top of page

Search Results

380 results found with an empty search

  • studio-access-w-manabu-ikeda-2024-05-19-13-00

    Studio Access w/ Manabu Ikeda May 19, 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.

  • Robert-Banks-and-Dexter-Davis-Color-Me-Boneface

    Mar 18-Jun 5, 2022 Robert Banks and Dexter Davis Color Me Boneface Mar 18-Jun 5, 2022 ∆ Robert Banks and Dexter Davis, circa 1980 ∆ Robert Banks and Dexter Davis, circa 1980 Robert Banks and Dexter Davis Color Me Boneface Mar 18-Jun 5, 2022 ∆ Robert Banks and Dexter Davis, circa 1980 Longtime friends, Cleveland-based filmmaker Robert Banks and Cleveland-based painter Dexter Davis both embody a distinctly experimental vision, one that fosters an active exploration of the intersection between art and life. Though they work in different mediums, both Banks and Davis’s work harnesses abstraction’s potential to map personal, political, and psychological landscapes, using innovative techniques to reconstruct images. The artists grew up together in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood and, together in the 1980s, attended the Cleveland Institute of Art. Their artistic practices and lives continued to intertwine beyond art school, resulting in a longstanding friendship firmly rooted in shared experiences, material exploration, and a profound commitment to visual storytelling. Color Me Boneface is a film and exhibition project that Banks envisioned based on his belief that Davis’s impactful practice has gone largely unnoticed and is deserving of (re)discovery. Beginning in November of 2021, Banks and Davis transformed a portion of moCa’s Mueller Family Gallery into a working studio, where Banks filmed Davis creating new work; conducted interviews with him, his friends, family, and colleagues; and collaborated with students from Cleveland’s NewBridge Center for Arts and Technology to shoot, create, and edit footage shot over Davis’s lifetime into seven short films. Functioning like an expanded portrait, Banks’s films both capture the essence of Davis’s creative spirit and exemplify his own commitment to film as a physical object, revealing the incredible material beauty inherent in the medium of analog moving image. The seven short films will premiere at the Cleveland Cinematheque on June 2, 2022, followed by an in-depth conversation between the artists. Guided by the spirit of collaboration, the exhibition portion of Color Me Boneface presents a selection of Davis’s work complemented by photographs taken by NewBridge students documenting his artistic process. Mounted closely together, these photographs echo the filmstrips Banks uses in his moving image work, including the seven short films centering on Davis. The exhibition is organized in a loosely chronological fashion, beginning with Headhunter (1994), a large-scale mixed media piece that captivates visitors immediately upon entering the gallery. Moving clockwise through time, the most recently-created work featured in the exhibition, Rebecca Werner (2020), is the final touchpoint before entering the Cohen Family Gallery, which showcases footage from the Color Me Boneface films. A fixture in the Cleveland arts community, Davis’s work lives in the homes of many local collectors. Works presented in this exhibition are borrowed by friends and supporters who have been following alongside Davis’s artistic journey. This element of the project reiterates the ways in which strong relationships undergird both Banks and Davis’s practices. At every level, Color Me Boneface reminds us of the power in embracing curiosity, criticality, and complexity, not just in visual culture, but in our friendship and kinship circles as well.

  • Manabu-and-Madison | moCa Cleveland

    Title Round Manabu & Madison! Estimated Value Range: $2,000-$3,000 Starting Bid: $1,000 Bidding increments: $100 Last winter, Manabu Ikeda fever swept moCa, with record crowds drawn to his astonishingly intricate, awe-inspiring drawings. Over 60 days, Manabu created a monumental new work live in the gallery during his first U.S. solo exhibition. Now, you and three guests have the extraordinary opportunity to visit Manabu at his Madison, WI studio—an experience few collectors ever access. Spend time viewing works in progress, discussing his meticulous practice, and receiving a one-of-a-kind drawing created by the artist during your visit. Your art adventure continues with private, behind-the-scenes tours of the Chazen Museum of Art and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. * More: Manabu & Madison! *Airfare, ground transit, and incidentals not included; visit to be scheduled at a mutually agreeable time.

