CLEVELAND, Ohio — Art museums across the country closed to the public in March as state governments responded to the mounting coronavirus pandemic.
But the museum-quality collection at the Cleveland Clinic, greatly enhanced over the past 14 years under its recently retired director, Joanne Cohen, has remained available to patients and caregivers.
That’s one reason why Ellen Rudolph, a veteran Northeast Ohio curator and museum professional, was thrilled to succeed Cohen this spring after starting work at the clinic as a curator in June, 2019.
“I’m very passionate about art museums, but there is something very alive about the collection at the clinic and the way it interacts with people, every day, 24-7,’’ Rudolph said in an interview with cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.
Under Delos “Toby” Cosgrove, the clinic’s CEO and president from 2004 to 2017, the institution emphasized the power of art and architecture to aid in healing patients and to provide comfort for caregivers and family members.
Cosgrove and Cohen were honored for their work with a 2010 Martha Joseph Prize from the Cleveland Arts Prize, as were then-Curator Trudy Wiesenberger and then-President Thomas Zenty III at University Hospitals.
At the clinic’s 165-acre main campus west of University Circle in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood, Cohen significantly expanded the art collection from roughly 2,500 to more than 7,000 objects, Rudolph said.
“It’s not decoration,’’ Rudolph said. “It’s intended to inspire people and to make people think, hopefully in a way that feels good, and that offers some kind of escape.”
The clinic has declined to say what it spends on art acquisitions, but Rudolph said funding comes through portions of construction budgets when for new buildings are built, and through earmarked donations of money or gifts of art.
Cohen also said during her tenure that the clinic sold heavily appreciated works previously donated to the institution. In 2007, for example, the clinic netted $2.5 million from the auction of an important painting by the American 20th-century artist Milton Avery.
Major acquisitions have included some 40 large-scale, site-specific commissions, such as“BlueBerg,” 2008, a monumental sculpture suspended in the four-story Great Hall between Miller Pavilion and Glickman Tower.
The 2008 work, by the Spanish-born Chicago artist, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, traces the outlines of an iceberg in precisely constructed aluminum tubes.
Last year, Cohen oversaw the installation of two massive wall drawings by Sol LeWitt in the Sheila and Eric Samson Pavilion, home of the Health Education Campus, a project of the clinic and Case Western Reserve University.
Joanne Cohen, executive director and curator for the Cleveland Clinic, holds Sol LeWitt artwork, to show what the background will represent inside the CWRU-Cleveland Clinic Health Education Campus, Wednesday, February 27, 2019. (Marvin Fong / The Plain Dealer) The Plain DealerThe Plain Dealer
Rudolph, 48, brings extensive experience to her work. A native of Shaker Heights, she directed the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood from 2014 to 2017, and had two stints in curatorial leadership positions at the Akron Art Museum from 2008 to 2014 and again from 2017 to 2019.
She declined to comment on recent turmoil at the Akron museum that led to the resignation of director Mark Masuoka amid allegations of workplace violations that had occurred on his watch.
Rudolph earned a bachelor’s degree in art history from Northwestern University in 1994, and a master’s degree in art history in 2007 from Case Western Reserve University.
At the clinic, Rudolph heads a seven-member curatorial team. Her goals include caring for and rotating objects on view, and building the diversity and breadth of the collection, which now represents artists from 70 countries. Some 40 percent of the collection comprises work by women artists.
Rudolph aims to add new environments integrating art and technology, including virtual reality, and she wants to expand education, programming and interpretation, especially online. This work will include enhancing the clinic’s free AR+ cellphone app, which features audio, video and written content.
“I’m thinking about how we can use the art collection as a catalyst for conversations with caregivers about unconscious bias and visual learning strategies,’’ Rudolph said in an email.
Programming also includes a daily “Art Break” for caregivers, presented on an internal Facebook account. New offerings focus on artworks with anti-racist messages in recognition over of the national uproar over police violence against blacks.
One such work is “...for those who come to bear witness...," 2018-19, by Jamaican artist and educator Ebony G. Patterson, which explores the variations on the phrase “See Me’’ in printed and sewn fabric.
“We talk about the idea of bearing witness to the experience of people of color in our country,’’ Rudolph said of the Patterson piece, which she helped acquire for the clinic collection.
Future opportunities for acquiring art will include construction of an expansion of the clinic’s Cole Eye Institute and a new Neurological Institute, she said.
The clinic had planned to break ground on the Cole expansion this year, and the Neurological Institute by 2021, but both projects have been paused, a spokesperson said.
For now, Rudolph is grateful to be involved with an art collection that people can see during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We have this incredible opportunity to touch people,’’ she said. “That’s one of the things that’s so exciting about this role, and being able to play a part in this healing environment for people.”