Before the advent of landscape as an independent genre in European art (a development usually placed in the 1600s), depictions of the natural world appeared on the borders of manuscripts and as the backdrop for portraits, devotional works, and biblical narratives. In these contexts, nature held symbolic and metaphorical meanings tied to natural cycles, God’s generative power, Christian spirituality, and human love. Ranging from the Garden of Eden and courtly love gardens to the biblical deluge, prints and drawings in Love Gardens / Forbidden Fruit highlight humankind’s fraught but interdependent relationship with the natural world. The 60 works on paper in the exhibition, spanning the late medieval through the Renaissance periods (about 1460 to 1600), are assembled entirely from the CMA’s collection.

The Garden of Eden was the prototypical landscape for European artists, and the many themes of the Genesis story—such as creation, fertility, procreation, and sin—inform images throughout the exhibition. For example, prints portraying the Virgin Mary in an “enclosed garden” characterize her purity and chastity but also her fertile womb; in other cases, verdant gardens are places for illicit encounters and the exploration of carnal love. Nature’s simultaneously nourishing and destructive dynamic also features prominently throughout the exhibition. Hermit saints retreat to the wilderness to strengthen their connection to God; yet, for some, the wilderness holds the potential for spiritual temptation, despair, and physical peril. Other images explore how landscape provides the metaphorical ground for the journey through life, but one that is rife with challenging terrain—and likely pitfalls. Using the new medium of printmaking as well as drawing, and with increasing attention to realistic renderings, Renaissance artists created images in which nature and its many meanings profoundly resonated with contemporary life. Love Gardens / Forbidden Fruit examines these themes through works by some of the era’s most significant artists, including the Master E. S., Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Dürer, Fra Bartolommeo, Titian, Jacopo de’ Barbari, Giulio Campagnola, Giorgio Ghisi, Nicolò Boldrini, Albrecht Altdorfer, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Aawful Friends: The Future is Now postulates a future where art created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and traditionally made art are in conflict. The setting for this group show is a dystopian future version of Cleveland, Ohio. The city has been left in ruins, ravaged by a mysterious force, and the remaining citizens are ruled by an evil group of tyrants who keep the populace under control using AI.

Featuring the work of 12 local artists in a range of media including painting, sculpture, and digital art, this exhibition explores the impact that new technology has had on the creative process. A powerful commentary on the future of art and the potential conflict between AI and human creativity, "Aawful Friends: The Future is Now," examines the role of AI in today’s society, and its potential misuse in the future.

Many artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were fascinated by the styles and subjects of medieval art. Soaring cathedrals and ornate illuminated manuscripts impressed artists living in an era of increasing mechanization, while reverent visions of saints and heroes offered inspirational models in the midst of war and political violence. Along with representative medieval objects, Medieval X Modern presents the work of modern artists from Europe and the Americas who created prints, drawings, paintings, illustrated books, sculptures, and decorative objects informed by the spectacular craftsmanship and compelling historical figures of the Middle Ages. Scholars and artists also produced publications illustrating royal treasures and architectural remains that not only testify to a pride in the medieval past, but also serve nationalistic narratives in the present. Drawing primarily from the Blanton’s collection, Medieval X Modern offers a wide array of artistic responses to the European Middle Ages, including one of the museum’s most iconic works—Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin.

Crown Point Press announces the release of Castiron Calendar, a new etching by Ed Ruscha. It is featured in a group exhibition, About Words, that includes eleven of Ruscha’s etchings made between 2006 and 2023 along with a selection of prints made between 1977 and 2019 by Robert Barry, Iain Baxter, Steve Reich, Pat Steir and William T. Wiley. Each artist uses words as imagery to explore language and meaning visually.

Ed Ruscha throughout his career has used words as subject matter. These “non-verbal communications,” as he describes them, are set against textured backgrounds that act as stage sets or backdrops. In his new print, Castiron Calendar, Ruscha created the letters in his iconic font by using a stencil. The two words, one stacked on top of the other, pop out from a dark background. The words play against each other: “calendar” marks the passage of time, while “cast iron,” in its heaviness and solidity, endures. The print mixes visual formality with playful language, and resonates in meaning and in presentation.

