Current Exhibitions

Mouse House Party

August 5, 2021-September 30, 2021 | Current Cleveland (1300 W 78th St Suite 101, Cleveland, OH 44102)

The Akron Art Museum in partnership with Current is pleased to announce a commissioned collective project by Liz Maugans called Mouse House Party, an exhibition of over 150+ (and growing) contemporary Northeast Ohio artists on view August 5-September 30. Conceived during the height of the pandemic, the project offers local artists an opportunity to share their work.

Continuum: Historical Resonances in Contemporary Art

July 15, 2021 – February 27, 2022 | C. Blake McDowell, Jr. Galleries

Art is not made in a vacuum. Even while trying new things, artists draw on deep traditions. Five special pairings of artworks in this gallery encourage enjoyment of the past alongside the present. These combinations invite you to find surprises and delights, to see the old anew and the new afresh.

The 10,000 Things

May 27, 2021 - May 15, 2022 | Various Locations

Artwork usually is hung in galleries—rooms designed for viewing paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures. But what if you happened upon an artwork on your afternoon walk in the city, or while strolling in a garden, outside in the sunshine and fresh air? That experience is at the heart of the museum’s latest outdoor exhibition, The 10,000 Things by Cleveland artist Jordan Wong.

Totally Rad: Bold Color in the 1980s

February 18 – September 19, 2021 | Judith Bear Isroff Gallery

Bright primary and secondary hues, radiating neon and Day-Glo, soft and sweet pastels, sharp black and white contrasts—in the 1980s, wild colors touched the entire spectrum of American culture. This exuberant trend was urged onward through television, music, music videos, video games, graffiti, fashion, and the materialism brought on by an economic boom. Artists burst forth with their own vivid creations across a variety of media, enthusiastically adding to this wave of color.

Totally Radical: Art and Politics in the 1980s

February 18 – September 19, 2021 | Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery

From the AIDS crisis to the intensifying feminist movement, ongoing calls for racial justice, struggles between corporate profit and union labor, growing concerns about human impacts on the natural environment, and the tense climax of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the 1980s proved to be a dense and dramatic period in American history. Many artists responded with a new sense of urgency and created works that are directly and unapologetically political.