  • Maggie-Menghan-Chen | moCa Cleveland

    Maggie Menghan Chen LISTEN ON APPLE LISTEN ON SPOTIFY LISTEN ON I HEART + more Maggie Menghan Chen (b. 1998, Beijing) lives and works in Beijing and London. She obtained her MA degree in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts following her BA degree in Art History at New York University. + more Talks ↓ All Events moCa NOW moCa Saturday Parties Talks This episode is hosted by DJ Hellerman. Produced by DJ Hellerman and Tom Poole. Edited by Tom Poole. Consulting Producer and Audio Engineering by Adam Zucarro. +more on the exhibition Maggie Menghan Chen: Body Building Exercise 34 min. Episode Guest: Maggie Menghan Chen Maggie Menghan Chen (b. 1998, Beijing) lives and works in Beijing and London. She obtained her MA degree in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts following her BA degree in Art History at New York University. Episode Host: DJ Hellerman DJ Hellerman is the Deputy Director & Senior Curator at moCa Cleveland. A Northeast Ohio native, Hellerman holds an M.A. in Art History from Case Western Reserve University and began his career at the Progressive Art Collection. Prior to his work at moCa, he held the positions of Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, PA, Curator at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, Curator of Arts & Programs at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, and Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Burlington City Arts in Burlington, Vermont. This episode is hosted by DJ Hellerman. Produced by DJ Hellerman and Tom Poole. Edited by Tom Poole. Consulting Producer and Audio Engineering by Adam Zucarro. +more on the exhibition Maggie Menghan Chen: Body Building Exercise This episode is hosted by DJ Hellerman. Produced by DJ Hellerman and Tom Poole. Edited by Tom Poole. Consulting Producer and Audio Engineering by Adam Zucarro. +more on the exhibition Maggie Menghan Chen: Body Building Exercise Artist Maggie Menghan Chen’s exhibition Body Building Exercise is at moCa Cleveland through January 4, 2026. In this podcast, Maggie talks about collaborating during a pandemic, her creative process, and her journey to becoming an artist. LISTEN ON APPLE LISTEN ON SPOTIFY LISTEN ON I HEART WATCH ON YOUTUBE LISTEN ON AMAZON

  • How Two 55-Year-Old Organizations are Talking About Innovating Affordable Housing

    News + Watch at WKYC Tuesday, August 27, 2024 Kohl Executive Director Megan Lykins Reich and moCa Board Vice-President and LMM Vice President, Development & Communications discuss the exhibition A PLACE meant , the work of LMM, and the role art has in building dialogue for change. Previous Next

  • studio-access-w-manabu-ikeda-2024-04-26-13-00-1

    Studio Access w/ Manabu Ikeda Apr 26, 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.

  • studio-access-w-manabu-ikeda-2024-05-17-13-00-1

    Studio Access w/ Manabu Ikeda May 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.

