What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine @ Cincinnati Art Museum

What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine 

Cincinnati Art Museum 

November 21, 2025 - March 1, 2026

Irreverent, iconic and wildly influential, MAD Magazine has been making generations laugh—and think—since 1952. The Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) invites visitors to rediscover the wit, weirdness and cultural critique that made MAD a publishing phenomenon in What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine.

Organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and co-curated by Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Chief Curator and Rockwell Center Director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, and Steve Brodner, foremost satirical illustrator and caricaturist, What, Me Worry? traces the illustrated history of MAD from its subversive comic book roots to its status as a mainstream force in American satire. Featuring more than 150 original works of art, the exhibition highlights beloved recurring features, unforgettable caricatures and the artists and writers behind them—collectively known as the “Usual Gang of Idiots.”

From Spy vs. Spy to the famous Fold-Ins and Alfred E. Neuman’s ever-grinning face, What, Me Worry? showcases MAD’s signature blend of visual hilarity and sharp cultural commentary. Original illustrations and cartoons by Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, Richard Williams and many others will be on view alongside ephemera, artifacts, media and rare memorabilia.

“This exhibition invites visitors, many of whom are MAD lovers, to reminisce over the magazine’s satirical history and have a good laugh but also explore the themes and critical historical moments spoofed by MAD,” said Director of Learning & Interpretation Emily Agricola Holtrop, the exhibition’s curator at CAM. “Through laughter, generations have learned about important social moments that have shaped this country—MAD did that.”

First hitting newsstands in 1952, MAD originally launched as an EC comic book series founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines, with its inaugural issue titled Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad. The publication’s now-legendary parodies of Superduperman (issue #4) and Starchie (issue #12)—takeoffs on the classic DC Superhero and Archie comics—launched MAD into the stratosphere. In 1955, with MAD #24, the comic was reimagined as an illustrated magazine, releasing it from the censure of the Comics Code Authority. Between 1955 and 2025, over 595 issues have been published, along with numerous of specials, books, paperbacks and compilation projects. Now part of the Warner Bros. Discovery family, managed by DC, MAD continues with curated reprints, compilations and some new features, and is available at Barnes & Noble’s newsstands, Bookazines or via subscription to fans nationwide.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM

Western & Southern galleries (Galleries 232 and 233)

953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott @ Cincinnati Art Museum

Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott 

Cincinnati Art Museum

October 10, 2025 – January 4, 2026

Ceramic tableware with intricate blue patterning has been a staple in dining room décor for centuries. Contemporary artist Paul Scott (British, b. 1953) carries this tradition forward, yet his designs are anything but conventional. More than 50 of his works, which present updated narratives about art, history and American experiences, will be on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) in the exhibition Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott.

Paul Scott breaks, reassembles, erases and adds details to ceramics from the 1800s and 1900s using transfer-printing and collage processes to create new “historical” patterns. In addition to these repurposed antique pieces and the artist’s new ceramic forms, Recall. Reframe. Respond. debuts Scott’s limited-edition letterpress artist book. A selection of his works will be paired with artworks from CAM’s American art collection to “reframe” the way audiences see, experience and reflect on these objects.

“This is not your grandparents’ blue-and-white china,” notes Amy Dehan, the museum’s curator of decorative arts and design. “Paul Scott’s work is subversive in the best way—witty, wry and challenging. It urges us to look critically at dominant narratives while making connections across human experience, places and time.”

Recall. Reframe. Respond. also celebrates local artists and voices, featuring responses to a selection of Scott’s works written by community members. Notably, the exhibition also presents two transferware pieces on which he collaborated with Cincinnati-based artist Terence Hammonds.

Based in the northwest English county of Cumbria, Paul Scott is an artist, author, curator and educator who is best known for his unique ability to employ extensive historical and technical knowledge of ceramics to create provocative artworks and social commentary. During a visit to Ohio State University in 1999, Paul Scott became inspired by historical British-made blue-and-white ceramic transferwares that depicted American scenes, directly engaging American consumers. After his visit, Paul Scott challenged himself to create his own versions that recontextualize the messages embedded within these historical works by focusing on contemporary imagery and subjects. Scott’s New American Scenery series reflects his personal experiences of being and traveling in America, and, in his words, the need to “rebalance the narrative with something more contemporary and inclusive.”

