Date Title One sentence desciption + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more Thu. April 23, 2026 moCa NOW: Cocktail w/ Sky Hopinka 5:30-6:30PM at moCa Cleveland Free for moCa NOW Members RSVP moCa members are invited to an exclusive early cocktail reception ahead of artist Sky Hopinka’s talk. Connect with fellow members and settle in before an engaging presentation from the acclaimed artist. Arrive early, explore the gallery, and experience this special pre-event gathering designed just for our member community. For details, contact Morgan Jones, Senior Advancement Officer, at 216.658.6934.

Date Title One sentence desciption + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more 12-2:30PM Sat. January 3, 2026 moCa Saturday: FAM Day (Family, Art & Movement) SIGN UP at moCa Cleveland Free with admission Move with meaning in this transformative experience where visual art meets street dance. Join the acclaimed 10K Movement to reconnect with your body, creativity, and expression—through moves inspired by the current exhibitions of Clotilde Jiménez and Maggie Menghan Chen. All ages and levels welcome—no experience needed. Presented in partnership w/

Date Title One sentence desciption + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more 12-2:30PM Sat. October 4, 2025 moCa Saturday: FAM Day (Family, Art & Movement) SIGN UP at moCa Cleveland Free with admission Move with meaning in this transformative experience where visual art meets street dance. Join the acclaimed 10K Movement to reconnect with your body, creativity, and expression—through moves inspired by the current exhibitions of Clotilde Jiménez and Maggie Menghan Chen. All ages and levels welcome—no experience needed. Presented in partnership w/

Date Title One sentence desciption + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more 5-8PM Thu. August 7, 2025 After Work Cocktail & Chill RSVP at moCa Cleveland Free to attend The Winter/Spring 2025 season includes the vibrant and vivid first solo U.S. exhibition by British artist Harminder Judge, an examination of natural phenomena by Heinz-award winning artist Gala Porras-Kim, and a heartfelt tribute to Black motherhood coordinated by Birthing Beautiful Communities. 6PM: Doors open 7PM: Artist Talk w/ Harminder Judge and moCa Deputy Director & Senior Curator DJ Hellerman Mingle with the art, enjoy sips from the cash bar and food from Yum Village.

Date Title One sentence desciption + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more 5-6:29PM Fri. April 10, 2026 CIFF: Paint Me a Road Out of Here GET TICKETS at Playhouse Square Complex Tickets available Mar 18 $1 off any ticket with discount code: MOCA In 1971, artist Faith Ringgold created a monumental painting “For the Women’s House” for the women incarcerated at Rikers Island jail. Fifty years later, artist Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, who gave birth in prison 15 years ago, finds herself banding together with an eclectic group of activists, politicians, artists, corrections officers, and Faith Ringgold herself to free the artwork with the ultimate goal of freeing the women. Paint Me a Road Out of Here is a wild tale of the painting’s whitewashed journey and the two artists who challenged the same powerful and oppressive institutions, a half century apart, with their artwork, their voices, and their shared, persistent goals. COMMUNITY PARTNERS: moCa Cleveland National Congress of Black Women $1 discount applies to all films, with the exception of Opening Night, 7x7 Retrospective, and Day Pass purchases.

Date Title One sentence desciption + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more Add a Title Add a Title Title + more 6-7:30PM Thu. February 18, 2027 In Response w/ Art Therapy Studio SIGN UP at moCa Cleveland Free w/ Registration Slow down, reconnect, and discover the restorative power of making. Inspired by works on view in moCa Cleveland's galleries, this guided, hands-on workshop invites you to explore creativity as a tool for reflection, mindfulness, and well-being—no artistic experience required. Through simple materials and thoughtful prompts, you'll create in a welcoming, judgment-free environment designed to reduce stress and spark curiosity. Space is limited; advance registration is recommended.

