The nonprofit Cleveland Artists Foundation has struggled in recent years as the only institution in Northeast Ohio devoted to collecting, studying and telling the story of regional art from the 1890s to the present. But a reboot backed by new money, new leadership and a new location is under way.
The organization announced this week that it has hired Grafton Nunes, the former president of the Cleveland Institute of Art, as its new executive director. Founded in 1984 and known for a time as ARTneo, the organization has also changed its name back to the original one.
The Cleveland Artists Foundation, or CAF for short, also changed locations. On Wednesday Sept. 16, it finished moving from cramped and chaotic quarters at the West 78th Street Studios in the Gordon Square Arts District to a more spacious and visible gallery at 2731 Prospect Avenue, just east of Cleveland State University and the Innerbelt.
In its first 42 years, CAF assembled a collection of 3,000 objects, organized dozens of exhibitions and published dozens of scholarly catalogs. It occupied several locations in University Circle and Beachwood before moving to the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood in 1998 and the West 78th Street Studios in 2014.
Over the past decade, however, funding dried up, enthusiasm waned, programming dwindled and the pandemic took a toll.
Nunes, 76, said in his first interview about the new job that he felt compelled to come out of retirement to lead CAF because he feels strongly that the excellence of Northeast Ohio art has been underappreciated by the art world.
“I see this as a huge opportunity,’’ he said. “This really becomes the museum of northeast Ohio art, which we've all wanted to see for so long.’’
Nunes is aiming for a November opening exhibition featuring classics from the CAF collection, including works by early 20th century luminaries known collectively as the Cleveland School.
Artists on that list include William Sommer, Carl Gaertner, Henry Keller, Frank Wilcox, Paul Travis, George Adomeit, August Biehle, Viktor Schreckengost, Clara Deike, Edris Eckhardt and many others.
New money
Regarding cash, CAF’s chairman, art enthusiast and Solon resident Gary Bombei, said the organization’s eight-person board voted this spring to require each member to make a minimum annual gift of $20,000. He called the policy “a 180-degree turn” from the status quo when he served on the CAF board in 2011-12.
The annual infusions are designed to put CAF on a firm footing for the first time in years. The money enabled the organization to sign a seven-year lease on its new home, and to hire Nunes, who said he wouldn’t have come on board without such a financial commitment.
The donations are intended to demonstrate a new seriousness about CAF’s mission. The board also sees its largesse as a way to attract additional funding, plus donations of art from collectors.
“We don’t feel comfortable going to the public or foundations for contributions unless our board is one hundred percent committed,” said Nunes, who serves on the board ex-officio, in addition to the eight regular members and officers.
Unique role
CAF occupies a unique niche in its focus on art of the region. The Cleveland Museum of Art, for example, devotes only two galleries to local art, a fraction of the space it uses to survey 6,000 years of global culture.
The non-profit art gallery Spaces and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland are non-collecting exhibit centers. The Akron Art Museum focuses on art from 1850 to the present, primarily American.
The nonprofit Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, at 1834 E. 123rd St., Cleveland, provides permanent storage space for artists who donate their work for safekeeping and study, and it organizes exhibitions. Artists are asked to endow the storage space, but acceptance of their work must be approved by a jury. The practice is fundamentally different from that of a museum collection shaped by curators and gifts from collectors.
Nunes, a board member at the Artists Archives, said he envisions collaborations between that organization and CAF.
Up and down history
CAF was founded by collectors and relatives of Northeast Ohio’s leading early 20th century artists. Over the years, CAF’s collection and exhibitions grew to include modern and contemporary artists, and architecture. Its informative and well-illustrated catalogs included essays by local art historians, including William H. Robinson, Elizabeth McClelland, Christine Shearer, Sharon Dean and Marianne Berardi, who currently serves on the CAF board.
But the organization struggled after changing its name to ARTneo in 2013 and moving in 2014 from the Beck Center to the West 78th Street Studios. The name change was intended to signify CAF’s evolution beyond its focus on Cleveland artists of the early and middle 20th century.
But Cleveland art historian and educator Sabine Kretzschmar, who served as an ARTneo board member from 2015 to 2023 and as president for several years up to 2023, said the organization lived from grant to grant over the past decade and often relied on volunteer labor. In recent years, she said, it has not had any full-time employees.