Paul Scott shares: “Industrial transferwares were part of the new media revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They have always carried images and patterns which have journeyed through media, time, histories and geographies, capturing and changing meanings as they have travelled. Cumbrian Blue(s) contemporary artworks reference these original wares, so I very much enjoy opportunities which allow me to juxtapose my 21st century iterations alongside the historic in visual dialogues that act to re-animate (sometimes forgotten) objects from museum stores. For Recall. Reframe. Respond., I am excited to extend this process to include paintings, prints, photographs and other artworks from Cincinnati Art Museum’s extensive collections, creating new ‘conversations’ and reanimations.”

Over the last three decades, Paul Scott has established an international reputation. His work can be found in public and private collections around the globe including The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Norway, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

Transfer-printed ware, or transferware, describes industrially produced ceramic tableware that has a decorative pattern applied by transferring a print first from an engraved copper plate to specialized paper and finally to the ceramic’s surface. This term also applies to modern wares with printed graphic surfaces made using more recent printmaking techniques and decal transfer technologies.

The exhibition will be on view in the Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell Gallery and the Manuel and Rhoda Mayerson Gallery (124 and 125) located across from the Terrace Café. Several works will be displayed in other museum galleries, to be in conversation with the collections.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM

953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

East Asian Art Rediscovered Treasures @ Cincinnati Art Museum

Rediscovered Treasures 

Cincinnati Art Museum

September 19, 2025 — January 18, 2026

This exhibition reveals the untold stories behind East Asian masterpieces long housed in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s (CAM) collection. Featuring approximately 60 objects—ranging from Japanese armor and Chinese scrolls to Korean lacquer—Rediscovered Treasures brings to light transformative discoveries made possible by decades of scholarship, archival research and conservation efforts. 

While many of the featured works entered the museum in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they remained un-accessioned or misidentified due to a lack of staff expertise in Asian art at the time. Since 2002, when the museum formally established its Asian art department, ongoing research led by Hou-mei Sung, PhD, Curator of East Asian Art, has dramatically improved the understanding of these objects. Their rediscovery has not only reframed the museum’s collection, but has also illuminated Cincinnati’s early cultural ties to East Asia.

Among the exhibition’s highlights are three exceptional works: the fan-favorite Japanese bronze “magic mirror,” which reveals an image of Amida Buddha under special lighting, making CAM one of the few museums in the world to house such an object; a Qing dynasty portrait of a court lady, identified through research as an imperial portrait of Lady Nian, possibly painted by the Jesuit artist Giuseppe Castiglione; and a Meiji period sumo wrestler’s embroidered apron, recently linked to the tragic career of Otokoyama Osuke, a promising young wrestler immortalized in a ukiyo-e print by Utagawa Kuniaki II. Each piece offers a unique story of rediscovery that enriches the understanding of East Asian art and culture.

“This exhibition is both a reflection of CAM’s mission to preserve and interpret cultural heritage and a celebration of the exciting process of rediscovery,” said Hou-mei Sung. “Many of these works, once overlooked or mislabeled, now tell vibrant stories of art, of individual lives, and of historical connections that extend far beyond Cincinnati.”

The exhibition is organized in three thematic sections. Uncovering Hidden Gems spotlights artworks recovered from storage and newly identified, including Japanese scrolls linked to Cincinnati artist Robert Frederick Blum and samurai armor tied to CAM’s early supporters and a trailblazing Japanese doctor. Revealing Identities feature reclassified works with newly attributed artists, corrected origins and uncovered meanings. Preserving Legacies highlights the scientific and technical efforts behind preserving these treasures, with insights from CAM conservators Cecile Mear and Kelly Rectenwald.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM

Thomas R. Schiff galleries (234 and 235)

953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Rose Iron Works and Art Deco @ CMA - Cleveland Museum of Art - A Journey from Art Nouveau to Art Deco

Rose Iron Works and Art Deco 

Cleveland Museum of Art

July 6 - October 19, 2025

Muse with Violin Screen, 1930 

Rose Iron Works (America, Ohio, Cleveland, est. 1904) 

Designed by Paul Fehér (American, b. Hungary, 1898–1990)

Steel, brass, silver and gold plating, cotton velveteen, 

156.2 x 156.2 cm. 