Studio Access w/ Manabu Ikeda Feb 17, 2024 Experience the artist create onsite at moCa as he develops a new monumental artwork over the course of the Winter/Spring season. About Experience the artist create onsite at moCa as he develops a new monumental artwork over the course of the Winter/Spring season. Experience the artist create onsite at moCa as he develops a new monumental artwork over the course of the Winter/Spring season.

Press Release DOWNLOAD PDF DOWNLOAD EXHIBITION IMAGES Tuesday, January 16, 2024 New exhibitions at moCa Cleveland by Manabu Ikeda, Andrea Bowers, and BlackBrain uplift nature and sacred human experience Opening Night Celebration: Friday, Feb 2, 2024 Contact: Tom Poole tpoole@mocacleveland.org 216.658.6938 Cleveland, Ohio—The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (moCa) announces three new exhibitions that explore the power of nature and human nature. From asserting our obligation to protect the Great Lakes to envisioning rebirth that comes after climate devastation to symbolizing our existential journeys, these exhibitions elevate our shared experiences to encourage connection and change. Kohl Executive Director Megan Reich notes, “This season beckons and probes in equal measure. It is teeming with awe-inspiring artworks that invite us into their richness with ease. In all three shows, drawing plays a primary role, a technique that we all understand but in the hands of these artists, becomes a transcendent practice.” Opening Friday, Feb 2 and running through May 26, 2024, the exhibitions include the United States debut of Manabu Ikeda’s acclaimed Flowers from the Wreckage retrospective and new commissions, installations, and artworks by Northeast Ohio-raised artist Andrea Bowers and Cleveland-connected collaborative BlackBrain Group. Aligned with moCa’s approach and values, collaboration is key this season, from BlackBrain Group’s immersive installation done with our institutional residency partner Julia de Burgos Cultural Art Center (JDBCAC) to collaborations with Great Lakes Science Center (GLSC) and Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) in support of Andrea Bowers’s new monumental neon in downtown Cleveland. Manabu Ikeda, Foretoken , 2008. Pen and acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board. 74.8 x 133.8 in (190 × 340 cm). Collection of Sustainable Investor Co., Ltd. (Kagura Salon). Photo: Yasuhide Kuge Manabu Ikeda: Flowers from the Wreckage Feb 2-May 26, 2024 The first North American retrospective of its kind, Manabu Ikeda: Flowers from the Wreckage presents over 50 works from the past 25 years. Seeking inspiration from his surroundings, Ikeda (born 1973, Saga, Japan; lives and works in Madison, WI) brings attention and inspiration to viewers while sending warnings about the painful reality of environmental disasters. Central to his practice are metaphors of grief and the undeniable aspects of life, including the fundamental forces of Mother Nature. Ikeda’s drawings also reveal human resilience and the ability to rise above devastating situations when it appears impossible. Organized by the Audain Art Musuem (Whistler, Canada) and curated by Kiriko Watanabe, Gail & Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator, the show includes several of Ikeda’s renowned monumental works including Foretoken (2008), Meltdown (2013) and Rebirth (2013-16), each about the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the most devastating earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power disaster in the country’s recorded history. In each work, Ikeda painstakingly builds worlds that are both profoundly familiar and also beyond comprehension, inspiring and awe-inspiring in equal measure. Open Studio Artist Residency Select times throughout season. Visit moCacleveland.org for full schedule. Manabu Ikeda will be onsite for an in-gallery studio residency at moCa at various times throughout the exhibition season. Visitors can experience Ikeda’s creative process for themselves as he continues work on a new monumental drawing based on water inside moCa’s Mueller Family Gallery. Engagement Guides and CIA students will be available to discuss and answer questions about the artist’s practice during these sessions. Organized and circulated by the Audain Art Museum, Whistler, BC, Canada, with the generous support from the Audain Foundation. This exhibition is curated by Kiriko Watanabe, Gail & Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator, Audain Art Museum. Lead support from Dealer Tire. Lead support for Manabu Ikeda’s artist residency from The Flagstar Foundation. About Manabu Ikeda Born in Saga, Japan, Manabu Ikeda currently lives and works in Madison, Wisconsin. Ikeda is