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The Cleveland Museum of Art closes every Friday night at 9pm, or so you think. On Friday, November 13, 2009, CMA will be play host to a special after hours event celebrating the Cleveland Institute of Art exhibition "CIA Students: Cleveland, 2009". The even will of course feature art, as well as refreshments, a cash bar, and live performances by Marina Rosenfeld's Sheer Frost Orchestra and Eats Tapes.

The student exhibition features 10 pieces created just for the occasion, and are inspired by Paul Gaugin and other anti-establishment artists at Monsieur Volpini's Café des Arts in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in 1889

Admission for After Hours is just $10, which includes refreshments and admission into Gaugin: Paris, 1889. For more information or to order tickets, call 1-888-CMA-0033 or visit online at www.cma.org/afterhours.

The Cleveland Museum of Art has announced that Deborah Gribbon has been chosen to assume the position of Interim Director, and that it has initiated a broad search for the next permanent director of the museum. Gribbon will arrive at the museum on September 14, and will begin in her position on September 21 when the current director parts ways.

Most recently, Gribbon was the Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum and Vice President of the J. Paul Getty Trust for four years. For the previous 16 years, Gribbon served in various curatorial leadership positions, including Associate Director and Chief Curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum. Prior to her career in Los Angeles, she also served as curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston for eight years.

While a graduate student, Gribbon taught in various capacities at Harvard University. She also lectured and is published in the art history and museum fields. She holds a doctorate and master's degree in fine arts from Harvard University, and an undergraduate degree in art history from Wellesley College.

On being appointed to the position, Gribbon said:

In an attempt to balance its budget amidst declining endowments, the world-renowned Cleveland Museum of Art laid off 14 employees on Tuesday. The museum has a staff of about 300, and in addition to the layoffs they will leave 8 vacant positions unfilled.

Timothy Rub, director of the museum, indicated that these moves will help to balance the museum's budget in its current fiscal year as well as the one beginning in July 2010.

In the past two years, the museum's endowment has dropped from $821 million to about $510 million.

Rub will also be leaving the museum in September to take a new job at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Two of today’s most accomplished contemporary artists visit the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) this summer to share the muses behind their work, as CMA’s Womens Council Speakers Series presents Evenings with Contemporary Artists featuring Carrie Mae Weems and Liza Lou.

Carrie Mae Weems offers Social Studies at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, August 26. Weems examines racial and gender themes through striking photographs. For 30 years, Weems has made people question society’s stereotypes about gender, race and class through her photographs and texts. In 2005, she won the Women in Photography International Distinguished Photographer’s Award. Her work, Kitchen Table Series, can be seen in the photography galleries of the museum’s East Wing.

Crocker Park will be hosting their 4th annual Crocker Park Fine Art Fair this weekend. 2008 award winners Trent Altman (mixed media), Stan Baker (ceramics), Angie Dresie (jewelry) , Sandra Happel (ceramics), Diane Sicheneder (painting), Brian Skyes (wood) and Susan Sturgill (drawing) will be back with exhibits this year. In total, over 125 artists will be displaying their works at the fair which feature works such as jewelry, ceramics, painting, glass, photography, fiber, wood and much more.

Admission and parking is free at the event. For more information you visit www.theguild.org which is sponsoring the event.

In the new book "Secret Identity" The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster", the little-known beginnings of one of America's favorite superheroes are revealed. The book features page after page of the Cleveland comic writer's racy, sadomasochistic cartoons which were drawn in the early 1950's. Entitled "Nights of Horror", the erotic horror comics were sold under the counter at drugstores for $3.

Exotic forms of torture, women with whips, men with hot pokes, and spankings are all featured in the drawings, but what makes them even more interesting is that many of the characters look exactly like Shuster's Superman and Lois Lane.

Comic-book historian Craig Yoe, who discovered the comics, said:

"Yes, they look like Lois and Clark. Joe obviously had some very dark fantasies. There's a panel in an early Superman comic book where he has Lois over his knee and is spanking her. But certainly nothing of this depth or extremeness."

Yoe found the complete 16-issue run at a used book store. He says of the publication:

The oldest collegiate Bach Festival in the country, the Baldwin-Wallace College Bach Festival, takes place Friday through next Saturday at Kulas Musical Arts Building in Berea, Ohio. The 77th annual festivall will feature Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" amongst the composer's numerous other works.

The Opera Cleveland Orchestra, led by Dwight Oltman, will perform vocal and instrumental works by Bach at 8pm Friday. The Chatham Baroque named "Best Classical Artist of 1999" by National Public Radio will also play at 4pm on Friday.

Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which will be presented in two parts on Saturday. The first at 4pm, and the second at 8pm. On Sunday, the C.O.5 wind quintent and a string quartet made up of members from the Cleveland Orchestra will play "Art of Fugue" at 3pm on Sunday.

There are also free events, including the Festival Brass which plays outside the Musical Arts building at 3:15pm on Friday and Saturday. Also free of charge is the "Bach Church Service" at 11:15am at the Berea United Methodist Church.

On of the most popular places to catch live theater in the Cleveland area says that they are in desperate need of money to survive. Lucinda Einhouse of the Beck Center, describes the Lakewood Beck Center as "in a crossroads" because money has dried up. She adds that if the Beck Center, which sits on coveted land on Detroit Ave, closes there is little chance that it would open its doors again.

Here is the letter in full:

Now is the critical time to support the Beck Center. Be a Beck champion -
In these tough economic times, people look for moments when they can smile. The Beck Center for the Arts was founded on the principle that music, theater, dance, painting, and other forms of art bring joy and comfort in good times and in bad.

The Beck Center now finds itself at a crossroads. Funding from our familiar sources is in short supply. In difficult economic times, arts organizations are particularly vulnerable, and we are pinching our pennies and stretching our dollars.

We now come to you for help. If the Beck Center cannot raise funds from new sources, we are in danger of closing. Our hallways, always echoing with laughter, music, and the promise of young talent, will be quiet.

One of Cleveland's long-standing, world renowned cultural institutions - the Cleveland Orchestra - is facing a projected 4.5 million deficient by the end of the fiscal year in June. With diminishing endowments and reduced revenues, the Orchestra is being forced to cut back.

Executive Director Gary Hanson will take a 15 percent pay cut, and Music Director Franz Wesler-Möst will take a 20 percent cut. In addition, the Orchestra will scale back regular season performances, and cancel tour dates that are expected to lose money.

Hanson also says that the orchestra will seek concessions from musicians and other staff represented under labor contracts.

Last year between June and December, the orchestra's endowment lost 26 percent of its value. Hanson says that the orchestra is ramping up its fundraising efforts in order to replenish the endowment.

What's being performed at the Orchestra this month?

The Marriage of Figaro

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 7:00 PM
Friday, March 27, 2009 at 7:00 PM
Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 3:00 PM

at Severance Hall

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Michael Volle, baritone (Count Almaviva)
Malin Hartelius, soprano (Countess Almaviva)
Martina Jankova, soprano (Susanna)