The Cleveland Museum of Art, 

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, 2020.216. 

© Rose Iron Works Collections  

Martin Rose (American, 1870–1955)

Rose, c. 1904

Wrought iron; 35.6 x 14 x 40.6 cm.  

© Rose Iron Works Collections 

Rose Iron Works, the family-owned, Cleveland source for premiere quality decorative metalwork, is the subject of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s (CMA) newest exhibition, Rose Iron Works and Art Deco. An important part of Cleveland’s artistic heritage, Rose Iron Works has been operating continuously since its founding in 1904, creating a legacy of industry, craftwork, and artistic production. Rose Iron Works and Art Deco traces the company’s journey from Art Nouveau to Art Deco during its first 30 years.

In the early 1900s, Cleveland was one of the wealthiest cities in the United States and a center for metalworking, which made it an appealing place for Hungarian ornamental blacksmith Martin Rose, founder of Rose Iron Works, to start a business. It soon became one of the leading manufacturers of decorative metalwork in the United States, with decorative metalwork adorning some of the city’s most notable buildings.  

Trained in Budapest and Vienna in a tradition that drew inspiration from recreating historical styles, Rose was interested in artistic and technological innovations. Around 1900, he adopted the Art Nouveau aesthetic, which used sinuous lines and organic forms inspired by nature, and in the late 1920s, a “modern” style. 

In 1925, a groundbreaking international exhibition in Paris presented modern decorative arts—a style that later became known as Art Deco. Rose’s compatriot and a designer active in Paris, Paul Fehér, joined Rose Iron Works in Cleveland a few years later. Their artistic collaboration resulted in some of the best Art Deco ironwork in the country, including the celebrated Muse with Violin Screen (1930), now in the CMA’s collection.  

“Rose Iron Works is important locally, nationally and internationally,” said Ada de Wit, Ellen S. and Bruce V. Mavec Curator of Decorative Arts at the CMA. “This exhibition places Rose Iron Works in context with an elite network of blacksmiths and designers in Europe between the cities of Budapest, Hungary; Vienna, Austria; and Paris, France. It is apparent that Martin Rose had his finger on the pulse of European trends in the decorative arts and was able to translate them for a Cleveland audience.” 

In the Art Deco period, decorative metalwork connoted luxury through high-quality craftsmanship; modern, sophisticated design; and the use of expensive materials such as brass, chrome, and in some cases, silver and gold plating, as well as novel alloys like monel. Ornaments played an important role in architecture and were used on everything from public buildings and places of worship to banks and private homes, many of which can still be seen, for example, in Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights mansions.  

The exhibition showcases some of Rose Iron Works’ most notable Art Deco creations, including the now iconic Muse with Violin screen (1930), and loans from Rose Iron Works, such as an ambitious 90-foot frieze of the history of metalworking and a door grille salvaged from Halle Brothers Co. (1927), a high-end department store chain in Cleveland. Another significant loan is an overdoor (c. 1885) from the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest, made by Gyula Jungfer (Hungarian, 1841–1908), Rose’s teacher in Budapest and the most successful artist-blacksmith in Hungary. It represents the European tradition and training that shaped Rose’s career.  

CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART

11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44106

www.clevelandart.org

Keith Haring Exhibition @ Akron Art Museum - Against All Odds

Keith Haring: Against All Odds

Akron Art Museum

April 15 - September 24, 2023

KEITH HARING

Untitled, 1982

Acrylic on vinyl tarpaulin

180 x 180 in. (4750 x 4570 cm)

Collection of the Rubell Museum

Keith Haring artwork copyright © Keith Haring Foundation

KEITH HARING

Untitled, 1984

Ink on leather

35 x 42 in. (89 x 106.7 cm)

Collection of the Rubell Museum

Keith Haring artwork copyright © Keith Haring Foundation

KEITH HARING (Collaboration with LA II) 

Untitled, 1982

 Acrylic and ink on fiberboard

 Collection of the Rubell Museum. 

