Cleveland Art, January/February 2020
- Member Magazine
In this issue of the members magazine: PROOF: Photography in the Era of the Contact Sheet; Signal Noise; The Iraqi Maqam; Laser Treatment; Meet Nadiah Rivera Fellah; Exhibitions in 2020
PROOF: Photography in the Era of the Contact Sheet
Born in 1898, Alfred Eisenstaedt began his photographic career in Berlin in the late 1920s, just as photographs were beginning to flood the pages of magazines and newspapers. Thirty years later he was a celebrated staff photographer at Life magazine when he explained why roll film had become so impo...
Richard Avedon New York, 1985. Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009). Gelatin silver print; 27.9 x 21.6 cm. © The Irving Penn Foundation
Signal Noise
A photograph “takes the world and makes it into something else,” says Aaron Rothman, whose interest lies in transformative rather than documentary photography. This exhibition surveys 10 years of Rothman’s studies of the landscape of the American West, a region with which he has a deep, long-standin...
Shadow (Pink) 2012. Aaron Rothman (American, b. 1974). Inkjet print; 76.2 x 95.3 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Rick Wester Fine Art, New York
The Iraqi Maqam
Composer, trumpeter, santur player, and vocalist Amir ElSaffar is equally well known in the worlds of American jazz and classical music and Middle Eastern musical traditions. ElSaffar returns to Cleveland with Safaafir, his ensemble supporting the extraordinary Iraqi singer Hamid Al-Saadi, on Wednes...
Celebrating the Maqam Singer Hamid Al-Saadi (left) performs with the author.
Laser Treatment
The conservators at the Cleveland Museum of Art now have a laser that can clean centuries of grime off a marble bust or dirt particles off a feather.
“We’re literally not ruffling feathers,” says Colleen Snyder, associate conservator of objects. “Laser treatment is often viewed as aggressive because...
Grime Zapper The laser makes (relatively) quick work of cleaning this marble bust by Francis Legatt Chantrey. At right are two views showing the cleaning in progress, with the face cleaned except for the tip of the nose, and the inscribed back halfway completed.
Meet Nadiah Rivera Fellah
Nadiah Rivera Fellah joined the museum in November as associate curator of contemporary art, after four years at the Newark Museum in New Jersey. A native of Bowling Green, Ohio, and a graduate of Oberlin College, she is no stranger to the Cleveland Museum of Art. When she was a student at Oberlin,...
Exhibitions in 2020
Paper, stone, silk, woodblocks, and Cleveland teenagers. In 2020 the museum is showcasing artists with distinct inspirations. “This year, more than most, speaks to artists who are makers,” says Heidi Strean, director of exhibitions and publications. “We’re focusing on artists who elevate their sourc...
Seated Woman (Dora) 1938. Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973). Pen, ink, gouache, colored chalk on paper; 76.5 x 56 cm. Fondation Beyeler, Riehen / Basel, Beyeler Collection, Inv. 72.5. Photo: Peter Schibli. © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.