Celebrate Mardi Gras with The Cleveland Museum of Art

Break out the beads!  It’s Mardi Gras time!

The Cleveland Museum of Art brings the flavor and festivities of the Cajun bayou to Cleveland with a Mardi Gras celebration on Friday, Feb. 12 from 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. Revelers can dine on a Mardi Gras themed buffet; enjoy refreshments at our cash bar featuring a signature cocktail; create a dazzling carnival mask; and dance to the music of DJ Adam Ritenour.

Tickets are $30 per person, $20 per person for CMA members, and can be purchased by calling 1-888-CMA-0033 or online

African-American artists at CMA

Reflect on the great contributions to art by African-Americans during Black History Month with a visit to CMA where you can see the works of three such notable artists:

Augusta Savage’s Gamin

Savage (1892 – 1962) was the most acclaimed sculptor working during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ‘30s, and Gamin is her most famous work. It was long thought that the image was a generic figure; however, recent research reveals that it depicts her nephew. The warm characterization likely arises from the close bond shared between artist and model. Although several small versions of the sculpture were produced, this life-size, hand-painted plaster is unique, and likely the oldest surviving example of the subject.

Carl Frederick Gaetner’s The Pie Wagon

One of the most widely exhibited artists working in Cleveland, Gaertner (1898 – 1952) specialized in painting the city and its environs. His favored subjects include scenes of Cleveland’s industrial heyday, including The Pie Wagon. In this painting, the artist focused attention on the laborers who spend their lunch break milling around a horse-drawn bakery wagon in the shadows of the hulking factories.

Jacob Lawrence’s Fulton and Nostrand

Having moved to Harlem as a teenager, Lawrence (1917-2000) would become the first major artist trained entirely within the neighborhood’s African-American community. Throughout his long career he believed art should be a quest for both self and social identity, a notion reflected in this work, one of his liveliest and largest paintings. Teeming with more than forty figures, it depicts the vibrant streetscape at the intersection of Fulton Street (now Harriet Tubman Avenue) and Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, near where the artist lived at the time.

Celebrate Gartner Auditorium’s Reopening

The Cleveland Museum of Art is now just a little more than a month away from reaching another exciting milestone in our building expansion and renovation project. In February, we’ll celebrate the reopening of Gartner Auditorium, ushering in a new era for our VIVA! & Gala performing arts series.

Those who want the first look and listen in the beautifully refurbished hall, redesigned by nationally recognized Cleveland-based architects Westlake Reed Leskosky in collaboration with leading acoustician Paul Scarbrough, will want to mark their calendars for our Gartner reopening bash on Sunday, February 28.

We’ve planned a stylish evening of elegant music and sophisticated reverie with Max Raabe & Palast Orchester as VIVA! & Gala returns to the museum following four seasons at venues around town. This black-tie big band plays note-perfect renditions of European jazz from the 1920s and 1930s. Arrive at 6:00 p.m. for cocktails and appetizers; the concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are limited and going very quickly, with registration available online.

Then, we’ll keep the party going throughout March and April with eight weeks of free performances this spring. The Opening Nights Festival, running March 12 through April 30, features some of the finest of Cleveland’s diverse talent pool. The festival also allows Clevelanders to experience first-hand the capabilities of the city’s newest performing arts venue, through a diverse mix of high-caliber instrumental, dance, and vocal artists.

Highlights of the festival include performances by members of the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, OperaCleveland Chorus, Roberto Ocasio Latin Jazz Project, and Harmonia. The festival also includes a screening of the Oscar-winning Harrison Ford movie Raiders of the Lost Ark and the vocal stylings of local singer/songwriter Baby Dee, one of the city’s best known alt-rock performers.

Presenting sponsor is KeyBank. Supporting sponsors include Donley’s, The Musart Society, and Westlake Reed Leskosky.

We’ll share more details about individual performers soon.

Art and music festival honors Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On Monday, January 18, the Cleveland Museum of Art will open its doors for a daylong, free festival of art and music in celebration of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Family-friendly activities, storytelling and song will fill the galleries to promote Dr. King’s vision of understanding and acceptance.

Budding artists can create prayer flags and attach their messages to the museum’s Spirit Trees, while visitors of all ages are invited to use a specially designed map to search for specific works of art in the museum’s 1916 building. Hear inspiring tales from the Cleveland Association of Black Storytellers, or join members of the museum’s own security staff, who will offer insights regarding their favorite artworks in “If These Walls Had Ears.”

In the afternoon, musical presentations take center stage in the museum’s east wing, café, and rotunda. Performers include the Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s Jazz Trio and Vocal Ensemble, the Cleveland Music School Settlement’s Cello Quartet, and Motivation Through Excellence.

