Left to right: Tereza Ruller, Lo Smith, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Courtenay Finn, Meghana Karnik, Murtaza Vali, Tina Kukielski, Prem Krishnamurthy, Evelyn Burnett, Dushko Petrovich, Emily Liebert. Image: Paul Sobota.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The inaugural FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art in 2018 carried the title of “An American City” and focused on artworks that portrayed Cleveland as an urban archetype.

Now, channeling the zeitgeist of a city and a planet suffering from climate change and social and economic divisions, the organizers of the next FRONT exhibit in 2021 have made healing and transformation their new theme.

FRONT announced its new focus, title and full curatorial team Tuesday evening in a press conference at Karamu House, the nation’s oldest black theater organization.

“The show will address difficulties, wounds, things that require healing,” Cleveland philanthropist and cultural entrepreneur Fred Bidwell, the show’s founding CEO, said in an interview before the event. But he said: “There’s a speculative sense of hope and optimism that change is possible.”

Bidwell created FRONT as a way to highlight Northeast Ohio’s capacity as a cultural center capable of attracting an international audience. The show is modeled after successful European visual art festivals such as Documenta, centered in Kassel, Germany, every five years….

Read the full article here.

CLEVELAND, December 20, 2019 — The Cleveland Foundation is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition of paintings by noted Cleveland artist and educator Timothy Callaghan at its offices in Playhouse Square in Cleveland. The exhibition, entitled “Glenville” will host an opening reception on January 9, 2020 from 5:00 to 7:00 pm at […]

FRONT INTERNATIONAL RECEIVES SUPPORT FOR AKRON ART MUSEUM EXHIBITION, PUBLIC SPACE FOR DANCE   $100,000 Knight Arts Challenge Akron Award Will Support an Exhibition at the Akron Art Museum and a Commission for a Public Space for Dance by the Stockholm-based Studio Dansbana! to Premier at FRONT 2021  Download Press Release as a PDF   […]

Co-Artistic Directors Prem and Tina share their late summer reading list. It’s never too late to start another book.   Abdelrahman Munif, Cities of Salt Banned in several Middle Eastern countries, this novel records the encounter between Americans and Arabs in an unnamed Gulf emirate in the 1930s. As oil exploration begins, the destruction of […]

Expo Chicago 2018.
COURTESY EXPO CHICAGO/CORY DEWALD

The eighth edition of the Expo Chicago art fair, which runs from September 19 through 22, will feature some 135 galleries from 24 countries at the Navy Pier Festival Hall. Click here for the full list of exhibitors.

“Native Clevelanders, like myself, are used to national derision, enduring myriad “mistake on the lake” jokes. So, it was clearly evident to us that FRONT founder Fred Bidwell and artistic director Michelle Grabner intended to turn those Rust Belt associations around.” Check out the full article from the March/April 2019 volume of Sculpture Magazine! Download […]

It’s clear: We need space for new narratives. But how far will we get if the space-making rests in the hands of the colonizers?

Dawoud Bey, “Untitled #1 (Picket Fence and Farmhouse),” from the series Night Coming Tenderly, Black (2017) (© Dawoud Bey, courtesy the artist and Rennie Collection, Vancouver)

In her Glenville apartment building, Julie Ezelle-Patton cultivates a community of artists and preserves her mother’s legacy as a painter. But new development threatens it all.

  Own a piece of history FRONT is pleased to release a spectacular limited edition Print Portfolio of the mural designs for Canvas City, 2018. The Canvas City limited edition print portfolio is a set of six screenprints based on original mural proposals for An American City. These limited editions were commissioned especially for the inaugural […]

THEME SONG FOR CLEVELAND AND AKRON by Jonn Herschend and Silas Hite  Because Cleveland can’t have too many theme songs…The “Theme Song for Cleveland and Akron” was commissioned by FRONT International for the 2018 Cleveland Triennial. Made in collaboration with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the citizens of Northeast Ohio, the lyrics were […]