Keith Haring artwork copyright © Keith Haring Foundation

The Akron Art Museum presents Keith Haring: Against All Odds. Organized by the Rubell Museum and the Akron Art Museum, this show provides a sweeping overview of the height of Keith Haring’s career and includes more than 110 original objects made between 1981 and 1990. The Rubell Museum holds one of the largest private Keith Haring collections in the world. Many of the works that are on view at the Akron Art Museum were acquired by the Rubell Museum shortly after Keith Haring created them and around the same time as they were first presented publicly. 

Keith Haring’s career in art took off through chalk drawings in New York City subway stations and, during the 1980s, exploded into paintings, drawings, large-scale murals, fashion, and pop culture. The artist channeled his newfound popularity and his signature style of bold and energetic outlines into expressions of love and positivity. He also used his art to make political statements against war, environmental destruction, racism, and more, and to advocate for gay rights and AIDS awareness. 

“The exhibition [...]  highlights Haring’s commitments to art and politics, as well as his relationships with artistic peers like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. We are looking forward to sharing Keith Haring’s work, his ideas, and his personality with our visitors,” said Jeff Katzin, Ph.D., Curator for the Akron Art Museum.   

In 1986, Keith Haring opened his Pop Shop in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood selling shirts, posters, and other items to break down barriers between fine art and broad audiences. While many artists shy away from commercial enterprises, Haring was committed to making his art more accessible. The Museum have an area that has been hand-painted by local artist Ron Copeland in the style of Keith Haring’s Pop Shop, providing an exciting, immersive environment for reflection, education, and programs. 

Keith Haring’s monumental painting of two figures dancing around a heart and his Statue of Liberty sculpture created with Angel Ortiz will be on view through May 14. After their limited time at the Akron Art Museum, they will head to the West Coast to join a traveling exhibition. These two works were part of Keith Haring’s debut exhibition at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York City in 1982. This was his first show at a commercial gallery, and the success of the exhibition cemented his place in the world of fine art.  Two additional works, courtesy of the Keith Haring Foundation, will be on view starting May 16.    

“We are honored to be showcasing Keith Haring’s work on a grand scale here in Akron. His unique imagery is immediately recognizable around the globe, even for those who are not familiar with his story,” remarked Executive Director and CEO Jon Fiume. 

AKRON ART MUSEUM - AAM 

1 South High Street, Akron, OH 44308

akronartmuseum.org

Frank Duveneck @ Cincinnati Art Museum - American Master

Frank Duveneck: American Master

Cincinnati Art Museum

Through March 28, 2021

FRANK DUVENECK (1848–1919), United States

He Lives by His Wits, 1878

Oil on canvas

Collection of Gates Thornton Richards and Margaret Kyte Richards

The Cincinnati Art Museum presents a major re-evaluation of the work of FRANK DUVENECK, the most influential painter in Cincinnati history.

Through his brilliant and inspiring work as a painter and printmaker and as a charismatic teacher, Frank Duveneck’s impact on the international art world of his time was substantial and enduring. More than 90 examples across media from the holdings of the museum, the leading repository of the Kentucky native’s work, and 35 pieces on loan from collections across the United States, provides a fresh, in-depth look at this important artist.

Once Cincinnati’s most celebrated artist, Frank Duveneck was born in Covington to Westphalian immigrants in 1848. He studied in Munich, Germany, where he became an influential teacher, and spent nearly two decades in Europe. His work reflected the impact not only of modern German art, as is widely acknowledged, but also French and Italian work. His paintings’ lack of finish and assertive brushwork parallel Impressionism, and his work as a printmaker positioned him centrally in the period’s etching revival.

A captivating educator of men and women, Frank Duveneck counted John Henry Twachtman and Elizabeth Boott among his pupils and James Abbott McNeill Whistler among his collegial friends. Returning to the United States in 1888, Duveneck taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where he became director of the faculty in 1905. As a mentor and esteemed advisor to collectors and the Cincinnati Art Museum staff, Duveneck’s impact on the Cincinnati art world remains unparalleled.

This is the first exhibition in 30 years to dive deep into Frank Duveneck’s artistic development, his working methods, and the historical and social context of his subjects. Presenting abundant new research, the exhibition upends many common misconceptions and reveals the artist’s accomplishments across subjects and media, including oil paintings, drawings, watercolors, pastels, etchings, monotypes, and sculpture.