  • Teun-Hocks | moCa Cleveland

    Title Round Teun Hocks Untitled (Man Playing with Train) , 1996 Color silkscreen 30 x 40 inches Estimated Value Range: $1,800 - $2,400 Starting Bid: $900 Bidding increments: $100 Teun Hocks (b. 1947, Leiden – d. 2022, Rotterdam) was internationally celebrated for his tragicomic photo-paintings—works that combined photography, performance, and painting into richly staged tableaux. A pioneer of staged photography, Hocks became known for portraying himself as the resigned, endearing anti-hero in meticulously crafted theatrical scenes. His dreamlike, slightly absurd environments often placed an ordinary man—himself—amid surreal tasks or ambiguous predicaments. These worlds, rendered in black-and-white photography and hand-colored with oil paint (or digitally in later works), toe the line between humor and melancholy, clarity and mystery. Hocks’ works emerged from carefully developed drawings that explored visually interesting, surreal, or droll situations. These sketches served as blueprints for the elaborate sets he built in his studio. Once constructed, Hocks photographed himself within the scene using analogue black-and-white photography, then hand-painted the resulting prints in delicate layers of oil. In later years, he began digitally coloring his photos to create editioned works while preserving the painterly aesthetic of his practice. More: Teun Hocks Artist Statement & Approach Hocks never saw himself as a traditional storyteller. “Because the basis of my work is a staged scene, the image suggests that it involves an event that actually happened in reality,” he explained. But rather than offer a clear narrative, Hocks aimed to create open-ended situations, seldom titling his works to encourage individual interpretation. Each image feels like a moment suspended in time—something is about to go wrong, or perhaps has just gone awry. The result is work that is at once deeply human, oddly comic, and subtly unsettling. Critic Ken Johnson, writing in The New York Times , captured the poetic tension in Hocks’ work: “Teun Hocks’ works are truly profound, like the one of an artist who, unaware of the sun burning on the horizon behind him, focuses on the candle light in his hand—a metaphor, perhaps, about the human limits of spiritual perception.” About the Artist Hocks studied at the St. Joost Academy in Breda from 1966 to 1970, and was active early on in performance and collaborative art projects. While many artists in the Netherlands during the 1970s leaned into conceptualism, Hocks pursued a more accessible, visual storytelling approach. His early photo-performances eventually led to the hybrid photo-paintings that defined his mature work. Over his career, Hocks exhibited internationally and became an icon of Dutch staged photography. His work appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States, and he earned cult status for his unique ability to bridge photography and painting with narrative poignancy. Legacy & Final Years In the spring of 2021, Hocks held his final exhibition, Drawings , at TORCH Gallery. It featured works made during his period of isolation at home in central France—testament to his lifelong commitment to drawing, a practice that often remained in the background of his more well-known photographic works. Hocks also contributed as an educator, teaching drawing at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Design Academy Eindhoven. Teun Hocks leaves behind a legacy of work that defies easy categorization—simultaneously staged and spontaneous, humorous and haunting. His images invite us to pause, reflect, and imagine the stories unfolding within.

  • Clotilde-Jimenez | moCa Cleveland

    Clotilde Jiménez LISTEN ON APPLE LISTEN ON SPOTIFY LISTEN ON I HEART + more Born in 1990 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Clotilde Jiménez now lives and works in Mexico City. He earned his MFA from The Slade School of Fine Art and his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Add a Title Add a Title Title + more Talks ↓ All Events moCa NOW moCa Saturday Parties Talks This episode is hosted by DJ Hellerman. Produced by DJ Hellerman and Tom Poole. Edited by Tom Poole. Consulting Producer and Audio Engineering by Adam Zucarro. +more on the exhibition Clotilde Jiménez: Shapeshift 62 min. Episode Guest: Clotilde Jiménez Born in 1990 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Clotilde Jiménez now lives and works in Mexico City. He earned his MFA from The Slade School of Fine Art and his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Episode Host: DJ Hellerman DJ Hellerman is the Deputy Director & Senior Curator at moCa Cleveland. A Northeast Ohio native, Hellerman holds an M.A. in Art History from Case Western Reserve University and began his career at the Progressive Art Collection. Prior to his work at moCa, he held the positions of Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, PA, Curator at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, Curator of Arts & Programs at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, and Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Burlington City Arts in Burlington, Vermont. This episode is hosted by DJ Hellerman. Produced by DJ Hellerman and Tom Poole. Edited by Tom Poole. Consulting Producer and Audio Engineering by Adam Zucarro. +more on the exhibition Clotilde Jiménez: Shapeshift This episode is hosted by DJ Hellerman. Produced by DJ Hellerman and Tom Poole. Edited by Tom Poole. Consulting Producer and Audio Engineering by Adam Zucarro. +more on the exhibition Clotilde Jiménez: Shapeshift Artist Clotilde Jiménez’s exhibition Shapeshift is at moCa Cleveland through January 4, 2026. In this podcast, Jiménez talks about the evolution of his work, the use of color in his collages (and on the set of Seinfeld ), the legacies impacting him, and the ones he wants to create moving forward. LISTEN ON APPLE LISTEN ON SPOTIFY LISTEN ON I HEART WATCH ON YOUTUBE LISTEN ON AMAZON

