Tony Feher @ The Akron Art Museum

I'm excited to see this show in Akron after missing his talked about retrospective at The Bronx Museum.

Tony was represented by the same gallery as me for a while.

An artist who stacks milk crates, hangs plastic bottles or places pennies on the floor creates a lot of eye rolls.
But spending time with the work often makes me see poetry and potential meaning in the most overlooked things.

My guess is this one is worth the trip.

Tony Feher

April 12, 2014 - August 17, 2014

Akron Art Museum

One South High, Akron, Ohio 44308

330.376.9185
mail@AkronArtMuseum.org

Gallery Hours
Wednesday - Sunday: 11 am - 5 pm
Thursday: 11 am - 9 pm
Closed Monday & Tuesday

Closed on most major holidays

Iconic Cindy Sherman photo for sale by Akron Art Museum could bring record price

Many are likely pretty upset that The Akron Art Museum, plans to sell Cindy Sherman's #96 from her 1981 Centerfolds Series at auction. Expectations are that the work could fetch as much as 4 million or more, which would be a record price for any photograph. Remember, most photos are prints there are some other copies, one of which recently sold for almost 4 million.

The intent is to build an endowment to support the purchase of other works.

Akron Art Museum to Sell Iconic Cindy Sherman Print

While, this move makes the museum look more like a stock trader than a museum, I can't blame them for trying to make the most of a prime market moment. That kind of money can go a long way. They will still have one Sherman work.

If you have not been to The Akron Art Museum, you are really missing something. The building is amazing and the collection includes important works by Chuck Close, Jean Dubuffet, Kiki Smith, Lynda Benglis, Anthony Caro, Charles Burchfield, Ansel Adams, Berenice Abbott, Marina Abramovic, Viktor Schreckengost, Lari Pittman, Donald Judd, Richard Tuttle and many others. I particularly love their collection of artist's normally known as "outsiders"; Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, William L. Hawkins, Minnie Evans, W. D. "Crazy Mac" McCaffrey etc...

It's just a great place.

April 2011 Cleveburgh Regional Art Roundup

Sarah Kabot @Akron Art Museum

A few of the shows that seem interesting in the wider Western PA and Eastern Ohio region, outside of Pittsburgh.

Cleveland

Cleveland Museum Of Art


Contemporary Landscape Photography

March 26–August 14, 2011

"Since the 1960s, contemporary photographers pursuing the landscape as subject matter have predominantly used two conceptual approaches. One is epitomized by the iconic landscapes of Ansel Adams, who sought out pristine views of the natural landscape—rivers, mountains, valleys, orchards, deserts, and the sea in the western United States—all presented with clarity and enriched by his poetic vision and commitment to environmental conservation. The other style sought to balance the depiction of formal beauty with the desire to document humanity’s presence and intervention in the landscape. The pioneering photography of Robert Adams is a leading, articulate expression of that approach. This survey show featuring these two methods of recording the natural landscape is drawn from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s permanent collection, and contains some 40 images—many of them new to the collection."

The Art of Daily Life: Portable Objects from Southeast Africa

April 16, 2011–February 26, 2012

The Art of Daily Life celebrates the stunning formal diversity and deep cultural meanings of Southeast Africa’s artistic heritage. Despite some growing interest and appreciation over the past three decades, the art of traditional southern African societies have long been neglected. Portable in nature and generally small in size, works created by peoples such as the Zulu, Nguni, Tsonga, Ndebele, Sotho, and Swazi in the 19th and 20th centuries were typically related to the privacy of the home or the intimacy of the person. The makers and users of many of these works were cattle-herders with a complex history of migrations. This nomadic existence has contributed to the emergence of fluid regional artistic styles that often defy specific ethnic attributions.

The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art

March 27–August 28, 2011

"This presentation highlights Korean and Japanese artistic efforts to fuse the genres of art and poetry in works as diverse as landscape painting, figure painting, and calligraphy. With strokes of genius, artists in the early Joseon period and Muromachi period explored themes such as the Chinese Xiao Xiang River, producing a rich array of artwork—from hanging scrolls and powerful screens that provoke the imagination to intriguing images of the natural world—all without traveling to China.

