Cleveland continued to show admirable vitality in all of the arts in 2011, and especially in art and architecture, despite its status as a perennially shrinking city. The biggest gauge on the city’s urban dashboard — its population level — continued a long downward trend as the U.S. Census Bureau reported in March the dispiriting news that the city dropped below 400,000 inhabitants for the first time in a century. The slide might exert some serious negative pressure on the city’s cultural health if it continues. But that hasn’t happened yet. Here’s a quick look at outstanding developments in art and architecture in Cleveland and in Northeast Ohio in 2011.
Reviving midcentury modern: Developer and entrepreneur Michael Chesler and Dimit Architects of Lakewood completed a $7 million renovation of the ASM International headquarters in Russell Township. In July, ASM, a global clearinghouse for research on advanced materials, reoccupied a curving, 50,000-square-foot office pavilion designed in the late 1950s by Cleveland architect John Terence Kelly and surmounted by a vast geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller. The project, aided by $2.5 million in federal and state historic-preservation tax credits, was a model for the revival of midcentury modern buildings around the country.
Hospitals expanding: 2011 saw the completion of a bumper crop of new and renovated hospital buildings around the region, including the expanded and renovated Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield, a new Clinic hospital in Twinsburg, the University Hospitals Monte Ahuja Medical Center at Chagrin Highlands in Beachwood, the UH Seidman Cancer Center in University Circle and the new CARES Tower at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, also in University Circle.
As presences on the urban and suburban skylines, the hospitals varied in the quality and impact of their designs. But they all shared a similar attitude toward interiors, with lobbies, patient rooms and public amenities that emphasized light, views and, in many cases, lots of art. The latest crop of buildings shows that hospital administrators now understand that the physical environment in which patients are treated can have an impact on how well they respond.
MOCA rising: The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland broke ground in February for its $26.7 million building in the University Circle Uptown development, designed by Farshid Moussavi of London.
By year’s end, construction was well under way. Scheduled to open late this year, the building marks a new era for the city’s leading institution devoted to contemporary art, and perhaps for the city’s cultural climate overall.
The project is also a triumph for museum director Jill Snyder, who has devoted 15 years of her career to MOCA, and to Cleveland.
Busta breaks loose: Speaking of contemporary art, dealer William Busta firmly established his expanded gallery at 2731 Prospect Ave. as perhaps the city’s leading commercial gallery devoted to contemporary art by holding a string of strong, overlapping exhibitions.
Important regional artists who showed work at the gallery in 2011 included Mark Howard, Brinsley Tyrrell, Andrea Joki, Derek Hess, Kate Budd, Lorri Ott, Darice Polo and Dexter Davis. The level of work at Busta was often museum-quality.
Waterfronts: By the end of 2011, the downtown Cleveland waterfronts had become the focus of not one or two but three new plans aimed at pumping life into one of the city’s greatest and most underperforming assets: its frontage along Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. In May, the Cleveland Browns proposed a redevelopment of acreage directly north of Cleveland Browns Stadium with 600,000 square feet of office space, a Cleveland Clinic wellness center, an athletic field and new parking.