Monday also marks the final day for the museum’s landmark special exhibition Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889 (tickets required). The show re-creates on a smaller scale the radical independent exhibition that Gauguin organized with his artistic disciples on the grounds of the 1889 Exposition Universelle and explores how the artist created his signature style.

Times and other details regarding the Martin Luther King Jr. Day events can be found on the museum’s web site.

Special offer for Gauguin final week visitors

Did you get to know Gauguin at the Cleveland Museum of Art this fall? If you are not one of the more than 50,000 people who’ve already seen Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889 (or if you just want to catch the show again), there’s still time. But you’ll need to hurry. The exhibition, co-organized by us with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, closes on Monday, January 18, and Cleveland is the only city in America where you can see it.

We’re sweetening the deal for visitors during this final week. If you buy a cup of coffee at one of 12 participating locations across the city, you’ll receive a coupon valid for $2 off the price of one adult admission to the exhibition.

We’d like to thank all of the participating coffee houses, including:

• Café Ah Roma, 2230 Euclid Ave.
• City Roast, 1979 W. 25th St. #C1
• Cork & Beans, 925 Euclid Ave. #8
• Cravings Deli, 19701 Lake Rd.
• Dewey’s Coffee House, 13201 Shaker Square
• Gloria Jean’s Coffee, 7850 Mentor Ave. #1375, Mentor
• Gypsy Beans and Baking Co., 6425 Detroit Ave.
• Lucky’s Cyber Café and Coffeeshop, 777 Starkweather
• Mojo’s Coffee Shop, 600 Dover Center Rd., Bay Village
• Seekers Coffee House, 13365 Smith Road
• Southwest Café, 6030 Broadview Rd.
• Truffles Pastry Shop, 11122 Clifton Blvd.
• Coffee Roaster, 7899 West Ridgewood Drive

Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889 features 75 paintings, works on paper, woodcarvings, and ceramics by Gauguin and his contemporaries. It explores how the artist created his signature style in 1889, the year he staged an independent exhibition at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

50,000 and counting …

It’s official: More than 50,000 people have visited the Cleveland Museum of Art to see Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889.

In recognition of this milestone, Michael, Danielle and Jaden Cosgrove, along with their guests Bill and Sandy Ladebue, received free tickets to the exhibition, as well as a $50 gift certificate to a local French restaurant. The Cosgroves are from the Cleveland neighborhood of West Park, while the Ladebues were in from Pittsburgh to visit and catch the show.

Not yet gotten to know Gauguin? There’s still time, but you’ll need to hurry. The exhibition is entering its final week and will close on January 18.

Introducing our new associate curator

Meet the newest member of our curatorial staff. The museum announced today the appointment of Seunghye Sun as associate curator of Japanese and Korean art. She’ll be joining our team in Cleveland in July, upon completion of her doctorate in Japanese art at Tokyo University.

In her new role, she will be responsible for all aspects of the care, presentation, and interpretation of the museum’s renowned holdings of Japanese and Korean art. She also will develop exhibitions and public programming, while continuing to acquire works that enrich and expand the museum’s collection.  

Since 2002, she has served as curator at the National Museum of Korea, where, as the first curator of Japanese art in Korea’s history, she single-handedly planned and installed the permanent galleries of Japanese art. Additionally, she was the curator and publication author for several exhibitions, including Western-style Paintings in Modern Japan, The Lure of Asia in Japanese Art, and A Treasury of Joseon Period Manuscripts and Portraits from the Distinguished Families in Gongju, Korea. 

She also has contributed to several books, catalogues, and publications, including The Lure of Asia in Japanese Art (2008), Western-style Paintings in Modern Japan (2008), “Asian art galleries at the National Museum of Korea” (Orientations, 2005), “Three Laughers in Japanese Art” (Korea Art and Archeology, 2006), and “Korean Paintings of Peach Blossom Spring in the Late Joseon Dynasty” (Asia Yugaku, 2009). 

Prior to her tenure at the National Museum of Korea, she was appointed a visiting fellow at the Harvard-Yenching Institute; researcher at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston; curatorial intern at the Ruth & Sherman Lee Institute for Japanese Art at the Clark Center in California; and research assistant at the Institute of Oriental Culture at Tokyo University. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aesthetics from Seoul National University in her native country of Korea and taught aesthetics and art history at several universities there. 

The addition of Ms. Sun is made possible by a spendable three-year grant of $450,000 awarded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the hiring of a curator of Japanese and Korean art.

Meet this year’s 300,000th visitors!