Figure paintings of the recluse show an inner heart protected from the “dusty world” of politics. Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, Four Elders of Mt. Shang, and The Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup also epitomize the refined way of life idealized by the scholarly class in Korea and Japan."

MOCA Cleveland (same exhibits as last month--through May 8th)



Andrea Joki

William Busta Gallery

Andrea Joki
March 18 -- April 23

Kenneth Paul Lesko Gallery

Adnan Charara

Adaptability

March 18th - May 14th

"Adnan Charara came to the U.S. by way of Lebanon and Sierra Leone--eventually making his home in Detroit, Michigan. In his Return to Sender series, painted figures on envelopes merge with canceled postage in complex narrative compositions. In his found art sculptures, objects take on human characteristics, as a protractor becomes a ballerina's tutu or a hammer bows its head in sadness. Charara's life and his work, even his materials, are about adaptability."

Wow, check out the images!

Canton Museum Of Art

Canton Artists League Spring Show
Through April 24th

Akron Art Museum

M.C. Escher: Impossible Realities

February 12, 2011 - May 29, 2011
Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries

A chance to see 130 of Escher's Mezzotints, Lithographs, Woodcuts, sculptures and rare preparatory drawings and truely get inside the head of this important artist.

Sarah Kabot: Unfolding Space

"Cleveland artist Sarah Kabot creates installations that toy with human perception by altering the physical environment, specifically the seemingly mundane structures of the built environment. With her “interventions,” as she calls them, Kabot asks us to question what we think we know about the things we see every day and sharpen our awareness of our surroundings.

To assemble what she refers to as "interventions," Kabot often uses foamcore, a rigid but lightweight material, which allows her to assemble elaborate installations that aren't overly cumbersome. In Unfolding Space, Kabot will replicate the lights, floorboards and wall surfaces of the museum’s Isroff Gallery and then use these objects to both deconstruct and reconfigure the space."

March Regional Arts Roundup

A late attempt to roundup some of the more interesting shows in the wider Northeast Ohio, Western PA region. Many of the ones I mentioned last month are still up and won't be highlighted. It's a big area so lots of stuff isn't mentioned.

The extensive show of 130 of M.C. Escher's prints at the Akron Art Museum running till May 29th is high on my to do list.


Cleveland

Cleveland Museum

FYI, The Cleveland Museum is huge; the closest thing this region has to a Met and there are a number of great shows going on there at any given time. Not to insult Cleveland, but this place alone justifies a trip. A few important shows are coming down there.

In Honor of the Cleveland Arts Prize Closes March 13!

"This exhibition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Cleveland Arts Prize, featuring some 30 works in all media created by former visual arts prize winners whose work is in the permanent collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. The museum’s partners in this wide-reaching celebration—MOCA Cleveland, SPACES, and the Sculpture Center—will feature exciting, newly commissioned programs held throughout the summer to draw attention to the excellence of the arts in Cleveland through the lens of the Cleveland Arts Prize. The museum’s exhibition is accompanied by the Annual Awards event for the Cleveland Arts Prize, which will be hosted in the newly renovated Gartner Auditorium on June 26, 2010."

June 13, 2010–March 13, 2011

Sorry, I dropped the ball on telling you about this show.



The Glory of the Painted Page Manuscript
Illuminations from the Permanent Collection
November 6, 2010-April 17, 2011

"The history of manuscript illumination corresponds almost exactly with the epoch we know as the Middle Ages, a vast period of about a thousand years. An illuminated manuscript is a book that was written and decorated by hand sometime between the fall of Rome, in the late 5th century AD, and the perfection of printing technology towards the end of the 15th century. Its texts were written on vellum (animal skin), not paper. These were enlivened by the application of colorful inks, pigments, and gold. In antiquity, literature was thought of as something spoken or heard. The Middle Ages broke with this tradition by considering a literary text as something to be revealed visually to be understood through the written word. Often elaborately decorated in a multitude of styles and formats, illuminated manuscripts flourished in ecclesiastical, monastic, devotional, courtly, legal, and academic contexts throughout the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. This exhibition presents a selection of liturgical, academic, and biblical leaves from the museum’s permanent collection."

