By Emily J. Peters, Curator of Prints and Drawings — Prized for its brilliant coloring and matte surface, the pastel medium was used by artists in Europe as early as the 16th century. But it was the 18th century that saw the zenith of the medium, coinciding with the enormous rise in popularity of portraiture as an artistic genre. …

By Robin Hanson, Conservator of Textiles, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Holly Witchey, Adjunct Professor, Department of Art History and Art, Case Western Reserve University —

By Dean Yoder, Senior Conservator of Paintings and Head of Paintings Conservation — Venus Discovering the Dead Adonis, one of the most important and powerful Italian Baroque paintings in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), is undergoing a multiyear conservation effort (fig. 1). The mythological story of Venus and Adonis owes its origin to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This interpretation is probably…

Benjamin Levy, Guest Curator and PhD Candidate at Case Western Reserve University The exhibition Photographs in Ink, on view through April 2, 2023, looks at the intersection of photography and printmaking. Whether used for visual communication or creative expression, photographic images produced in printer’s ink have increasingly saturated our daily…

By Helina Gebremedhen, Leigh and Mary Carter Director’s Research Fellow — Love modern and contemporary African arts, heritage, and literature? Come to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Ingalls Library to browse through issues of Nigeria Magazine and read about the country’s thriving arts and culture scene between the 1960s and 1980s (fig. 1). …

By Madalyn Rehrman, Ingalls Library Summer on the Cuyahoga Intern — As a digitization intern at the Ingalls Library and Museum Archives this summer, I’ve had the great fortune to work with several different objects, ranging from rare folios that have just recently entered the public domain to archival materials from the Frances Prindle Taft Collection. Frances Prindle Taft (1921–2017) was…

By Jillian Kruse, Curatorial Intern in Prints and Drawings and PhD Candidate at Case Western Reserve University — For many, the word Impressionism conjures images of light-filled landscapes, ballerinas, or fashionably dressed women at the opera, in a garden or park, or at the seaside. Yet, as the Cleveland Museum of Art’s exhibition Degas and the Laundress reveals, women’s labor was an equally important subject in Impressionism (fig…

By Stefanie Lima Taub, Director of Community Arts — When everyone has finished their drawings and gone home, and all the supplies have been packed up for next year, I love to take a moment and stand at the top of the Fine Arts Garden to bask in the abounding creativity that has just occurred in front of my…

By Justin Willson, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History Leadership, The Cleveland Museum of Art / Case Western Reserve University — Seating arrangements shape many of our activities, from business meetings, concerts, and meals to car rides, graduation ceremonies, and weddings. One might go so far as to say that where we sit is a fundamental human concern. …