Overview
Our rotating exhibition space showcases art that reflects an interest in underlying concepts such as innovation and teamwork. The exhibitions, alongside the permanent collection, evidence a commitment to supporting the international, national, and local arts communities.
An emphasis on contemporary art fosters an environment of creative excellence, encourages dialogue, and challenges viewers to experience diverse points of view. The art exhibitions bring together works of art, from the permanent collection or on loan from artists, collectors, or other institutions, that explore new ideas, the human condition, our global world, and popular culture.
Current Art Exhibition
See the Current Art Exhibition, on display now in the hallway between the Q and G buildings.
2016
Common Threads
August 11 - October 17, 2016
Cleveland Clinic Art Exhibition Area – between Q and G buildings
Now in its 10th year, Cleveland Clinic Art Program, Arts & Medicine Institute, continues to enhance the hospital’s patient and public areas throughout the health system. The mission of the Art Program is to enrich, inspire and enliven our patients, visitors, employees and community and to embody the cornerstones and core values of Cleveland Clinic. While the focus is on contemporary art and artists, the program provides a unique and meaningful experience for our viewers.
Global diversity, innovation, collaboration, pop culture and the human condition are only some of the concepts that run through the collection and tie the more than 6,000 works of art together. Artists historically have been a prescient barometer for the spirit of the time in which we live, adeptly responding to the zeitgeist and what is relevant in our society. Finding thematic connections within the artwork is an important part of what the curators do when choosing art for a new building or renovated area.
Impacted by research that shows Cleveland Clinic’s contemporary art collection has a positive impact on health outcomes and the patient and visitor experience, the Art Program uses the art collection to create unique opportunities for engagement. We strive to create amenities including a self-guided audio tour, cell phone stops featuring sound bites from artists, artist and curator talks, Art Ambassador tours, a digital program with highlights from the collection on a patient TV channel, and customized tours for people with memory loss.
Ultimately the power of the art helps to provide diverse perspectives and an opportunity to experience things anew. It is our hope that the art and the response that it elicits has a positive impact on the healing process. In Common Threads, we take a look at some of the recent additions to the collection, many soon to be installed in the new Cancer Building and Avon Hospital.
Art + Environment: A Delicate Balance
April 7 - July 26, 2016
Cleveland Clinic Art Exhibition Area – between Q and G buildings
From the romantic landscape painters of the late 18th century, to Ansel Adams’ black and white photographs of the American West, to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty constructed with mud, salt and rocks, artists have long since brought awareness to issues of environmental conservation. The advent of the 21st century has made daily headlines like “global warming” and “climate change” part of our collective consciousness. In light of recent dramatic, weather-related occurrences, contemporary environmental artists are more relevant than ever. They have invited us to think more critically about the way we use our land and have contributed to the world-wide dialogue surrounding the changes in the Earth’s condition.
Connecting the scientific and creative worlds in acts of beauty and activism, artists use their craft to call attention to green initiatives and issues of conservation. Working with materials ranging from the raw to the found to the non-toxic, environmental art can be evocative, provocative, and sublime. The artists in this exhibition communicate the urgent need to find solutions to environmental problems by tackling an array of topics including: climate change, recycling, water purification and plants for restoration,endangered species, alternative fuel sources, and consumption.
The changing landscape, sustainable living, and the critical loss of natural resources play important roles in each of the works in Art + Environment. Through their vision and innovation, these artists present unexpected views of the world that inspire us to make efforts in our daily lives to respect the Earth and its resources.
The exhibition Art + Environment is a combination of work on loan from local Northeast Ohio artists and artwork from the permanent collection of Cleveland Clinic.
For more information about Cleveland Clinic’s sustainability programs contact the Office for a Healthy Environment at 216.448.8589 or read our sustainability report at clevelandclinic.org/ungc.
2015
This Magic Moment
December 10, 2015 - March 23, 2016
Cleveland Clinic Art Exhibition Area – between Q and G buildings
Breathe in. Breathe out. Take a minute to consider. Notice the ordinary and the extraordinary. Take a mental
picture. The world around us can be a wondrous place, where we may encounter beauty, humor, excitement, and even love
at some of the most surprising moments. At any second in our lives there is an opportunity to privately capture what
makes each of us and our experiences unique. What is it that leaves a mark in our minds; is it a fleeting euphoric
feeling or a vision burned into our memory?
