be burdened by the legacies of violence, or will we be able to author our own histories?
“Without direct experience of the horrors of their countries’ recent tragic histories, can these children escape past hatreds and build a better world?” — Pieter Hugo
Hugo’s photograph and the ofika sculpture raise questions about the relationship of one generation to another. The ofika figure is meant to encourage a younger generation to avoid the transgressions of their forefathers, while Hugo hopes that the youth of South Africa and Rwanda depicted in this photograph can be free of their countries’ violent histories, and forge a new path of their own that is characterized by peace.
Such works of art invite us to ponder and better understand the world around us.
Check out a selection of installation images from Recent Acquisitions 2014–2017 below, and see this exhibition in person through Wed, 6/6/18.


CMA’s collection is dynamic and always changing, so it can be difficult to know what’s currently on view. Don’t worry. There’s an app for that! Learn more and download CMA’s ArtLens App to stay in-the-know about recent acquisitions on view.

Additionally, in conjunction with this exhibition, stop by gallery 224A every Saturday and Sunday through September 30 to see Name Announcer, a durational performance piece that explores public space and how individuals relate to one another, and the first work of its kind to enter the museum’s collection.