Front International

Front International

About

FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art

July 16 – October 2, 2022

FRONT International is a new art triennial based in Cleveland, Ohio, whose inaugural edition launched in the summer of 2018. This regionwide art program brings together international, national, and regional artists, curators, and scholars to propose a new format for biennials and triennials. It focuses on process, research, collaboration, and long-term engagement with Cleveland and Northeast Ohio to provide an expansive stage to create and share new work that is inspired by and engaged with the social, political, cultural, ecological, and economic issues of our time.

FRONT has teamed up with all of Cleveland and the region’s most renowned arts and cultural institutions, making it unique in the world for the scope of its collaboration.

Learn more about the inaugural 2018 edition of FRONT International: 2018.frontart.org

FRONT is organized by the FRONT Exhibition Company

The FRONT Exhibition Company was formed as a 501(c)(3) non-profit to plan, organize, and present FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art with a mission to:

  • Generate new economic activity and opportunity through cultural tourism
  • Develop an even stronger, more vibrant and sustainable creative community by bringing new recognition and opportunity to arts institutions and creative professionals
  • Enhance the brand of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio by presenting a more nuanced and sophisticated view of its arts and cultural resources
  • Stimulate positive change and create new opportunities in Cleveland’s communities

 

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Leadership

Fred Bidwell

Executive Director

Fred Bidwell is a philanthropist, collector, and community leader. After a 35-year career as an advertising and marketing entrepreneur, in 2011 he and his wife established the Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Foundation. In 2013, the Bidwell Foundation opened Transformer Station, a contemporary art exhibition space on Cleveland’s West Side. Transformer Station alternates between acting as a venue for exhibitions curated by the Bidwells from their renowned collection of photo-based contemporary art and as a venue for exhibitions organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art. Fred Bidwell served twice as board president of the Akron Art Museum and currently on the board of the Cleveland Museum of Art and on the Visiting Committee of the Allen Memorial Art Museum.

Prem Krishnamurthy

2022 Artistic Director

Prem Krishnamurthy is a designer, curator, writer, and teacher based in Berlin and New York. He currently directs Wkshps, a multidisciplinary design practice and organizes Commune, an emergent, multiform workshop that practices artistic tools for social transformation. Prem received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Communications Design in 2015. In March 2020, he started a live, collaborative, virtual event series called Present! as part of the artist collective Home Cooking. His experimental, ever-changing, electronic book, P!DF, is available online.

Staff

Deputy Director, Director of Exhibitions

Sarah Spinner Liska

Project Manager

Allison H. Smith

Project Management, LAND studio

Nancy Boylan
Joe Lanzilotta
Greg Peckham

Development, LAND studio

Sarah Siebert

Finance and Accounting, LAND studio

Rita Tersigni
Elizabeth Place
Kelly Peecook

Board

Helen Forbes Fields, Chair

Michelle Jeschelnig, Co-Vice Chair

Scott Mueller, Co-Vice Chair

Jon J. Pinney, Secretary & Treasurer

Fred Bidwell, Executive Director

Virginia N. Barbato

Yuval Brisker

Paul Clark

Joanne R. Cohen

Sandra Earl

Howard Freedman

Michelle Grabner

Sara Hurand

Donna M. Kohl

James Lincoln

August A. Napoli Jr.

Richard S. Rogers

Steven D. Standley

Felton Thomas, Jr.

Toby Devan Lewis, Honorary

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