The paintings of streetwise kids and informal portraits for which he is renowned are accompanied by society portraits, Bavarian landscapes, Venetian harbor views, depictions of Italian city and country folk, renderings of the nude figure and more. A profusely illustrated catalogue published with D. Giles Ltd is available.

Dr. Julie Aronson, curator of American Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum since 1999, has been working on the exhibition for several years.

“We are excited to celebrate Frank Duveneck with this exhibition that illuminates one of the unique strengths of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s collection: its deep concentration in the works of one of the towering figures of American art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Side by side with our stunning Duveneck masterworks are key paintings on loan from across the country, presenting a fresh approach to the compelling story of one of our regional heroes. Duveneck’s bravura painting shines in this exhibition as never before!” said Julie Aronson.

Advanced online registration is required.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM

953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.cincinnatiartmusem.org

Vincent van Gogh @ Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio - "Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth" Exhibition

Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio
October 15, 2016 – January 8, 2017

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)

Undergrowth with Two Figures, June 1890

Oil on canvas, 19 ½ x 39 ¼ in. (49.5 x 99.7 cm)

Cincinnati Art Museum; Bequest of Mary E. Johnston, 1967.1430

Centered on Vincent van Gogh’s Undergrowth with Two Figures, the Cincinnati Art Museum’s new exhibition, Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth, will take visitors up close with celebrated woodland landscapes.

This exhibition—presented only at the Cincinnati Art Museum—brings an important group of artworks on loan from around the world together for the first time.

Exploring the works of the Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries, the exhibition traces the evolution of the Dutch artist’s love of the natural world, powers of observation and mastery of detail through this special group of landscape paintings spanning his career.

This exhibition is the first to take a close look at Van Gogh’s poetic depictions of the forest floor, known as sous-bois, the French term for “undergrowth.” These odes to nature were a reaction to the increasing industrialization and urbanization of society.

The exhibition allows visitors to compare Van Gogh’s treatment of this theme with examples by those who influenced and inspired him, including Théodore Rousseau, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin. Twenty artworks are borrowed from museum collections in Canada, The Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Japan and more, and are joined by works from the Cincinnati Art Museum’s own important collection of French paintings and works on paper.

“Visiting this exhibition is like taking a walk in the woods with Van Gogh and fellow artists,” explains Julie Aronson, Curator of American Painting and Sculpture. “Vincent van Gogh’s Undergrowth with Two Figures is widely recognized as one of the great masterpieces of Van Gogh’s late career. It is also a visitor favorite—often the favorite—among the many extraordinary works in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s galleries. This exhibition is a revelation that puts this significant work in the context of the art of its time.”

Since the Cincinnati Art Museum’s acquisition of Undergrowth with Two Figures in 1967, the museum has made this treasure available in major exhibitions around the world. It will travel to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2018.

In Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth, the painter is brought to life for visitors with his own words about the intimate relation between nature and art and the artists he admired, extensively quoted from his voluminous correspondence with his brother Theo. These letters serve as inspiration for the exhibition’s interactive activity, which involves a hands-on letter-writing experience. Another interactive will employ Google technology to allow visitors to explore Undergrowth with Two Figures on a touch screen, revealing the texture and brushstrokes of the painting in greatly enlarged detail.

With this exhibition, the Cincinnati Art Museum is leading the way with original scholarship in one of the few areas of Van Gogh study that remains to be explored. The accompanying catalogue, also titled Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth, examines Van Gogh’s engagement with the sous-bois subject from various perspectives. Co-published by D Giles Limited, it will be available for sale at the Cincinnati Art Museum and online this fall. Cornelia Homburg, art historian and one of the world’s foremost Van Gogh experts, is among the authors. She will be speaking at the Cincinnati Art Museum on October 16.

To shed further light on Van Gogh’s artistic milieu, the exhibition will also include Unlocking Van Gogh's World, a rich display of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist prints from the Cincinnati Art Museum’s collection. In addition to Van Gogh, Artists Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Camille Pissarro, James McNeill Whistler and others will be included in this supporting exhibition.