Since the very first cave drawings of animals and successful hunts, art makers have continued to translate important
events and epiphanies, in paint, pencil, or print. From the artist’s hand and eye a gesture or moment can convey a
universal feeling, like Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker or Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream. This skill
renders visual our understanding of what it feels like to be human.
We connect with each other through common experiences by seeing and showing through art what may be impossible to tell
in words. In Charles Fréger’s documentation of Mardi Gras Indians, there is an homage to the earliest
Americans from later generations which exudes a vibrant splendor. Communal celebrations like these are part of
our contemporary life—whether it is watching a holiday fireworks display or planning special occasion, artists like
Michelangelo Lovelace and Nikki Woods bring us into the fun and anticipation of
sharing events with others.
Artists Sebastiaan Bremer and Chris Johanson use the natural world as their backdrop
for examining potential periods of exhilaration, phenomena, and intimate reflection. Internal meditations that
can result in a physical manifestation of beauty are at the heart of works by Karl Haendel and
Sarah Charlesworth. Whether we are looking out or looking inward, these instances can be rife with
emotion and clarity. They are magic moments.
The Journey: A Juried Exhibition of 15 Artists with Disabilities
September 3 - November 30, 2015
Cleveland Clinic Art Exhibition Area – between Q and G buildings
The Journey is the 13th exhibition presented by VSA and Volkswagen Group of America as part of the VSA Emerging Young Artists Program, a Jean Kennedy Smith Arts and Disability Program. This longtime collaboration provides young artists with disabilities, ages 16-25, with an opportunity to display their work nationally, and creates a place in which each artist’s individual talent, mode of expression, and view of the world is showcased and valued.
The 2014 theme, The Journey, asks artists to present work that illuminates innovative viewpoints at the junction of sustainability, creativity, and disability. Here, artists consider the representation of a journey—internal and external, personal and communal, human and technological—and, in response, create compositions highlighting the ways in which our individual journeys shape our aesthetic and environmental terrain and define our daily lives as a community.
Artists responded to this call in myriad ways, incorporating deeply personal narratives into universal concerns. Large-scale, bold abstractions proclaim these messages aloud, while intimately scaled images ask us to step closer and investigate the artist’s treatment of the theme. The works surprise us: traditional fine arts incorporate innovative subject matter or technique, delicate paper works burst forth with aggressive movement, photographs record past and present with illuminating clarity.
With this travelling exhibition, we hope to position and give visibility to the work of artists with disabilities throughout the United States and around the world, cementing their work in the broader context of the history, art, and culture of the American—as well as global—experience.
Dreamscapes
March 26 - August 27, 2015
Cleveland Clinic Art Exhibition Area – between Q and G buildings
Dreamscapes are surreal environments that fuse elements of reality with those of the imaginary through the distortion of scale, shape, color, sound, or other sensory information. Each artist explores these distortions, whether it be depicting our everyday world or an abstract concept.
Some artists in the exhibition challenge our perception of our everyday world and its objects. Both Amy Pleasant and Laura Ball's whimsical watercolors represent the liminal space between sleeping and waking, revealing only snippets of actions and containing characters who undertake fantastic adventures, respectfully. The meticulous illustration of George Washington’s eye by David Opdyke also puzzles the viewer with two simultaneous images. Imaginary landscapes which fool the viewer by Matthew Albanese and also by Walter Martin and Paula Muñoz meticulously construct and photograph smallscale dioramas of strange, emotive places.
Also using photography as his chosen medium, James Welling’s photograms push the concept of abstraction into the realm of a medium that traditionally documents the real world. Often, dreamers just see variations of color that shift and change as their dream progresses, seen also in Lisa Oppenheim’s series. Reminiscent of a Rorschach-folded ink blot used for psychological interpretation, Analia Saban also utilizes alternative photography methods in her work where she manipulates the darkroom print in its last stages and removes the top emulsion surface, transferring it onto a treated canvas. These artists’ works epitomize the most abstract qualities that dreams can possess.
This exhibition marks the culmination of the inaugural collaboration between the Cleveland Clinic Art Program and Case Western Reserve University’s Master of Arts program in Art History and Museum Studies.
