Contemporary Art

Since 1960, the Cleveland Museum of Art has collected art that was contemporary at the time it was acquired. Now comprising works made after 1960 and up to the present day, the CMA’s collection of contemporary art reflects and illuminates the world in which we live. It carries forward in time stories whose beginnings are told elsewhere throughout the museum’s historic collections. Innovative approaches to portraiture and representations of the figure can be seen in works by Robert Colescott, Robert Gober, Alice Neel, and Amy Sherald. Artists including Firelei Báez, Carmen Herrera, Ellsworth Kelly, and Martin Puryear offer fresh perspectives on abstraction. Throughout modern and contemporary history, artists have reimagined traditional artistic mediums. In the CMA’s contemporary collection, this tendency is on display in works by Pierre Huyghe, Nam June Paik, Rose B. Simpson, and Andy Warhol, among others. The artists in the CMA’s contemporary collection represent the expansive range of perspectives, backgrounds, and identities that animate art of the present day.