Cincinnati Art Museum
www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Dana Schutz, MOCA Cleveland, Exhibition Dana Schutz: Paintings 2002-2006

Dana Schutz: Paintings 2002-2006

Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland

September 29 - December 30, 2006

The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA) presents the work of 30-year-old painter Dana Schutz, whose “ecstatically imaginative paintings” have rapidly established her as one of the art stars of the contemporary art world.

Dana Schutz: Paintings 2002-2006, the first comprehensive solo museum exhibition of the artist’s work, features eighteen paintings created over the last four years, including three new works shown for the first time which were created specifically for MOCA Cleveland’s presentation of the exhibition.

The works, with their thick, lush surfaces and expressive palette of gaudy yellows, reds, deep greens and purples, explore social, emotional and political themes. The exhibition was curated by Raphaela Platow and organized by The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts. MOCA’s presentation of the exhibition and related programming was coordinated by Senior Curator Margo Crutchfield.

Dana Schutz describes her work as “pictures that float in and out of pictorial genres. Still-lifes become personified, portraits become events and landscapes become constructions. I embrace the area between which the subject is composed and decomposing, formed and formless, inanimate and alive.” Dana Schutz: Paintings 2002-2006 demonstrates this approach to painting through significant examples of Schutz’s different bodies of work, including selections from the series, “Frank From Observation” and “Self-Eaters.”

Says Rose Curator Raphaela Platow, “In many of her dynamic works, Schutz attempts to paint things that one almost cannot imagine.” With the Frank From Observation series, Schutz creates a world in which Frank is the last man on earth, a “castaway” who is seen alternately engaged in activity or reposed and contemplative. In the Self-Eaters series, Dana Schutz paints figures who are calmly depicted in the acts of devouring, dismembering and recreating themselves. Other paintings in Dana Schutz: Paintings 2002-2006, such as Party (2004), which portrays the Bush Administration Cabinet wandering through a jungle, are more politically-charged and overtly satirical.

About Schutz, whose influences include the German Expressionists, Henri Matisse and the Fauves, Paul Gauguin and the Symbolists, and Philip Guston, among others, Raphaela Platow has said she “creates her figurative paintings in thick, glutting strokes, similar to sculpting the image from paint. Many of her works depict hypothetical scenarios that are based on reality, but extended into the imaginary based on the parameters the artist sets for her narratives.”

Born in Livonia, Michigan in 1976, Dana Schutz currently lives and works in New York. She earned a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art (2000) and an MFA from the Columbia University School of Fine Arts in New York (2002). Her paintings have been featured in one-person shows in New York, Boston, Paris, Berlin, and Santa Fe, and in many group exhibitions, such as the Prague and Venice Biennials. Dana Schutz’s work is in numerous private and public collections including The Progressive Collection in Cleveland, OH; the Saatchi Collection in London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, all in New York.

MOCA - MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CLEVELAND

11400 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106

www.mocacleveland.org

Jim Dine Prints: 1985-2002 at Akron Art Museum

Jim Dine Prints: 1985-2002 

Akron Art Museum 

January 17 – March 27, 2004 

Ohio-born sculptor, painter and printmaker JIM DINE is one of America’s most famous living artists. Since the 1960s, Dine has transformed familiar, everyday objects such as hearts, bathrobes, tools, owls and skulls into powerful symbols of loss, longing, joy and wonder. The Akron Art Museum presents forty-seven monumental prints by this legendary artist with Jim Dine Prints: 1985-2002.

Born in Cincinnati in 1935, Jim Dine took evening art classes at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and later graduated from Ohio University. In 1958 he moved to New York City where he created performance art pieces, paintings and sculptures that incorporate real-life objects such as tools, lawnmowers and showerheads. Unlike the Pop artists with whom he is often associated, Dine does not use popular imagery to be humorous or ironic. Instead, he depicts objects that hold deep personal significance for him and conceives of each work as a kind of self-portrait.

Jim Dine Prints: 1985-2002 features the artist’s signature motifs of bathrobes, hearts, hands, and the Venus de Milo, themes the artist has recast in inventive ways since 1985. In conjunction with the exhibition, Dine’s Painting Around Mount Zion, a monumental image of four bathrobes owned by the Akron Art Museum, is also on view. The exhibition also features some of his newest subjects such as owls, ravens, trees and the character of Pinocchio, reflecting a more brooding, romantic sensibility.

