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| - I hate to say this but the museum, while an architectural gem and something very special for Cleveland, is a major disappointment when it comes to actually showing, you know, art. The first thing you see on the ground level is a gift shop, ticket booth and snack bar. Not a single piece of art in sight. There's a giant commons area that apparently shows boring educational videos to an audience of zero. Why waste this huge space on nothing? I know some modern sculpture or video installations or murals that would look great here.
Once you get to the exhibition spaces, they're nice and cleanly designed. But the art on the day we went, the show in the biggest gallery, Corita Kent's beautiful political prints, was charming and sweet but a little middlebrow. We were hoping to be challenged a lot more.
And what's with all the classrooms, children's drawing tables and empty rooms playing educational video nobody wants to see? Why not turn some of these smaller rooms into exhibition spaces? Why is there so much unused space? I don't understand. The wasted space actually makes me, a big fan of contemporary art, very angry.
I don't understand this museum's priorities. Is it art or education? Is it art or empty space? Is it art or a gift shop? The answer to me, on my one and perhaps only visit, is that art, especially challenging new work, is taking a back seat.
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