  • moCa Saturday: FAM Day (Family, Art & Movement) | moCa Cleveland

    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. November 1, 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/

  • Finnegan Shannon's Exhibition on a Conveyor Belt Alleviates Museum Fatigue

    News + Read more at Art in America Monday, November 7, 2022 Finnegan Shannon’s Exhibition on a Conveyor Belt Alleviates Museum Fatigue by Emily Watlington Art museums have developed a reputation for inducing a particular kind of exhaustion. Navigating crowds in order to get a glimpse at masterpieces, feeling overstimulated in blockbuster shows, and standing on hard concrete floors leads to what is commonly called “museum fatigue.” Exacerbating matters is the fact that museums just don’t have enough comfortable seating. For an exhibition at moCa Cleveland, Brooklyn-based artist Finnegan Shannon has taken matters into their own hands, with a show that requires no walking and offers ample seating. After arriving via elevator, visitors are invited to sit on couches and chairs while a conveyor belt parades by them a rolling display of artworks by Shannon’s artist peers. The setup’s closest proxy is conveyor belt sushi—but this is a feast for the eyes, rather than the taste buds. The soft seating feels decidedly more domestic than institutional; Shannon sourced the chairs and couches from local thrift stores. (They even found a small stool with a puzzle spelling out the first name of the show’s curator, Lauren Leving.) And Shannon tied it all together with some of their own homey touches, like embroidered pillows bearing fluorescent conveyor belts and cut-out cardboard letters on the wall spelling out phrases like DON’T MIND IF WE DO and WE BEING SILLY AND SERIOUS . Shannon further tends to their viewers’ bodies with DIY air purifiers made of duct tape and box fans that help alleviate Covid’s ongoing risk. The show encouraged visitors to slow down. On the wall, custom clocks told the day of the week rather than the hour of the day, as if asking, what’s the rush? It’s a show about promoting rest and alleviating museum fatigue, but more specifically, it is born of the disability justice movement. It’s aimed explicitly at questioning the ableist valuing of bodily exertion, as well as at the exclusionary assumptions museums make about bodies. Shannon considers the exhibition a fulfillment of their long-held “access fantasy.” Among the most charming pieces making the rounds are Emilie L. Gossiaux’s 3D-printed sculptures depicting various body parts of her guide dog, London—including a paw and a tongue. Also from Gossiaux is a journal full of hand-drawn illustrations of the color-identification system she created for herself after going blind, in which she associates colors with memories and feelings: a crayon that Crayola calls “purple mountains’ majesty,” for instance, is renamed “homecoming dress purple 2003.” Other pieces on the belt are interactive: visitors can lift them off and return them at their leisure. A card game by Jeffrey Kasper offers prompts for two players to engage in exercises promoting risk and intimacy. A Selection of Snapshots Taken by Felix Felix Gonzalez-Torres reproduces endearing correspondences, cat photos, and figurines that the late artist arranged lovingly on his pillows. For some photographs in the Gonzalez-Torres book, we see not the picture, but the description he wrote on the back: like HOME or MIAMI LANDSCAPE, 1995, SUMMER OF LOVE. These image descriptions are echoed in the audio description track Finnegan made for the show, accommodating blind and low-vision visitors. For Shannon, the access itself is often the artwork, and items like tissues and ear plugs (for those seeking a low-stimulus environment) both circulate on the conveyor belt and appear on the show’s checklist. As ever, Shannon takes great care with the details: the tissue box is in a fabric cozy in the shape of a house, the artist having removed the stairs that made its entrance inaccessible, and lovingly added lavender to the bushes. Here as elsewhere, Shannon approaches access, to quote organizer Kevin Gotkin, as “radical hospitality.” Implied in all this is the unseen effort that disabled artists often exert when working on an exhibition to make it accessible to our communities. Instead of keeping that work behind the scenes, Shannon compellingly makes it the subject of their debut museum solo. Shannon is best known for their benches and cushions that appear in group exhibitions, bearing statements like THIS EXHIBITION HAS ASKED ME TO STAND FOR TOO LONG. SIT IF YOU AGREE., written out in the artist’s signature script. The bold capital letters are polished off with soft edges and a lighthearted informality that mirrors their twinned playfulness and criticality. Shannon’s work is always participatory: their “Anti-Stairs Club Lounge” comprised a series of interventions, including a protest at the opening of architect Thomas Heatherwick’s gargantuan Vessel in New York, a 150-foot-tall structure made of interlocking staircases. Before it closed, it glorified 154 flights while promising a premier view. My own most memorable encounter with a Shannon intervention was at the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt, where I lay back in a cushioned chaise lounge to watch a gut-wrenching Nan Goldin slideshow, in which she relates how her sister’s institutionalization—and later, suicide—altered the course of her life. I became utterly engulfed, and started to wonder how many other treasures I’d skipped over because I hadn’t wanted to stand around, or squat on the floor, or sit on a hard, backless bench. That work induced in me a longing to lounge in museums. It also underscored a key contribution of Shannon’s work: the artist doesn’t just point out the absences and assumptions normalized in museums, they also dream up solutions. Rather than institutional critique, you might call it institutional repair. —Emily Watlington This article appears in the Winter 2023 issue. Previous Next