renowned for his highly detailed pen-and-ink drawings and complex imagery. Ikeda has exhibited his work internationally, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Russia, and the United States. It took Ikeda over three years to draw Rebirth , which is widely recognized as his masterpiece referencing the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and a collision between nature and humankind. Organized by the Audain Art Museum, Manabu Ikeda: Flowers from the Wreckage is Ikeda’s first solo exhibition in North America. Andrea Bowers, Rights of Nature I , 2022. Neon. Photo: Glen Cheriton, Impart Photography Andrea Bowers: Exist, Flourish, Evolve Feb 2-May 26, 2024 Huron, Ohio-raised, LA-based artist Andrea Bowers bears witness in her work, drawing attention to and inspiring action on urgent issues of our time. Her drawings, sculptures, installations, and films document collective action and amplify the labor and lived experiences of activists dedicated to change. Developed through an ongoing partnership with CELDF and activist Tish O’Dell, Exist, Flourish, Evolve is a new, multi-site, multimedia campaign that builds awareness and action around the dangers facing Lake Erie and the Great Lakes ecosystem. This project is anchored by a new, monumental neon public artwork installed on the Great Lakes Science Center (GLSC) building and facing Lake Erie that declares the right of Lake Erie to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve—words drawn from CELDF’s Lake Erie Bill of Rights. Created with commission support from VIA Art Fund, the bright, buoyant light sculpture obliges us to examine our role in damaging, repairing, protecting, partnering with, and ensuring the health of the Great Lakes that we depend on for survival. At moCa Cleveland, Bowers’s exhibition presents additional artworks about environmental justice. New works include a neon chandelier, an LED text and light installation that is a corollary to the downtown neon sculpture, a drawing of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, and a documentary film investigating the impact of factory farming on Lake Erie’s ecosystem. Truth, Reckoning, & Right Relationship with the Great Lakes Conference: Apr. 22-23 Working with CELDF, this two day summit–which follows a one day “truth and reckoning” symposium at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in October 2023–focuses on creating “right relationships” with Lake Erie and will include a keynote address and artist talk, breakout sessions, and special presentations by high school students from MC2STEM High School and John Hay School of Science and Medicine. Commission sponsorship provided by VIA Art Fund. Generous support from Thompson Hine LLP, Joanne Cohen & Morris Wheeler, Chuck & Char Fowler, and Nicholas & Erin Reif. Community Partners: Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and Great Lakes Science Center About Andrea Bowers Ohio-raised Andrea Bowers is a Los Angeles-based artist who has been recording and amplifying the work of activists present and past for more than two decades. Her multi-media practice includes drawing, video, sculpture, and installation work that foregrounds the experience of the people who dedicate their time and energy to the struggle for gender, racial, environmental, labor, and immigration justice and those who are directly affected by systemic inequality. Over time, her different bodies of work have become a document of the changing language, prerogatives, and dynamics of social justice movements. In 2021, a major mid-career survey of Bowers’s work curated by Michael Darling and Connie Butler opened at the MCA Chicago and traveled to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2022. Other recent solo exhibitions include Grief and Hope , Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany and Light and Gravity , Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen, Germany. In September 2022, Bowers opened a solo exhibition including both new and existing work at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Milano as part of an exhibition program organized by the Fondazione Furla. Bowers is represented by Vielmetter Los Angeles, Andrew Kreps Gallery, Kaufmann Repetto, and Jessica Silverman Gallery. BlackBrain, Diamond Heart , 2024. Mural in progress. Courtesy the artist. BlackBrain: SCRD GRDN Feb 2 -May 26, 2024 SCRD GRDN is a new project by BlackBrain and guest artists from JDBCAC’s Unidos por el Arte program. Representing a metamorphosis from lone artist into collective creative force and guided by the mantra “go fast, go alone; go far, go together,” BlackBrain Group transforms solitary endeavors into dynamic collaborations grounded in a shared passion for storytelling through art. SCRD GRDN is an immersive painting installation about the resolute human spirit and its existential journey through oppression, justice, prosperity, and divine understanding. Fusing artistic styles and techniques, the series meditates on the interplay and influence between the inner self and the external forces that shape our existence. Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center Instiution & Artist Residency: This project is part of moCa’s institutional and early career artist residency with JDBCAC from January 2023-May 2024. JDBCAC occupies and engages spaces on moCa’s first and third floors in relation to its mission and work, and co-designs programming with moCa to advance the work of Latino/a/x artists and artists of color and provide new professional development opportunities. In 2023, BlackBrain founder Ariel Vergez served as a mentor artist to the seven artists involved in the moCa/JDBCAC early career artist residency, who presented their work in a group show called ¡Juntos! (Together) last year. Lead support for this residency provided by Margaret Cohen & Kevin Rahilly with additional major support from The Cleveland Foundation. About BlackBrain Ariel Vergez, aka BlackBrain, is a seasoned artist with a rich heritage and a passion for storytelling through art. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Florida, BlackBrain is the child of two immigrants who came to the United States in search of opportunity and met each other while working in the service industry. Growing up in a household where art was a daily presence, BlackBrain pursued his passion for art at the collegiate level, studying Industrial Design at the Cleveland Institute of Art. With a background in product and graphic design, BlackBrain has worked with world-class brands and has a keen understanding of the importance of storytelling in design. He has fused that experience towards his first love art. This experience is evident in BlackBrain’s art series, which feature unique narratives, a cross-wiring of pop culture icons, and a vuja dé feeling of nostalgia. FREE ADMISSION & HOURS Daily Admission at moCa Cleveland is always free to all. Thursdays-Sundays, 11AM-5PM; Holiday hours available at mocacleveland.org ABOUT moCa CLEVELAND For more than 50 years, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (moCa) has played a vital role in the city’s cultural landscape. moCa is a conduit and catalyst for creativity and inspiration, offering exhibitions and programs that provide public value and make meaning of the art and ideas of our time. Since its founding in 1968, moCa has presented the works of more than three thousand artists, often through artists’ first solo shows. Soon after its founding, moCa was the first in the region to exhibit the works of many vanguard artists such as Laurie Anderson, Christo, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Adrian Piper, and Andy Warhol. Recent artist commissions and solo exhibitions include work by Tauba Auerbach, Simon Denny, Aleksandra Domanović, Michelle Grabner, Byron Kim, Ragnar Kjartansson, Tony Lewis, Kirk Mangus, Catherine Opie, Adam Pendleton, Sondra Perry, Joyce J. Scott, Do Ho Suh, Liu Wei, Renée Green, and Nina Chanel Abney, among many others. 2024 INSTITUTIONAL SPONSORS All current moCa Cleveland exhibitions are funded by Leadership Circle gifts from Doreen & Dick Cahoon, Joanne Cohen & Morris Wheeler, Margaret Cohen & Kevin Rahilly, Grosvie & Charlie Cooley, Becky Dunn, Harriet Goldberg, Agnes Gund, Jan Lewis, and Toby Devan Lewis* moCa Cleveland receives lead institutional support in part by The Cleveland Foundation, the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture, the George Gund Foundation, the Nord Family Foundation, the Leonard Krieger Fund of the Cleveland Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, PNC, and the continuing support of the museum’s Board of Directors, patrons, and members. * deceased TOP IMAGE: Manabu Ikeda, Rebirth, 2013-16. Pen, acrylic ink and transparent watercolour on paper, mounted on board, 118.11 x 157.48 in (300 x 400 cm), collection of Saga Prefectural Art Museum. Digital Archive: TOPPAN PRINTING CO., LTD. ©️IKEDA Manabu, Courtesy Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo / Singapore ### Previous Next