MOCA Cleveland

Three contemporary artist shows there, two of which I covered last month.

Javier Téllez : Letter on the Blind, for the Use of Those Who SeeOn view January 28th, 2011 through May 8th, 2011

"Commissioned by Creative Time and Galerie Peter Kilchmann for the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Javier Téllez's stirring film, Letter on the Blind, for the Use of Those Who See (2007) documents six blind people as they touch and respond to a live elephant. Based loosely on an Indian fable, the film balances footage of these interactions with verbal commentary by each subject about his or her blindness. The rawness of the environment - an empty swimming pool in Brooklyn's McCarren Park - sharpens the rich poignancy of the individual's distinct, often profound physical and emotional response to the elephant. A compelling portrayal of non-visual perception through a visual medium, the work probes the value of sight in the interpretation of reality."

Spaces Gallery

Manic Growth
Elizabeth Dunfee
February 11 - April 01, 2011

"Akron-based artist Elizabeth Dunfee uses lyrical painting and mixed-media elements as a means to explore the consistent introduction of synthetic chemicals to our natural environment. Particularly, she weighs the alteration and manipulation of natural elements with the effects that they produce in human bodies. The resulting exhibition, Manic Growth, consisting of a large-scale "painting" environment will be on view at SPACES February 11 through April 1, 2011.

Dunfee employs microscopic cell imagery blown up to wall-sized proportions and then infuses the painting with three-dimensional objects, video and synthetic, "toxic" color to form a tension between the natural and the introduced. Her multi-media collage is a metaphor for the juxtaposition of chemical elements that lead to both beneficial as well as catastrophic results. This installation environment depicts a manic growth where she notes how altering our world for "survival" forms a paradoxical relationship with it."

Camp Cleveland
Machine Project, Emily Lacy, Nate Page, Ezra Buchla, Corey Fogel, Liz Glynn, Asher Hartman, Haruko Tanaka, Adam Overton, Laura Steenberge
February 11 - April 01, 2011

Put in plain English these are a loose group of artists who take over the space and create an ongoing series of events, performances, readings and ongoing installation projects.

Spaces Website

Sculpture Center (Cleveland)

Qian Li: No Matter How Hard I Yell and Daniel McDonald: Reluctant Redemption

Exhibition dates: March 11 – April 16, 2011

"Qian Li’s mixed media installations of sculpture and projected video incorporate memories, dreams, and visualizations of her troubled childhood and traditional Chinese background. She constructs a world of desperation, mental and physical pain, anxiety, and restlessness. Three different works will examine separate traumatic instances that have shaped her expression through art. These works take on a therapeutic aspect for the artist but the brutal emotional honesty of the pieces confronts the viewer directly.
To add another dimension of meaning and response to the artwork of No Matter How Hard I Yell, composers of FiveOne, Cleveland’s new music ensemble, are writing original music for solo instruments for each of Li's pieces."

"Daniel McDonald’s sculptures give form to the internal dilemmas he feels from the overlap of his spiritual upbringing and cultural convictions. Never quite comfortable in the socio-cultural environment of his Mormon childhood, McDonald’s works are partially cathartic but he also seeks to relate to the viewer by addressing broader social concerns such as stereotyping, manipulation and self-evaluation. His three sculptures in Reluctant Redemption examine what he deems “faith-promoting” stories, those which are fed to masses in order to create motivation through unconquerable goals and situations. By creating a dialogue with the work, McDonald hopes to create some resolution for his personal fixation while also scrutinizing the correlations and differences between expectations and eventualities."