Over the past four decades, Jim Dine has produced an incomparable body of paintings, sculpture, photographs and prints. Dine recently completed a monumental bronze sculpture of the Venus de Milo for the US Courthouse in Cleveland. Called Cleveland Venus, it was installed atop the new building this past October.

The works in the Akron Art Museum exhibition reveal Dine’s expressive vision as well as his devotion to innovative printmaking techniques. The artist uses power tools to carve images into printing plates, combines multiple techniques within a single print and hand colors many works, using brushes, his fingers and even a straw broom. Like his paintings and sculptures, Dine’s prints are characterized by both technical virtuosity and emotional intensity. They are grand in scale, extraordinary in technique and rich in allusion, with a powerful visual and emotional impact not to be missed.

This exhibition was organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in collaboration with Pace Editions Inc. and Jim Dine. 

AKRON ART MUSEUM

70 East Market Street, Akron, Ohio 44308

www.akronartmuseum.org

Andrea Loefke, The Sculpture Center, Cleveland

Andrea Loefke
The Sculpture Center, Cleveland
January 10 – February 7, 2003

once upon a time there was a world: whimsical, humorous, synthetic, girly, intimate, alien, glittering, sexy, soft, innocent, explicit, humming and obscure..........

I weave fictional narratives, dream worlds with anchors to the real, occupying a space between familiarity and fantasy. The environments are systems – overlapping worlds, groups and subgroups that are contrasted and united through scale, color palette, sound, form, space, and making technique. The continuous change of the vocabulary, the pushing and pulling between these things, creates hierarchies, different events that both compete and communicate. The groupings and their spacing become a journey of discovery. I lay down paths, combine the micro and the macro, introduce different narratives into the work, evoke notions of communication, irritation and movement between elements, infuse life into objects, and ask the viewer to relate oneself to.

– Andrea Loefke 

THE SCULPTURE CENTER
1834 East 123rd Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-1910
www.sculpturecenter.org

Paul Stankard Glass Sculptures at Akron Art Museum - Flowers in Glass: Glass Paperweights and Sculptures by Paul Stankard

Flowers in Glass 

Glass Paperweights and Sculptures by Paul Stankard

Akron Art Museum

9 November 2002 - 2 February 2003

Akron Art Museum presents Flowers in Glass: Glass Paperweights and Sculptures by Paul Stankard. The exhibition features over 60 of the legendary glass artist’s floral paperweights and sculptures. The works are all from the collection of Cleveland area glass collectors Mike and Annie Belkin, who own one of the largest Stankard collections in the world.

Considered to be one of the most important and prolific paperweight artists, Paul Stankard is simultaneously a master glass artist and an astonishing realist sculptor. Throughout his thirty-year career, he has challenged the limits of glass as an art form. His early works focused on uncannily accurate glass flowers, perfect in color and delicate detail. Inside his glass creations, he constructs amazingly minute, highly detailed microcosms of plants and insects. Viewing his work, one is instantly transported to a different time and place—from a meadow of wild flowers to a pond resplendent with water lilies. It is difficult to believe that you are not confronted with nature itself, miniaturized and preserved forever at its peak by crystal-clear glass.

Look more closely, though, and there is even more to these swirls of worlds than the complexity of botany. By experimenting with color and composition, Stankard has achieved his own personal interpretation of nature. Layers of glass create fiction, metaphor and allusion. Some of the flowers, such as the coronet in Coronet, Blueberries and Damselflies, are not even native to nature, but the artist’s fanciful inventions. In a number of the more recent sculptures that Paul Stankard has termed “Botanicals,” tiny root people, words or the female form–which represents the earth spirit–become clear, intermingled among the roots. In commenting on these botanical interpretations, the artist has stated: “I am interested in integrating mysticism, informed by botany, into my work, giving the glass an organic credibility. Through the work, I explore the cycles of nature with wildflowers as a personal metaphor. The addition of tiny root people and word canes as emblems allude to unseen forces of growth and decay.”

