Fri 8/22 @ 6pm
By Josh Usmani
This Friday, ARTneo (formerly the Cleveland Artists Foundation) invites art professionals, collectors and enthusiasts to celebrate the organization’s 30th Anniversary at 78th Street Studios. As the name change alludes, this important organization is in the middle of an exciting transition. This weekend’s benefit is appropriately titled Under Construction.
“We are very excited to be celebrating our 30th anniversary,” says Under Construction’s Benefit Chair Jon Logan. “It’s a special time for our organization as we move from the Beck Center to our new home at 78th Street Studios. Stop by this Friday for our annual benefit, get a chance to bid on some great Cleveland art, see our Phyllis Sloane exhibition (Pop Portraits) and a sneak peek at our new space.”
Additionally, the evening will include abundant food and drink, live music and a small peek inside the organization’s impressive collection. These works will be featured in their upcoming 30th Anniversary Exhibition (details to be announced soon).
ARTneo’s mission has always been centered around a core mission of “preserving, researching, collecting, exhibiting, documenting and promoting the significant visual art and architecture of the Northeast Ohio region.” The Cleveland Artists Foundation was founded in 1984 by a collective of local artists, collectors and patrons. Their initial mission was centered around the “Cleveland School” (circa 1900-1950) – including artists like Carl Gaertner, Henry Keller, William Sommer, Paul Travis, Abel Warshawsky and Frank Wilcox to name a few.
In recent years, the organization changed its name to ARTneo, and expanded its mission to include artists from before and after the “Cleveland School” (with an emphasis on artists and architects active in the past 50 years). Moving forward, ARTneo’s broadened perspective will allow for a more comprehensive narrative of regional art history and innovation – helping define the region, as well as its relation to national and international contemporaries.
If you’re not an arts professional or enthusiast, you may have never heard of ARTneo. However, the work ARTneo does is extremely important to our community. Northeast Ohio has a rich history of arts and culture. However, without organizations like ARTneo, this legacy would be lost to the annals of history. ARTneo’s mission to promote and preserve the region’s visual art history may only be fully appreciated in hindsight.
As a community, we need a strong understanding of our foundation in order to properly build upon it. The better we understand our past, the more clearly we’ll understand our present and future. ARTneo preserves and promotes the historical narrative to which today’s artists are contributing.
Please consider purchasing a ticket (or two) to Under Construction, and see for yourself why ARTneo is so important to our community.
Josh Usmani is a 27 year old local artist, curator and writer. Since 2008, his work has been featured in over 50 local and regional exhibitions.
Cleveland, OH 44102