Sculpture Center Website

Akron Art Museum

M.C. Escher: Impossible RealitiesFebruary 12, 2011 - May 29, 2011

"M.C. Escher: Impossible Realities features 130 works by master printmaker Maurits Cornelis Escher, including woodcuts, lithographs, mezzotints, sculptures, and rare preparatory drawings that provide an in-depth view of the artist's creative processes. Featured in the exhibition are seminal and instantly recognizable works such as Drawing Hands and Reptiles, as well as the extremely rare lithograph stone for the making of Flat Worms.

The exhibition comes from the Herakleidon Museum in Athens, Greece, which houses one of the world's largest collections of Escher works. Akron is one of only two North American venues for this extraordinary loan."

Akron Art Museum website

Erie Art Museum

Hidden in Plain Sight: Art Treasures from Regional Collections
Main Gallery
October 23, 2010 through April 3, 2011

The perfect show for this post!

"Throughout our region—northwest Pennsylvania and neighboring New York and Ohio—are numerous collections containing outstanding works of art. Some, like the art museums in Cleveland and Buffalo, and the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, are well known to visitors from around the country; however, dozens of collections exist in small museums, historical societies, colleges, libraries and other institutions. These collections are often unknown to their local audience, let alone within the region. To celebrate the grand opening of the new galleries, the Museum has borrowed artworks from these various collections, providing an opportunity for our audience to sample the treasures that can be found throughout the region.

The exhibition features sculptures, paintings, drawings, Native American artifacts, furniture and more. Highlights include works by American artists Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, Ralph Albert Blakelock, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Thomas Hart Benton, Adolf Dehn, Walter Ufer and many others. Native American works include a rare, early Navajo serape, a painted parfleche and a set of pictograph drawings. Works created in the region include a portrait done by John James Audubon during a sojourn to Meadville, a wonderful collection of carved and painted folk art birds by a Crawford County farmer and sculptures by Marion Sanford. Crafts enthusiasts will enjoy Japanese pottery and baskets, a Calder weaving, a Wendell Castle table, sculptural ceramics by Daniel Rhodes and Ken Ferguson, and an unusual late 18th century Windsor chair. Many of these treasures have never been exhibited outside of their home institutions; some have never been exhibited at all."

Erie Art Museum website

Willie Cole Gives Two Artist's Talks Today In Cleveland

If you saw my museum rundown, you know that northeast Ohio is hosting two major shows involving African American artist's--Pattern ID @ The Akron Art Museum, and From Then to Now : Masterworks of Contemporary African American Art @ Cleveland MOCA.

Also, Willie Cole is an artist in residence at The University Of Akron.

"At 1 p.m. on Friday, Cole will give a free lunchtime talk at the Cleveland Clinic's Art Program, Arts & Medicine Institute, which loaned some of its collection of Cole's work to the MOCA exhibit. The Arts & Medicine Institute is also organizing a tour of the MOCA exhibit in April. Call 216-448-0232.

Then at 6 p.m. Friday, Cole will give a gallery talk at MOCA Cleveland, 8501 Carnegie Ave., Cleveland, about his work in that exhibit. Call 216-421-8671."



You might have seen one of Willie's large shoe works at at The Society For Contemporary Art In Pittsburgh a few years ago.

If you have thoughts or insight you want to share about art, music,film, urban design, architecture, transit or history in the Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Youngstown, Erie, Morgantown, Akron, Canton region--Cleveburgh, email me diggingpitt@gmail.com

This is not Hyper Local media, but regional media seeking local viewpoints.

April Regional Arts and Museum Roundup

A few interesting and very interesting arts events and shows in the greater Cleveburgh region. Actually, an understatement, this might be a good month for a road trip. Themes for the month seem to be African American Artists, Pattern In Contemporary Art, Folk Art and Craft, Lush Abstract Painting, Native American Art.

You can send your event to --- diggingpitt@gmail.com but I will only be posting a few.

Akron



Photo from museum website

Pattern ID @ The Akron Art Museum

January 23, 2010 - May 9, 2010
Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries

This show at The Akron about the use of pattern in contemporary art has been getting a lot of buzz and might very well be worth the trip.

