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Exhibition Archive

FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art

July 14, 2018 - September 30, 2018 | Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries, Beatrice Knapp McDowell Grand Lobby

For the premiere edition of FRONT International, artists from the U.S. and around the globe will offer perspectives on aspects of “The American City” at the Akron Art Museum. Works by sixteen artists—several newly created for the Akron Art Museum—include a major video installation, sculpture, photography and mixed media objects that will occupy spaces throughout the museum. The exhibition examines how we as individuals move through the urban landscape. Artwork reflects on ways that technology, communications, advertising, industry and popular culture shape socio-economic and environmental conditions.

Jerry Birchfield: Asleep in the Dust

March 24, 2018 - September 23, 2018 | Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery

The multimedia work of Jerry Birchfield thoughtfully investigates photographic processes and concepts. Obscuring his camera-based images with layers of darkroom processes, Birchfield calls attention to the gap between his photographs’ original subjects and the abstracted printed image that you see. The resulting gelatin silver prints are complemented by wall relief sculptures that assert the physical nature of printed photographs. The exhibition highlights the transformational role of the artist in producing objects of meaning from such materials through an iterative process of framing, reproduction and display.

Frameworks: Paintings by Dragana Crnjak, Andrea Joki and Matthew Kolodziej

March 3, 2018 - September 9, 2018 | Judith Bear Isroff Gallery

Dragana Crnjak (Youngstown), Andrea Joki (Cleveland) and Matthew Kolodziej (Akron) each approach painting as a process of inquiry into the way we understand time and space. The artists are particularly interested in the concept of time being fluid rather than linear. That fluidity is easily illustrated in our digital age—time can be visually compressed, drawn-out and even layered. Interwoven into that equation is how memory becomes clouded or fragmented over time.

Ed Emberley: Better You Than Me

January 11, 2018 - July 15, 2018 | Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery

"…while friendly to any age group, it [Ed Emberley: Better You Than Me] doesn’t talk down to anyone. Here we have a museum that is trying to engage the audience in a way that is educational as well as a partnership, allowing us to see the exhibit in a place full of meaning and quality for every patron. Shows like Ed Emberley: Better You Than Me are why the Akron Art Museum should be such a point of pride for the community."—Anderson Turner, "Art review: See the process of creating a children's book in Ed Emberley," Akron Beacon Journal. Using simple shapes and lines, beloved illustrator and picture book artist Ed Emberley has created enchanting worlds for generations of young people, while also giving them the tools to create worlds of their own. Ed Emberley: Better You Than Me opens on January 11, 2018 and includes an array of dazzling artwork from the artist’s personal archive of hand drawn sketches, woodblock prints, mock-ups, and first edition books.

Jun Kaneko: Blurred Lines

February 17, 2018 - June 3, 2018 | Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries

Among the most acclaimed artists working in contemporary ceramics today, Jun Kaneko has spent decades pushing the boundaries of ceramics, sculpture and painting, repeatedly blurring the lines that have traditionally separated the world of fine art and craft. Jun Kaneko: Blurred Lines, opening February 17, 2018, presents an array of the artist’s monumental works while providing insight into his thinking and artistic process. Informed by early experiences in a Zen Garden at Ryōan-ji in Kyoto, Japan, Kaneko’s work contains ongoing references to rhythm and pattern and sound and silence. His artworks are often covered with stripes, simple geometric shapes, and spirals and dots, suggesting opposing but complementary forces of light and darkness, mass and space and present and past.

Micro/Macro: Views of Earth by Marilyn Bridges and Jeannette Klute

September 2, 2017 - March 11, 2018 | Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery

Marilyn Bridges and Jeannette Klute both chose Earth’s natural and human-touched terrain as their subject matter. Micro/Macro illustrates how photographs of the Earth on both an intimate and aerial scale can be disorienting as well as familiar, and the inherent compositional parallels between the work of two very different artists. Bridges photographs sites around the world that show signs of past or present human activities. Looking down from the open door of a small plane flying at an altitude between 300 and 1000 feet, her aerial photographs record a visual experience that is neither like standing on the ground, nor looking out the window of a commercial jet. Her black and white images flatten Earth’s terrain into patterns of light, dark and texture. Exact scale and orientation are not clear except through detailed examination.

Heavy Metal

August 12, 2017 - February 18, 2018 | Judith Bear Isroff Gallery

Metal is ubiquitous. We wear it, dwell inside structures built of it, and cook and eat with it. The development of civilization itself depended on our ancestors’ ability to craft metal tools and weapons, paving the way for advancements in agriculture, warfare, transportation and architecture. This substance, whether in pure element, alloy or compound form, has served as a mother lode of ideas and materials for artists for centuries.

Alchemy: Transformations in Gold

October 7, 2017 - January 21, 2018 | Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries

Alchemy: Transformations in Gold brings together a group of international artists whose work incorporates gold (or another metal disguised as gold). In each case, this precious material not only imparts a sense of luxury, but also calls to mind connotations of the historic and cultural value various societies have placed upon the rare element. As glamorous and sought after as gold may be, it is capable of suggesting complicated politics and potent symbolism. The works in Alchemy embrace both dark and light readings of this glittering metal. Artists in Alchemy are an international group at the forefront of contemporary practice.

Find a Face

July 27, 2017 - December 31, 2017 | Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery

Do you ever feel like your teapot is staring at you? Does your bathroom faucet look like a nose? Maybe that electrical outlook is winking at you. There are faces to be found in the most unexpected places. In Find a Face, the museum invites visitors to find friendly faces in photographs, drawings, prints, and paintings from the collection. There are window eyes peeking out from the side of a house, a snow-covered nose on the hood of a car, and a toothy grin from an autumn pumpkin hidden in the artworks on view

Snack

January 16, 2016 - October 1, 2017 | Judith Bear Isroff Gallery

We all need to eat. Food is essential to our survival, but it’s also a sign of celebration, a source of pleasure and a profitable industry. The universal nature of food makes it an appropriate subject to critically examine themes common to contemporary art, such as politics, commerce and the intersection of art and life. Snack is a (mostly) lighthearted look at works drawn primarily from the Akron Art Museum collection that depict food or the places we buy and consume it through humor, pop culture and nostalgia.

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