For the past month the talk in the Cleveland art world has focused on the opening of the Cleveland Museum of Art's new East Wing and the sudden resignation of Timothy Rub, the Museum's director for just three years. I would enjoy comments from readers on either subject.
My history with the CMA goes back to second grade when I attended Saturday classes there. In high school, my Saturday art classes were across the street at the Institute of Art, with trips to the Art Museum after lunch. My high school art club traveled to the Museum's May Show each Spring (after dinner downtown at the New york Spaghetti House.) After college at Baldwin-Wallace and Kent State and art school in New York, I returning to Cleveland to paint. The Museum was again a place to visit often. Finally, after a hiatus of recording and touring with a rock band, my re-involvement the the visual arts was through a teaching position in the Museum's Education Department. My association with that department continued until just several years ago.
This personal history of my relationship with the Cleveland Museum of Art is by way of introducing a discussion of its new East Wing. This new space is part of a long expansion process the Museum is undertaking. Last Summer the Museum re-opened the main floor of the its 1916 building which I covered in an earlier post to this blog. Much work is left to be done on this expansion process including the construction of a new West Wing, a new covered atrium replacing the outdoor garden court, the re-opening of Gartner Auditorium, the renovation of the lower level of the 1916 building and the re-installation of the bulk of the Museum's long stored collections.
My first visit to the Museum's new East Wing was late on a Wednesday afternoon in July. My wife Gail and I wanted to tour the new wing and have an early dinner before viewing a film showing there. As typical of the CMA, the galleries were beautifully finished and the art beautifully displayed. Natural light penetrated deep into the interior spaces of the new wing. The art includes European and American work from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Photography now has its own galleries and is no longer diplayed in dimly lit corridors. Artists of the Cleveland School even have their own small gallery. There is one striking anomoly: A single, long, narrow gallery hung with art that should be viewed at a distance which is impossible in this space.
(This is the first of several blogs on the Cleveland Museum of Art. Please stop back for future installments.)
George Woideck
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