"Over the last two decades, artists have increasingly turned to pattern and dress as a language with which to communicate who they are and where they come from. The experiences of culture clash, immigration and multi-ethnicity in our globalized world have driven artists to use this visual language to chart their personal and communal histories. Through pattern and dress, artists compress time and cross geographic boundaries to illustrate the various influences that inform their cultural identities. The artists freely mix motifs from popular culture, history and art history to transform the meanings of patterns. Pattern ID features 15 artists of diverse origins who have seized on pattern and dress as powerful visual connectors between themselves, their histories and their audiences."

Quite a list of global artists in this show

Mark Bradford
Iona Rozeal Brown
Nick Cave
Willie Cole
Lalla Essaydi
Samuel Fosso
James Gobel
Brian Jungen
Bharti Kher
Takashi Murakami
Yinka Shonibare
Mickalene Thomas
Aya Uekawa
Kehinde Wiley

Erie



Making It Better
Folk Arts In Pennsylvania Today (Show ends April 11)

Main Gallery
January 15, 2010 through April 11, 2010

“Making It Better” tells the story of 30 artists who work within and for their respective communities. The art, coming from every corner of the state, represents a wide array of traditions such as African dance, stonewall construction, Aztec clay flutes, Pysanky eggs, contemporary blacksmith work, and Vietnamese funerary portraits. Objects, photographs, film, music and interactive stations allow visitors to experience these traditions with all their senses. Dispelling the notions that folk art is “quaint” and “something from the past” this exhibit demonstrates that although most traditional arts are rooted in centuries’ old practices; they are meeting the needs of those living in very modern times."

Opening April 24th 87th annual juried Spring Show

Anyone want to post a review of it? Email me John Morris, diggingpitt@gmail.com

Cleveland

Cleveland Museum (MUST SEE SHOW !!!!!!!!!!!)



Horse Mask, about 1875–1900. Nimi’ipuu (Nez Perce) or possibly Cayuse, Idaho, Oregon, or east Washington. Thaw Collection, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y., T0097. Photograph by John Bigelow Taylor (from museum website)

Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection

MARCH 7–MAY 30, 2010
Admission free (Please donate if you can or become a member)

We all know the ethics behind the collection of art from most traditional cultures. not only was it theft, but for most people these were not just "art", but a living part of their identity, life and religion. Bottom line is see these amazing objects while you can from the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

MOCA : Cleveland (Looks Like Another Must See Show!!!!!)

From Then to Now : Masterworks of Contemporary African American Art
On view January 29th, 2010 through May 9th, 2010

"Unprecedented in our region, the exhibition brings together for the first time the rich holdings of contemporary African American art drawn from preeminent collections of contemporary art in the region - the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, the Akron Art Museum, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Progressive Corporation, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Presented are works by many of the most important artists of our time in a range of media - works on paper, painting, sculpture, and installations. The exhibition features 27 artists, and begins with signature pieces by such pioneering figures of the 1970s and 1980s as Romare Bearden or Alma Thomas, and continues up to the present with prime examples of works by artists such as Leonardo Drew, Alison Saar, Willie Cole, David Hammons, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, René Green, Kara Walker and Kehinde Wiley, among others. Addressing a range of themes and issues, the exhibition presents an overview of the rich cultural heritage voiced by contemporary African-American artists in their examination of history, identity, and memory."

And check out the fact that all these great works are from Ohio Colections. (Like the Progressive Collection) Ohio, unlike western PA, is home to a number of very significant contemporary art collectors.

Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art



Gianna Commito
Falls, 2009
watercolor and casein on panel
30 x 24 inches

Untitled (Painting): Gianna Commito, Scott Olson, Zak Prekop, Brian Sharp
Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art
February 19, 2010 - April 2, 2010

(OOPS, looks like a wonderful show about to end)

William Busta Gallery



Matthew Kolodziej
Accumulations

March 19 - April 24 2010

William Busta Gallery
2731 Prospect Ave
Cleveland, Ohio

Wed-Sat 11 - 5.30
or by Apt.