News + Read more at W Magazine Tuesday, November 29, 2022 by Kat Herriman Photographs by Jesper D. Lund The artist’s college years are the focus of a new exhibition at the ICA Miami. The New York-based artist Nina Chanel Abney punches eyes out one at a time. Her life-size paper dolls don’t seem to mind. They crowd around the ankles of her standing desk, in blank anticipation, patiently waiting for her to finish their faces so they can go on to their destiny as protagonists in her primary-colored collages. Abney points down at the huddle encircling her feet. “It’s a dance scene,” she says. Assembling her dancers requires meticulous choreography. “One millimeter can shift an expression,” Abney says. Despite the precarity, Abney feels at home in this cut-and-paste world. Over the past decade, her figurative collages depicting the lives and stories of Americans like herself—Black, queer, working class individuals—have become a fixture of the art world. Her exuberantly colored paintings, executed with stencils and spray paint, mimic Abney’s collage aesthetic and make me think of artists like Henri Matisse, Kara Walker, and Lari Pittman—but Abney bats away these art-historical touchstones. She says her mother, who is also an artist, is the one responsible for her love of drawing and collaging. “I’ve been cutting and pasting since childhood,” Abney says. “I like the familiarity of it.” Raised in Chicago by her mother, Abney used drawing as a way to connect. In school, she and her sister invited their mostly white classmates to commission portraits of Black celebrities from them. Abney earned a BFA from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois before heading to Parsons, where she graduated with a masters degree in 2007. In 2008, she participated in the groundbreaking group show 30 Americans at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, and as the exhibition traveled around the country her exuberant images depicting Black joy and pain began appearing in museums alongside fellow participants like Rashid Johnson, Renée Green, and Kerry James Marshall. In 2017, she had an exhibition with Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, and after that she was featured in monographic museum shows. Abney vibrates on a cultural frequency all her own and has also collaborated to create Air Jordan sneakers, as well as a version of the classic game card Uno. Her most visible pop cultural moment, an album cover created last year for Meek Mill’s Expensive Pain , was a tearful cartoon portrait of the rapper surrounded by nude women, a yacht, a motorcycle, and dollar signs. The ICA Miami exhibition of Nina Chanel Abney: Big Butch Energy, on view during Art Basel, focuses on Abney’s college years, when the artist was less assured in her queer identity and struggled to find a community that reflected the kind of person she wanted to be. An epic shower scene, notably, dwells on the awkwardness and discomfort of forced group dynamics. Abney was attracted to the universality of coming-of-age scenes; she is devoted to mediums freighted with childhood resonance and stories she knows can be found on the tip of the tongue. The conceptual second half of the Miami presentation opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland on January 27. Those works focus instead on the more positive side of Abney’s collegiate experience, and the energy is festive. “Like coming into myself and the celebration,” Abney says. The keystone work here depicts a raucous dance party like the ones Abney would have liked to attend. After the MoCA Cleveland show and a well-deserved break, Abney will be doubling down on her efforts to focus on public art and shift her language into three-dimensional sculptures. She’s not sure what they will look like yet, but she does know she wants those artworks to depict the lives of those unsung in the Western canon and be accessible to the public at all hours. “I always want the viewer to be able to feel like they have a connection with the work and recall some of their own similar experiences,” she says. “I’m good at finding communities that wants their stories told. I don’t feel like there is enough representation of Black masculine-presenting or queer women in media, so if I can bring my experience to life and it inspires others then I feel like I’m doing a good job. In earlier work, I was trying to make the content more ambiguous—now, it’s leaning toward the opposite.” Previous Next

News + Read more at Crain's Cleveland Business Monday, November 6, 2023 Immersive Exhibits are Leading a Transformation in Cleveland Museums by Paige Bennett Previous Next