  • moCa Cleveland Building

    moCa's building garners various reactions from those in our city. 11400 Euclid Avenue, often used as a personal mirror by passers-by, was designed to inspire dialog centered on creativity. It does so while reflecting a cosmopolitan area of Cleveland and those who bring it to life. The Building The Building About moCa mission The Building Staff & Jobs Board News Contact Us Farshid Moussavi moCa's building garners various reactions from those in our city. 11400 Euclid Avenue, often used as a personal mirror by passers-by, was designed to inspire dialog centered on creativity. It does so while reflecting a cosmopolitan area of Cleveland and those who bring it to life. moCa's physical structure is nearly 34,000-square-foot, 44 percent larger than moCa's former rented space. A museum expansion need not be large in scale to be ambitious. Both environmental and fiscal sustainability were key considerations within the design. Resulting in a landmark that is at once technically inventive and highly practical. Iranian-born, London-based Farshid Moussavi designed the dynamic structure, formerly with Foreign Office Architects (FOA) and now principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA). moCa remains her first U.S. commission and her first museum. In addition to FMA, the design team included executive architects Westlake Reed Leskosky , headquartered in Cleveland, and designers of more than 50 cultural buildings throughout the United States. According to Moussavi, "museums today are not just homes for art, but serve multiple functions and host a variety of activities. Our design for moCa Cleveland aimed to provide an ideal environment for artists and visitors to foster creativity in a variety of exhibitions and programs." The four-story building, which anchors the Uptown district, rises 60 feet from a hexagonal base to a square top, where the primary exhibition space is situated. All four floors contain areas for either exhibitions or public programs. The exterior is primarily a mirror-finish of black Rimex stainless steel. Three of the building's six facets, one of them clad in transparent glass, flank a public plaza designed by James Corner Field Operations , a New York-based landscape architecture and urban design firm. The plaza serves as a public gathering place and links moCa to Uptown attractions and amenities. Upon entering the building, visitors find themselves in an atrium where they can experience the dynamic shape and structure of the building as it rises. This space leads to moCa's lobby and a double-height multi-purpose room for public programs and events. From there, visitors may take moCa's monumental staircase, a dominant architectural feature of the building, to the upper floors. On the top floor, the 6,000-square-foot gallery space has no fixed dividing walls, allowing for various configurations. This floor also contains a gallery designed for new media work and the Dick and Doreen Cahoon Lounge, which overlooks Toby's Plaza and Uptown.

bottom of page