Speaking of the CAF collection, she said, “I think it's really significant. You couldn't do a major show of Cleveland art without using some of the objects in that collection.’’
Despite the importance of the collection, CAF’s future fell into question recently. For more than a year, the organization’s board explored donating a significant part its holdings to the Western Reserve Historical Society — an idea both organizations ultimately rejected.
Back in action
The directorship is an encore for Nunes, who led a highly visible turnaround as president of the Cleveland Institute of Art from 2010 to 2022. He came to the independent art college after stints as a filmmaker and working for 22 years in various posts at Columbia University. He served from 1998 to 2010 as the founding dean of the School of the Arts at Emerson College in Boston.
In 2010, CIA was in turmoil over financial distress, a failed expansion plan, faculty unrest and strife among board members. Nunes raised $75 million, revised and built the expansion, stabilized finances and calmed what he had called “a rolling thunder’’ of “anxiety, dissatisfaction, and anger.”
During his time at CIA, Nunes became fascinated by the connections between Cleveland art history and the Cleveland Institute of Art. He persuaded heirs of instructors and alumni to donate examples so current students could get a feel for the institution’s history.
Now, at CAF, he wants to highlight the connections between fine art and commercial art in regional art history, plus links between local artists and early 20th century and avant-garde movements in Europe, including French Fauvism and the mystical Blue Rider movement in Germany. He also wants to focus more attention on Cleveland’s minority artists, many of whom have been overlooked.
Finding a new home
Before locating CAF on Prospect Avenue, Nunes explored Shaker Square as a possibility. He said that the nonprofit Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, the square’s primary owner during a multi-year stabilization supported by the City of Cleveland, “gave us as much consideration as they could [on rent] but ultimately, they needed to charge what would be a commercial rate.’’
Nunes said the amount was not affordable.
“We are a nonprofit museum with no source of income other than the generosity of patrons and foundations,’’ he said. “We’re a nonprofit museum, not a commercial gallery.’’
Edward Stockhausen, CNP’s senior vice president of advocacy and external relations, responded in an email.
He said that “since 2022, CNP has worked to stabilize and strengthen Cleveland’s historic Shaker Square by investing more than $5 million in capital improvements, hosting more than 60 public events for thousands of neighbors, and attracting new tenants – all of which supports the community’s long-term priorities as reflected in the 2025 Vision Plan. As stewards of the Square, we offered the Cleveland Artists Foundation a competitive rental rate, and as a champion for every Cleveland neighborhood, we are excited they found a new home in the city.’’
CAF now occupies 6,000 square feet on the ground floor of the two-story early 20th-centiury commercial building that houses the architecture firm Bostwick Design Partnership upstairs. The ground floor space, one-third of which is for storage, is more than twice the 2,500 square feet CAF previously occupied on the basement-level at West 78th Street.
The Prospect Avenue address has previously hosted galleries including one operated by art dealer William Busta from 2007 to 2015.
Architect Robert Bostwick is the sole member of the LLC that owns the building and leases it to the firm that carries his name. He said that he and his partners have enabled discounted rents for galleries in the past, and for CAF now, as a way to support Cleveland’s art community.
A notable work
One of the most notable works in the CAF collection is a vivid 1942 portrayal of Doris “Dorie” Miller, the U.S. Navy mess attendant second class who, though untrained in gunnery, manned an anti-aircraft gun on the USS West Virginia during the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Miller downed at least one enemy fighter plane and possibly as many as six, according to historical accounts. He was awarded the Navy Cross.
Published accounts say Elmer Brown, a Black artist who trained at Karamu House in Cleveland, was commissioned by the government in 1942 to paint Miller in action for use as a poster to inspire Black service members. The image reportedly lost publicity value after Miller died while serving on an aircraft carrier that was torpedoed by a Japanese sub in late 1943.
Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. played Miller in the 2001 film “Pearl Harbor.’’ The U.S. Navy planned to name a new Ford-class aircraft carrier, now under construction, for him, making him the first Black sailor to be so honored. But recent reports hold that President Donald Trump wants the carrier named for him, not Miller.
Brown’s painting of Miller, donated to CAF by the artist’s estate, is but one example of the historical and artistic resonance of the organization’s collection.
“People have to believe that we're serious about this,’’ Nunes said of CAF’s mission. “We've got this collection and it's a core. It's a foundation upon which we can build and that we can expand.’’
