A Spring Exhibition Preview

In the New Year, a wave of dynamic exhibitions arrives at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The season begins with Manet & Morisot, featuring the artistic relationship between Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot and her friend and colleague, Édouard Manet. It continues with Martin Puryear: Nexus, the most substantial survey of work exhibited in nearly two decades by one of the most important sculptors working today. Rounding out the season, Epic of the Northwest Himalayas: Pahari Paintings from the “‘Shangri’ Ramayana” takes you on a vivid and unforgettable journey into the mountains

Manet & Morisot
March 29–July 5, 2026
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Gallery

Manet & Morisot is the first-ever major exhibition dedicated to the artistic exchange between Édouard Manet, the so-called father of modern painting, and Berthe Morisot, the only female founding member of the Impressionist movement. Unfolding over a period of roughly 15 years, between 1868 and 1883, their relationship was perhaps the closest between any two members of the Impressionist circle. Friends and colleagues—by turns collaborative and competitive—they collected one another’s work. Morisot posed for some of Manet’s most compelling portraits, several of which are on view in the first gallery of the exhibition. When she married Manet’s younger brother, their professional connection deepened into a familial bond. 

Thirty-five paintings and six drawings and prints borrowed from museums and private collections in the United States and Europe reveal the evolution of a singular friendship between two groundbreaking artists. Visitors can see beach and garden scenes made en plein air (outdoors) that demonstrate how Manet borrowed individual motifs and compositional ideas directly from Morisot. Portraits of fashionable Parisian women of the 1880s by the two artists show their different perspectives: Manet’s paintings were inspired by admiration and erotic interest while Morisot’s were informed by lived experience. The exhibition closes with Self-Portrait by Morisot, painted when she was in her mid-40s, revealing her perception of herself as a professional artist.

Heather Lemonedes Brown
Paul J. and Edith Ingalls Vignos Jr. Curator of Modern European Art

Martin Puryear: Nexus
April 12–August 9, 2026
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall

For more than half a century, the preeminent sculptor Martin Puryear (born 1941) has enthralled viewers with works of astonishing beauty and elaborate craftsmanship whose sources of inspiration range from global cultures and social history to the natural world. This spring, visitors to the CMA get to know these works through Martin Puryear: Nexus, the first substantial survey of the artist’s work in nearly two decades. Co-organized with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the exhibition also travels to the High Museum in Atlanta.

Developed in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition begins with work from the early 1960s and follows the artist’s innovations in form, material, and process up to the current moment. Visitors can encounter iconic works alongside those that have not been exhibited publicly in more than three decades. Sculpture, the medium for which Puryear is best known, is integrated with prints, drawings, and documentation of the outdoor commissions that the artist has created around the world. Visitors get to know Puryear’s singular practice across media, illuminating the expressive potential for abstraction in our time. Martin Puryear: Nexus is accompanied by an expansive and richly illustrated catalogue featuring new scholarship and responses to individual works of art by a range of thinkers and makers, including Thelma Golden, Maya Lin, Kerry James Marshall, Julia Phillips, and Charles Ray. 

Emily Liebert
Lauren Rich Fine Curator of Contemporary Art and Chair of Art of the Americas and Modern and Contemporary Art

Epic of the Northwest Himalayas: Pahari Paintings from the “Shangri” Ramayana
April 19–August 16, 2026
Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery | Gallery 010

“Permit the mind to become enthralled.” (Ramayana I.4.27) Thus begins one of India’s most timeless tales that is shown across 40 paintings in Epic of the Northwest Himalayas: Pahari Paintings from the “‘Shangri’ Ramayana.” Like most Indian paintings that made up a series at the time of their creation, the “Shangri” Ramayana has been divided and dispersed across many dozens of collections worldwide. This exhibition reunites works from 12 different institutions and private collections. Digital stations present more than 100 animated images of paintings from three specific episodes to show the cinematic effect of viewing them in sequence.

Reuniting folios from this singular series reveals that the “Shangri” Ramayana may be the most extensive surviving fully pictorial example of this foundational South Asian epic. Produced about 300 years ago by multiple artists in workshops across the culturally distinct region known as Pahari, India—straddling the modern states of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir—it delivers unexpected climaxes, a riot of colors, and stunning visual appeal. The exhibition contextualizes the folios in the CMA's holdings and those from the Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim Collection published in the accompanying catalogue Pahari Paintings: Art and Stories. 

Sonya Rhie Mace
George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art