Moreover, Paul Stankard has altered the way people view paperweights by changing their very shape. The artist has transformed paperweights from the traditional, round French style (what most people consider when they think of paperweights) to rectangular blocks composed of two or more laminated glass pieces forming one complete scene. In this regard, his paperweights have come to be viewed as sculptures, and Stankard has emerged as one of the most influential glass artists of his time. Indeed, his works are featured in museums throughout the world—from Washington, D.C. to Tokyo, Japan.

Paul Stankard does not just depict the natural world; he uses art to express his awe at the miracle of nature and to hint at the unknowable wonders lying beneath the world’s visible surface. The artist himself has noted: “My work is my prayer,” and his stunning sculptures express this spiritual component silently through form and color. Come to Flowers in Glass and delight the eyes, the intellect and the soul!

Flowers in Glass is organized by the Akron Art Museum from the collection of Mike and Annie Belkin.

AKRON ART MUSEUM

70 East Market Street, Akron, Ohio 44308

www.akronartmuseum.org

Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Cincinnati Art Museum

How Small the World is: Selected Photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo 
Cincinnati Art Museum
May 18 - October 28, 2002

The Cincinnati Art Museum presents an exhibition of the powerful photographs of Manuel Alvarez Bravo that span his career of nearly 80 years. The exhibition is drawn entirely from the permanent prints, drawings and photographs collection at the Museum. 

Manuel Alvarez Bravo's life and work have coincided with radical changes in the twentieth century; he is the last of a generation of artists with direct ties to the avant-garde movements in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. While growing up in the midst of the Mexican revolution (1910-1920), Manuel Alvarez Bravo witnessed the horror of nearly one million Mexicans' deaths due to starvation and the fighting between rebel factions struggling for power. This experience compelled him to become part of Mexico's national search for identity by capturing with his camera the daily life activities of humble people and focusing on the subtleties of human interaction.

Two primary factors characterize his work: an early openness to artistic influence from outside Mexico and a thoroughly Mexican subject matter. The effort to establish a unified Mexican cultural identity in conjunction with the emergence of Mexico City as an international center for artistic and intellectual exchange provided the backdrop against which Manuel Alvarez Bravo pursued his lifelong vocation. His photographs capture the eloquent images of dreams, death and transient life, juxtaposed with the everyday existence of street signs, cafes, shop windows and street vendors.

The photographs Manuel Alvarez Bravo made on the streets of Mexico City in his career were taken with the hand-held Graflex camera, which gave him two very desirable qualities in his pictures: the Graflex is a large-format, single-lens reflex camera which gives the photographer the ability to render surface, texture and detail; it also has a larger negative that provides for more detail in the finished print. This was particularly suited for Alvarez Bravo because his pictures appear to derive from a thoughtful, more deliberate matter of picture making. Through his work, he encouraged a way of looking at the world that emphasized the form of isolated images and artifacts, and his camera was the most essential tool for doing this.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo's images are timeless descriptions of a community that came back to life after a period of devastation. He has had an immeasurable influence on Mexican and Latin American photography. His insistently ambiguous irony and redemption of common folk and their daily subsistence have marked out a path of high standards for photographers from his area.

Born in Mexico City, 1902, Manuel Alvarez Bravo attended a Catholic school from 1908 to 1914, but left in 1915 to work. At this time, he began to educate himself in photography while asking for advice from photography suppliers. The 1923 arrivals of Edward Weston and Tina Modotti to Mexico were crucial to Alvarez Bravo's development, and he bought his first camera in 1924. In 1935 he won his first major award and decided to pursue photography as a full-time career. Alvarez Bravo met Andre Breton in 1939, and his work was included in a Paris Surrealist exhibit.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired their first works by Manuel Alvarez Bravo in 1942, and in 1955 his photographs were included in Edward Steichen's Family of Man. During 1959, Alvarez Bravo became the photographer of important art books for the Gondo Editorial de la Plastica Mexicana, of which he was the founder. Manuel Alvarez Bravo left the Fondo in 1980 to work with the Mexican-based media empire, Televisa, where his collection of photography was exhibited and published in a three-volume set. In 1996, his collection was moved to the newly created Centro Fotografico Alvarez Bravo in Oaxaca City, Mexico. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, hosted a retrospective exhibition, Optical Parables, or Alvarez Bravo's work this past winter.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM
953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202
cincinnatiartmuseum.org