News + Read more at Inside Climate News Sunday, February 4, 2024 Fighting for a Foothold in American Law, the Rights of Nature Movement Finds New Possibilities in a Change of Venue: the Arts The celebrated artist Andrea Bowers grew up in Ohio on Lake Erie. Her exhibit at MoCa makes a case that the lake and its tributaries possess the legal rights to “Exist, Flourish and Evolve. By Katie Surma CLEVELAND—The ailing Cuyahoga river, bloated with industrial pollution, erupted into flames reaching as high as a five story building on June 22, 1969. The river, one of several heavily polluted waterways that feed Lake Erie, had caught fire at least a dozen times over the course of a decade, the horror of which helped spark the nascent U.S. environmental movement, leading to the enactment of landmark legislation like the 1972 Clean Water Act. Fast forward nearly a half century to 2014, when Lake Erie, after having endured decades of pollution from industrial, agricultural and other human activities, was stricken with toxic algae blooms so intense that roughly 500,000 people living near the lake lost access to drinking water for three days. Those residents were left questioning what 50 years of environmental laws actually protected: ecosystems or industry’s right to pollute. Such are the bookends of Andrea Bowers’ new “ Exist, Flourish and Evolve ” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland (MoCa), showing now through May 26. Bowers, an Ohio native and internationally acclaimed artist, named the exhibit for three of the legal rights that activists enshrined into a 2019 law known as the Lake Erie Bill of Rights. The idea was, in part, to level the legal playing field between the interests of the lake, on one hand, and those of industry, on the other. Ecuador, Panama, Bolivia and Spain are some of the countries where lakes, rivers, forests, wild animals and Earth itself have been recognized as rights-bearing entities. The so-called rights of nature laws typically provide a higher form of protection than conventional environmental regulations and usually give human legal guardians the ability to enforce the rights on behalf of rivers, forests and wild animals. Exist, Flourish and Evolve provokes visitors to confront philosophical arguments behind the rights of nature movement: principally, that nature is not a thing, or merely human property as conventional law treats it. Rather, Earth and its ecosystems are complex living communities to which humans belong. Modern science confirms this fact and legal systems ought to catch up to that reality, advocates argue. The exhibition takes place across two locations. The first, a giant red, green and blue neon sculpture installed outside Cleveland’s lakefront Great Lakes Science Center and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame declares: “Lake Erie Has the Right to Exist, Flourish, & Naturally Evolve.” The second, at MoCa, holds Bowers’ drawings, additional neon light installations, a documentary film and activists’ posters and campaign paraphernalia, including a sign boldly asking the question: “If Corporations Have Rights, Shouldn’t Mother Nature?” In between displays of Bowers’ drawings are photographic images of the 1969 Cuyahoga fires and algae blooms of the 2010s, raising questions about the effectiveness of environmental protection efforts in the intervening years. Nuclear power plants, offshore wind farms, and factory farming are some of the region’s other industrial activities highlighted throughout the exhibit. For Bowers, who grew up splashing in Lake Erie’s waters, working on Exist, Flourish and Evolve has been deeply personal. Her first word was neither mom nor dad, but “lake,” and her family lived closely to the land with her father, an avid fisherman and hunter, running the police boat on the lake. A quintessential advocate, Bowers is known for using her art to amplify the plight of feminists, Indigenous communities, environmentalists, immigrants, workers and others. She spends lengthy periods of time in the field with activists, learning about their work and how she can be of service to their cause. She’s embedded with Indigenous communities at Standing Rock and was arrested in 2011 alongside fellow activists for “tree sitting” in protest of the razing of trees in her current home town of Los Angeles. “I always ask the simplest question which is, ‘How can my art be in service to you?’” Bowers said of her approach to working with other activists. “They are the driving force in terms of content and I try to create and use my access to institutions to bring attention to their issues.” For Exist, Flourish and Evolve , Bowers teamed up with the U.S.-based nonprofit Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), an organization that helped enact the world’s first rights of nature law in 2006 in a rural Pennsylvania town . Bowers spent most of 2019 talking with CELDF’s consulting director Tish O’Dell and learning about the organization’s thwarted efforts to make U.S. rights of nature laws more than symbolic—despite nearly 20 years of effort, no U.S.