Paper Is People: Decolonizing Global Paper Cultures, co-curated by Tia Blassingame and Stephanie Sauer, offers a new definition of paper­ within a global and decolonial framework. Featuring works by local, national, and international artists, this exhibition explores the vital role substrates play in human communities and how meaning is made from what we might call paper and papermaking.

Viewed together, the works on display seek to open a conversation around what paper is across cultures today: a vessel for collective memory, a body, a site of meaning, a living ancestor, and a form of cultural survival and resistance. Our ideas about paper are linked to how we value traditions of language, know­ledge production, creative expression, storytelling, and history. Many of us think of paper as thin sheets fashioned from fibrous pulp, but this understanding leans heavily on European applications and usage, with its roots in ancient Chinese technology and centuries of violent occupation, enslavement, and trade.

This exhibition is the first public presentation of an outstanding Midwestern collection amassed over four decades by printmakers and educators David and Sarojini Johnson. The display features relief and intaglio prints created by more than 25 artist printmakers represented in the Johnsons’ collection, including works by Francisco Goya, Lea Grundig, Stanley William Hayter, Mauricio Lasansky, and Sue Coe. The selection emphasizes the contributions of German Expressionist and Midwestern artists, with concentrations of art condemned by the Nazis as degenerate (entartete Kunst) and the legacy of printmaking at Atelier 17. These works are juxtaposed with several prints from the David Owsley Museum of Art’s collection that incorporate items acquired for the museum with David Johnson’s advice. A catalogue with essays by the collectors and contemporary Midwestern printmakers examines the democratic foundation of print collecting and the Johnsons’ desire to acquire works on paper of historical significance, quality, and social impact.

Pop-up books go back centuries. Since at least the 1100s, readers have been lifting flaps, spinning dials, and opening elaborate three-dimensional spreads in the pages of books. The earliest interactive texts were intended for scholars. Over time, pop-up books found new audiences and grew in popularity, engaging a wide range of users from emperors to mathematicians to children.

Featuring books, maps, and ephemera from the Newberry collection, Pop-Up Books through the Ages traces the extensive history of hands-on reading. Tactile, interactive components can be found in everything from a 1489 astronomical calendar and a 1775 battle map to a 1932 edition of Pinocchio. Viewing these different items in one place, visitors will see how the art, science, and business of pop-up books evolved over hundreds of years.

In addition to exploring the past, the exhibition highlights the present and future of pop-up books, including the work of contemporary book and paper artists who are pushing the form in new directions. Two of these artists, Hannah Batsel and Shawn Sheehy, have even designed a pop-up version of the Newberry that you can take home and construct yourself!

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Paul Coldwell is a practicing artist and Professor in Fine Art at the University of the Arts London. He has exhibited widely, his work included in numerous public collections, including Tate, V&A, The British Museum, Arts Council of England, the Musee d’art et d’histoire, Geneva and MoMA (New York).
This exhibition presents a selection of prints made by Coldwell including a recent portfolio of etchings entitled The Studio, created during lockdown from small models assembled in his studio. The prints explore the genre of still life, beginning as playful constructions and evolved through manipulation in the computer, before being realised as multiple blocks woodcuts with each block laser cut and hand printed by the artist.
Throughout his career he has acknowledged the profound influence of the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi. Like Morandi, Coldwell’s work is focused on objects, the everyday items which accompany our daily lives but that have little financial value. Through this, the intention is to focus on incidental events and relationships and propose alternative values.

A show by Carlos Barberena, Atlan Arceo-Witzl, & CHema Skandal.

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Mirroring the expansive nature of the Museum’s collection, recently acquired works on paper represent a wide variety of media and cultures and span 500 years, from an early 16th-century woodcut to a digital work created in a virtual platform from 2017 by the Indigenous artist Skawennati. New to the Museum: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs will showcase many of these rare and fascinating works.

More than 2,400 works on paper have entered the Museum’s collection since the 2016 exhibition A Decade of Collecting: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. Since then, several exhibitions focused on vernacular photography, early modern European prints, Black abstraction, and contemporary art, have featured recent acquisitions. New to the Museum celebrates new arrivals that have not yet been displayed.