Thursday's Place: The Cleveland Museum of Art

 I have grown fatigued with people who:

1.  Think surfing is a weird thing for a man in his 60's to do
2.  Are snobs about going on a sea cruise
3.  Don't like Wagnerian opera
4.  Can't change a tire
5.  Think Cleveland, Ohio is some hideous backwater that is well beneath their sense of self

In response, those people:

1.  Don't know how to swim
2.  Don't know how to swim and are afraid of water
3.  Don't understand German; don't understand opera; don't understand the liminal desires of the soul
4.  Are seriously maladroit
5.  Are puzzlewits

Not only may one find in Cleveland the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, three professional sports teams, a world-class medical research facility, and a variety of ethnic neighborhoods that represent the cultural transformation of the United States through history, but there is, in particular, a pleasantly green crescent named University Circle that contains:

Severance Hall [the home of the Cleveland Orchestra, rated one of the best, sometime the best, in the world],
The Cleveland Botanical Gardens
The Crawford Auto Museum
The Cleveland Institute of Art
Case Western Reserve University
The Cleveland Institute of Music
The Museum of Contemporary Art
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Murray Hill, Cleveland's Little Italy
and, the jewel in the crown, The Cleveland Museum of Art.

Since childhood, and since the death of my parents and the dissemination of our family throughout the U.S. world, the CMA is still my reason for going back home as often as I can.

One of the historical benefits of Northeastern Ohio is that it encouraged a considerable number of wealthy people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to multiply their wealth and re-invest it into the community.  That's why, even in the midst of daunting unemployment and poverty, there are still these cultural pockets of wonder.

[To see what it looks like for an area to create wealth for a few who leave nothing behind, check out western Pennsylvania.]

While some of the robber barons who lived in Cleveland are well-known in history, John D. Rockefeller being the best-known, the CMA owes its genesis to three lesser-known, but certainly generous, industrialists named Hinman Hurlbut, John Huntington, and Horace Kelley.  By pooling their considerable resources, and by accepting the donation of the estate of a Jeptha Wade [he founded Western Union], a 75 acre "green space" was completed in 1916 with the CMA serving as its centerpiece.

Expansion #1

#2

#3

My reflections are more personal, however.  It is the first museum that I ever remember visiting, back when it was still in its original incarnation looking like an impressive, private mansion.  While I found the rooms filled with antique furniture to be musty and dull, it was the collection of Medieval armor, particularly that of Richard the Lion-Hearted, that captured my lively imaginings.

[An aside:  So complete is the CMA's armor collection that Hollywood designers and prop managers will visit and meet with the curators so that what's represented in their films is authentic.]

Before I was out of elementary school, the museum expanded; and would again before I was out of high school.  Another ambitious expansion was completed in the last decade, with the collections now rivaling those of the other great museums of the world.  The disparate buildings were thus joined under a massive atrium, granting the museum a large, indoor space for innovative art and performances.  Currently, the CMA has a collection disseminated through separate departments for

Chinese Art,
Modern European Art,
African Art, Drawings, Prints,
European Art, Textiles and Islamic Art,
American Painting and Sculpture,
Greek and Roman Art,
Contemporary Art,
Medieval Art,
Decorative Art and Design,
Pre-Columbian and Native North American Art,
Japanese and Korean Art,
Indian and Southeast Asian Art,
and Photography

The permanent collection boasts these highlights:

The Crucifixion of Saint Andrew, Caravaggio, 1607

The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse), by Albert Pinkham Ryder

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, by J. M. W. Turner, 1834-35

A Hare and a Leg of Lamb, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, 1742

The Red Kerchief Portrait of Madame Monet, by Claude Monet

Pablo Picasso's Blue Period piece, La Vie (1903)

Walker Evans, Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama, 1936.

George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey's, 1909.

One of my favorite pieces is Rodin's The Thinker, posing outside the main entrance.  A sharp-eyed reader will notice the portions of his legs are missing.  Is that an indulgence of artistic vision?  No, some nutter in 1970 planted a bomb underneath it.  The nutter was never caught.

I should add that the aforementioned Asian collections are larger and finer than those found in NYC.  But, that would be bragging, so I'll simply whisper it to you.

During one trip back in the 1990's, I discovered the portrait of a rather common young man of the early 18th century.  I'd never paid much attention to it, but now it rattled my imagination as I realized that I was at the time living in the house in Connecticut that the young man had built.  Remarkable, isn't it?

However, the one feature that was emphasized by the founders and has been repeatedly, through all of the changes advanced through the last century, maintained by the current director and staff, is the best part of all:

The Cleveland Museum of Art is free.  Admission to the permanent collection is $0.00; it always has been and always will be.  Art, after all, belongs to the people; all of the people.

And that is a proud legacy that's worth some patronage.  Say what you will about the city of Cleveland, but I can't think of museum anywhere in the world that can boast of that particular feature.