The Scupture Center: Cleveland

2010 W2S Series
March 5 – April 10, 2010
Willard Tucker: Blackdamp
Main Gallery


Carrie Dickason: Cultivating Culture
Euclid Avenue Gallery
Friday, March 5

Looks like shows end April 10

William Tucker: Blackdamp

"This body of work is preoccupied with the industrial infrastructure that keeps online the system of the digital flows of electronic networks that define the space of contemporary life. Since the early 1990’s, the coal industry in Appalachia has converted to a more efficient form of surface mining to meet the increasing demand for cheap energy. After clear cutting the most bio-diverse temperate forest on the planet, heavy machine operators blast away thousands of feet of bedrock to reach razor thin veins of coal, while dumping the rock spoil into the valleys and streams below.

Blackdamp is the name given to poisonous gases that collect in sewers and coal mines, deep within the underground networks that sustain life above the surface. This body of work envisions what happens when the accumulating residues of an abject land-base can no longer be sealed off or sequestered. Once the material consequences of short-term development seep back in, literally and metaphorically, they disrupt the images of speed, simultaneity, and frictionless energy-use that life in the digital age has modeled in our brains."

Oberlin College

Well, actually the museum is closed for renovations but you can see 20 masterworks from the collection at The Met in NY, through late August.

"The AMAM is proud to present 20 of its European and American masterworks in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York during spring and summer 2010. The works on display, which span the 16th-20th centuries, will be integrated into the Met’s galleries, giving visitors the rare opportunity to see the AMAM works with those by the same artists or from similar contexts from the Met’s world-renowned collections. The AMAM’s important Ter Brugghen painting, St. Sebastian Tended by Irene, will be seen with the Met’s The Crucifixion with the Virgin and St. John by the same artist, and AMAM paintings by Domenichino, Sweerts, Turner, Monet, and Cézanne will hang alongside important works by those artists."

Youngstown

The Butler

A few shows of interest. (scroll down page)

Jedd Novatt
Jan 17, 2010 Through Jan 02, 2011

"Internationally recognized American sculptor Jedd Novatt will be exhibiting five of his works from his Chaos series. The work represent studies in scale, which Novatt uses as "drawings" for monumental works created in his studio in the Basque region of Spain. The five sculptures are in bronze and will be on view from January 17, 2010 to January 2, 2011. Jedd Novatt"

Esther Nisenthal Krinitz: Fabric of Survival
Mar 07, 2010 Through May 23, 2010

Esther Nisenthal Krinitz, along with her sister Mania, were the only members of their family, and among the few Jews in their Polish village, to survive the Holocaust. At the age of 15, Esther refused the Nazi order for the Jews to report to a nearby railroad station for relocation. She and her sister separated from their family and never saw them again. In 1977, at the age of 50, Krinitz began creating works of fabric art to depict her stories of survival. The exhibition is on loan from Art and Remembrance.

More On The Akron Art Museum

Charles Rosenblum, the architecture critic for The Pittsburgh City Paper wrote a nice piece on the Akron Art Museum's new expansion also. He also fessed up to have never had the urge to go there before this which is the reason so many cities fall over themselves to create a "Bilbao effect."

The strange thing about the reviews I have read so far is that few seem to talk abot the actual gallery and exhibitions spaces-- the aleged reason the place exists. I think if one asked many contemporary artist's their favorite NY exhibition spaces--the modest Whitney would come out near the top- in that it seems to be a building that is well adapted to it's function.I like it but, that could be because, it's the only museum that ever gave me a free lifetime pass!!!

The New Akron Art Museum

Andrea Kirsh, An Art Historian in Philly took a trip to see the Akron's new art addition to it's museum and put up a nice post about it on Artblog. So far the response to this project has been very positive. Akron, likely didn't have the cash to tear down half the city for the latest Gehry ,so it looks like they half to settle for a sensitive, but highly creative structure that just might work well as an art museum. As you can see, the design doesnt lack drama. It's the first project in the US by the Austrian firm, Coop Himmelblau.