On the morning of December 31, the museum reached another exciting milestone: We welcomed our 300,000th visitor this year.

The lucky person was Eric Lasky of Dublin, N.H., which is located outside of Peterborough. He was visiting the museum with his wife Cassie, 4-year-old daughter Charlotte, father Stanley and stepmother Luane.

Mr. Lasky and his family are in town for the holidays to see his father and stepmother, who reside in Cleveland Heights. Originally from Cleveland, he said that he loves the museum and often visits when he returns to the area.

The Laskys received free tickets to the museum’s current exhibition, Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889, as well as an exhibition catalogue.

As we prepare to welcome a new year, we’d like to thank everyone who has supported the museum and visited in 2009. We hope to see you in the galleries again soon.

Experience a whole new world on Jan. 8 with Evan Ziporyn and Gamelan Galak Tika

Imagine an orchestra of pitched percussion instruments. The exotic rhythms are created with a mix of gongs, metallophones, zithers, xylophones and drums. The sound evokes the rich culture of Indonesia, where this type of ensemble is integral to the court and sacred music of the nation. At the same time, the sights are a feast for the eyes, as the performers don brightly colored robes, flowers and head wraps.

That’s the experience the CMA is presenting when it brings Evan Ziporyn to town on Friday, January 8, along with his 30-member Gamelan Galak Tika. For musical fans, this is big news because Ziporyn, a longtime member of the Bang On A Can All-Stars, is one of the most interesting and enjoyable American composers working today. Plus, it’s not often that we get to see and hear a gamelan ‘round these parts.

Ziporyn, a Westerner, joins a long line of forward-thinking artists whose enchantment with another tradition informs and builds on his own. We might think of Lou Harrison (China), Terry Riley (India), Steve Reich (West Africa), and the granddaddy of them all, Colin McPhee, whose memoir “A House in Bali” inspired Ziporyn’s opera with gamelan, which premiered to great acclaim just a few months ago in Berkeley.

For this concert, Gamelan Galak Tika will perform Ziporyn’s pieces from their fantastic recording, along with newer works. You’ll find a preview of what you might hear on the Galak Tika web site.

Hot tip: Museum patrons who visit the exhibition Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889 now through January 3 will receive a voucher for two-for-one tickets to this exhibition-related concert. Additional information also is available on the CMA web site.

What happens when an artist has to travel to the other side of the world to find his muse? Gauguin was that guy; Ziporyn is too. In the best cases, a whole new world emerges. Perhaps he wasn’t thinking of Gauguin or Ziporyn when he wrote the following, but David Toop might have said it best in his Ocean of Sound:

The day when Claude Debussy heard Javanese music performed at the Paris Exposition of 1889 seems particularly symbolic. From that point–in my view the beginning of the musical 20th century–accelerating communications and cultural confrontations became a focal point of musical expression. An ethereal culture, absorbed in perfume, light, silence, and ambient sound, developed in response to the intangibility of 20th-century communications. Sound was used to find meaning in changing circumstances, rather than imposed as a familiar model on a barely recognizable world. Inevitably, some of this music has remained in fragments; some has been molded from fragments into mantras and other solid structures.

Gauguin hits the silver screen

You’ve seen the exhibition, and now you can see the man … well, versions of the man played by various actors. We’re holding a Gauguin film festival during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day with three films based on Gauguin’s life.

Gauguin the Savage is scheduled for Saturday, December 26, at 1:30 p.m. and Tuesday, December 29, at 1:30 p.m. In this little-known, Emmy-winning TV drama, Gauguin (played here by the late David Carradine) abandons his wife and children in Europe for a life of artistic freedom in Tahiti.

The Wolf at the Door will be playing on Sunday, December 27, at 1:30 p.m. and Wednesday, December 30, at 1:30 p.m. This biographical film, directed by Henning Carlsen with Donald Sutherland and Max von Sydow, dramatizes Paul Gauguin’s return to Paris after a long stay in Tahiti and his difficulty selling enough paintings to finance the trip back to his island paradise.

Finally, we have The Moon and Sixpence on Thursday, December 31, at 1:30 p.m. In this film version of a W. Somerset Maugham novel inspired by the life of Gauguin, a self-centered London stockbroker leaves his wife and family to pursue a painting career in Paris, then Tahiti. This restored, 35mm archive print is from the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. The film is directed by Albert Lewin and features George Sanders and Herbert Marshall.

All films will be shown at the CMA in the Morley Lecture Hall. Each movie costs $8; the cost is $6 for CMA members, seniors 65 and over, and students. More information about how to purchase tickets is available online.