-based rights of nature law has been enforced. Courts have struck down the laws on a variety of grounds, including state law preemption . O’Dell explained to Bowers how 61 percent of Toledo voters, fed up with toxic algae blooms and other environmental degradation, enacted the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR) into law in February 2019, and how a day later, an industrial farm challenged the constitutionality of the law. In February 2020, a federal court in Ohio struck down LEBOR, reasoning that it was unconstitutionally vague and exceeded the authority of a municipal government. Since then, O’Dell and her CELDF colleagues have entered a period of reflection, wondering how to advance their movement in light of the roadblocks erected in U.S. legal and political systems. Working with Bowers and learning about the power of art, O’Dell began riffing on a longstanding question in the legal world: Does law influence the culture, or does culture influence the law? “We had been so focused for so long on using the law to change our culture,” O’Dell said. “Andrea gave us a different way of thinking about organizing and how we can use cultural change to shift mindsets and use that to shift the laws.” And so CELDF, in partnership with Bowers, rolled out a two-phase “ Truth, Reckoning, and Right Relationship ” conference in late 2023 and April 2024. The fall 2023 meeting at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame convened doctors, lawyers, activists, Indigenous people, students and others to reckon with how existing legal, political, educational, economic and cultural systems have contributed to the “ill health” of the Great Lakes. A gathering in April 2024 will focus on how, beyond changing laws, humanity can come back into “right relationship” with those ecosystems. “Maybe then we won’t need laws to instruct us to not poison ourselves,” O’Dell said. Still, she and her CELDF colleagues have not given up on their work in the legal realm. In March 2022, New York state Assemblyman Patrick Burke, with the help of CELDF, introduced the Great Lakes Bill of Rights , aimed at “securing legal rights” for the Great Lake’ ecosystems. The bill is pending in committee, with Democrats currently in control of the legislature and governorship. As exhibit attendees exit Exist, Flourish and Evolve , a final neon and painted installation underscores that unfolding effort in bold letters: “The Great Lakes Ecosystem Shall Possess the Inalienable and Fundamental Rights Not to be Owned or Privatized or Monetized.” Previous Next

Title Round Julie Langsam Wayne County, MI: Pink Shapes #11 , 2023 Langsam has exhibited nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions include Gallery Thomas Jaeckel; Frederieke Taylor Gallery; and Michael Steinberg Fine Art in NYC; Maass Gallery at SUNY Purchase; Espai 8 in Barcelona; Reykjavik Art Gallery, Iceland; and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, among others. She is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and is represented in collections throughout the United States and Europe. Among Langsam's other activities she is curator of such exhibitions as "Color as Structure" at Frederieke Taylor Gallery in NYC and "The Big Bang" at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, OH. Langsam is currently Associate Professor at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers and was former Motto Endowed Chair and Head of Painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She recently completed an experimental documentary short, Garden State , about New Jersey, and is finishing a feature-length film that examines the United States through the lens of its varied terrains. +sign up to proxy bid return to auction menu More: Julie Langsam Langsam has exhibited nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions include Gallery Thomas Jaeckel; Frederieke Taylor Gallery; and Michael Steinberg Fine Art in NYC; Maass Gallery at SUNY Purchase; Espai 8 in Barcelona; Reykjavik Art Gallery, Iceland; and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, among others. She is the recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and is represented in collections throughout the United States and Europe. Among Langsam's other activities she is curator of such exhibitions as "Color as Structure" at Frederieke Taylor Gallery in NYC and "The Big Bang" at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, OH. Langsam is currently Associate Professor at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers and was former Motto Endowed Chair and Head of Painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She recently completed an experimental documentary short, Garden State , about New Jersey, and is finishing a feature-length film that examines the United States through the lens of its varied terrains.