A Year of Innovation

The Cleveland Museum of Art and the Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University have a partnership that stretches back to 1967. Over the past 10 years, funding from the Mellon Foundation has allowed the joint program between the CMA and CWRU to experiment with new offerings that prepare students to dynamically lead universities and museums. Three recent and upcoming projects straddle the classroom and the museum—keeping this partnership at the forefront of the field. 

New Courses
The Mellon grant offers an incentive fund for cross-disciplinary courses that incorporate the CMA’s collection. In 2023–24, two new courses offered distinctive collaborations between curators, faculty, and students. In fall 2023, Elina Gertsman, Distinguished University Professor of Art History and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at CWRU, and Gerhard Lutz, the CMA’s Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art, cotaught Creation and (Re)Birth in Medieval Art. This seminar explored birth and creation from a global perspective through the lenses of art, music, religion, and medicine. In spring 2024, Erin Benay, distinguished scholar in public humanities at CWRU, and Britany Salsbury, the CMA’s curator of prints and drawings, cotaught Karamu House: Race and Printmaking in WPA-Era America, which explored the historically Black performing art center’s connections to printmaking in the 1930s and 1940s, when it served as an artistic home for important Black printmakers.

Student-Engaged Exhibitions
Students in both courses took their learning beyond the classroom to support two exhibitions at the CMA. Creation, Birth, and Rebirth, cocurated by Lutz and Gertsman, is a new installation of the medieval manuscripts and textiles gallery (115) that opened in August and features global objects from the Middle Ages, including medieval art, Asian art, Islamic art, art of the Americas, and prints and drawings, as well as student-drafted labels and an informational booklet of short essays on the works by the students, faculty, and curators. In March 2025, Karamu Artists Inc: Printmaking, Race, and Community opens, leveraging the international reputation of the CMA to demonstrate that the artistic production of Cleveland and of Karamu House belongs in national art history. Students in the Mellon course contributed to the first-ever catalogue raisonné of these artists, to be published as part of the exhibition catalogue next spring.

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Artists and Scholars in Residence
The Mellon grant also supports a short-term residential fellowship, which is intended to bring art historians and artists to Cleveland to share new perspectives with students, create transformative experiences with the collection, and engage with the community. In April, the joint program welcomed two residents for Africa & Byzantium, which demonstrated the connection between African Christian kingdoms and the Byzantine Empire from the 4th century CE to today. Artist George Makary, a Canadian-Egyptian painter, joined the museum to paint an icon—an image used in Orthodox Christian devotion—based on the CMA’s famed sixth-century Egyptian tapestry Icon of the Virgin and Child. The joint program also welcomed Raymond (Ray) Silverman, professor emeritus of in the history of art, African studies, and museum studies at the University of Michigan. Silverman and Makary, alongside the CMA’s curator of African art, Kristen Windmuller-Luna, took part in a rigorous suite of activities that included a tour and discussion of the exhibition, meetings with collection and conservation staff, and two programs open to the public.

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Beyond University Circle
The CMA and CWRU both have strategic initiatives for deepening engagement with the community beyond University Circle. This investment is also woven into projects underpinned by the Mellon grant. Creation, Birth, and Rebirth culminates a multiyear collaboration between Gertsman and various CMA curators that brought in speakers from around the country through a series of Mellon-sponsored seminars on the global Middle Ages. The exhibition is also keyed toward the centennial of the Medieval Academy of America, a scholarly organization that promotes excellence in interdisciplinary medieval studies. 
The Karamu House project has had significant points of engagement with Cleveland communities and the larger field. Students visited Zygote Press, Cleveland’s oldest collaborative printmaking studio, to experience the medium most used by the Karamu artists of the 1930s and 1940s. The exhibition project was also featured in a panel at the Association for Academic Museums and Galleries conference in June. Now, Benay and Salsbury are working with the CMA’s interpretation team to offer community voice labels for the upcoming exhibition that feature lived and personal perspectives from community members on exhibition artworks. 

Additionally, the short-term fellowships connected to Africa & Byzantium offered members of these institutions the chance to learn about local faith communities through visits to Coptic and Orthodox churches. Notably, Makary’s icon created at the CMA was donated to Saint Mark’s Coptic Church (in Seven Hills) in June. As funding for the Mellon grant enters its final years, an exciting foundation has been laid for the future of the joint program.