Wizard World Cleveland 2021 Broken Transmitter Huntington Convention Center, Cleveland, OH

The novel coronavirus pandemic caused not only a couple of shutdowns of The Cleveland Museum of art but also a delay and then indefinite postponement of a major traveling exhibition, “Picasso on Paper,” due to restrictions on international travel.

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First bumped from May to September, the show was shelved in July. (A museum spokesperson says CMA “hopes to reconstitute the show in a future year.”)

With the museum’s spacious Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall and Gallery then set to remain unoccupied, CMA Director William M. Griswold and others came up with an alternative show that had curators digging through the joint’s back rooms.

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“Agni, God of Fire,” a piece from India that is about a thousand years old, is on display in “Stories From Storage” section “Green Tara and the Art of Protection,” assembled by Sonya Rhie Mace, CMA’s George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art.

Mark Meszoros — The News-Herald

“Stories From Storage” is an anthology exhibition, a show with 20 relatively small, unrelated sections spread throughout several rooms in the gallery. Running until May 16, the show pulls from the more than 55,000 objects not normally on display for one reason or another. (For some perspective, only about 4,000 pieces are regularly seen by visitors.)

“This wonderful new exhibition offers a glimpse into our vault, making available works rarely, if ever before, seen by the public,” Griswold says in a news release.

Griswold and Key Jo Lee, director of academic affairs and associate curator of special projects, are credited with curating the section that greets visitors to the gallery, “Trauma and Transformation.” It consists of a lone piece, Kara Walker’s massive, sight-consuming drawing “The Republic of New Afrika at a Crossroads.”

Like many works of art — and many in CMA’s permanent collection not on permanent display — it is light-sensitive and thus can be shown for only a few months every few years, according to the release.

“The title references the Black separatist organization that, beginning in the late 1960s, advocated for both reparations and the establishment of an independent republic as a refuge for Black people in the southeastern United States,” reads information that accompanies that section of the show.

Walker created the piece during a residency at the American Academy in Rome and CMA acquired it during its “The Ecstasy of St. Kara” exhibition that same year.

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This silk garment embroidered with mirrored paillettes from 1890s Egypt grabs attention in the “Threads Across Time: African Textiles” section of “Stories From Storage.”

Mark Meszoros — The News-Herald

A section of “Stories From Storage” that could be seen as a microcosm of it is “Things That Don’t Fit (Here),” assembled by Curator of Pre-Columbian and Native North American Art Susan Bergh.

An anthology within this anthology, her effort consists of four sections: “Amazonian South America”; “Pacific Islands”; “Modern Mexico”; and “Ancient Mexico.” And as with some of the other sections and as its theme suggests, it is composed of works that do not easily fit within the narratives of their related galleries or of the museum as a whole.

“It needed an anthology approach because … we have very few objects in Oceania and eastern South America,” Bergh says in a recent phone interview, adding she sought to fill her space in “Stories From Storage” with a quartet of object groups “that were unified under this notion of histories that aren’t told because recourses and space are finite, collections are small (and) there’s no context for these things in the galleries.”

Among the pieces that “Don’t Fit” are clay figurines from ancient Mexico; the elaborate “Headdress,” from pre-1919 Paraguay; the tall, narrow and striking “Male Spirit Figure,” from the the Pacific Islands, possibly in the 1800s; “Man’s Tunic (Cushma),” a lovely, detailed fabric work from 1970s Amazonian South America; and, last but not least, the seemingly quite-practical “Beer Container (Mahuetan), dated to around 1940 in Peru.

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“Beer Container (Máhuetan),” from Peru, is an attention-grabbing piece from Curator of Pre-Columbian and Native North American Art Susan Bergh’s section of “Stories From Storage,” “Things That Don’t Fit (Here).”

Mark Meszoros — The News-Herald

“I knew that would spark some interest,” Bergh says with a laugh when asked about the large, ornate vessel.

There is much more to see while walking through “Stories From Storage,” of course.

The rather self-explantory “Art in the Time of the Black Death,” overseen by Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art Gerhard Lutz, consists of works from the 1300s and boasts more than one painting inspired by Christ’s crucifixion.

Assembled by Associate Curator of European Art Cory Korkow, “(RE)search and (RE)store” contains, as the news release puts it, “one monumental sculpture and five once-celebrated paintings, whose condition prevents them from being ordinarily on view.” Plan to spend some time with 1500s Italian oil painting “Adoration of the Maji” from celebrated Venetian artist and/or his studio assistants, as well as the other hefty works.

“Garment,” from 1890s Egypt, is a gorgeous piece within “Threads Across Time: African Textiles,” organized by Kristen Windmuller-Luna, curator of African art. The section is CMA’s first focus of African textiles in nearly five decades, the news release states.

The primary focus of “A Painting Is a Sculpture,” from Curator of Contemporary Art Emily Liebert, is “Plywood Sunset Leaning (Fragment Series).” The difficult-to-describe piece — consisting of elements including (but not limited to) a large ladder, mirror, paper cups, a newspaper, acrylic paint and wood — is a collaboration between artists from different eras, Marcel Broodthaers (Belgian, 1924 to 1976) and Sarah Sze (American, born in 1969).

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You need to walk around “Plywood Sunset Leaning (Fragment Series)” — a work attributed to Sarah Sze but also involving the earlier work of Marcel Broodthaers — to fully appreciate it.

Mark Meszoros — The News-Herald

The tall piece is an example of something that doesn’t easily physically fit into an everyday space in the museum, Bergh says.

As with “Trauma and Transformation,” “A Focused Look” presents but one work, a small 1868 landscape painting by Sanford R. Gifford, “Haverstraw Bay.” It is lovingly bathed in light in an otherwise-darkened space that includes a bench a few feet away.

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“Stories From Storage” section “A Focused Look” shines a loving light on “Haverstraw Bay” by Sanford R. Gifford.

Mark Meszoros — The News-Herald

“Upon entering, please feel free to slow down, get comfortable, and experience the painting in a mindful manner,” reads an accompanying placard signed by William P. and Amanda C. Madar Curator of American Painting and Sculpture Mark Cole. “In doing so, we hope you will discover the advantages of concentrated, contemplative viewing, and approach that might, in turn, impact the way you look at other works through the museum.”

Those residing west of Cleveland may want to spend time deeply exploring “Lenore Tawney: Postcard Collages.” In her introduction to the section, Curator of Prints and Drawings Emily J. Peters, calls the Lorain-born Tawney “a pioneering fiber artist whose groundbreaking loom techniques and large-scale public fiber installations challenged the prevailing emphasis on paintings and abstraction in the New York art acne of the 1960s and 1970s.”

Peters goes on to say that just as essential were Tawney’s assemblages, collages and mail art she created “in abundance” beginning in the '60s.

The many postcards on display in this space were mailed to a friend and curator, Katharine Kuh, over 11 years and are “layered with personal metaphors” and engage with universal themes including “fragility and resilience, spirituality and childhood innocence.”

A few other notable sections and their curators: “Playbook on Solitude,” Curator of Korean Art Sooa Im McCormick; “Green Tara and the Art of Protection,” George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and southeast Asian Art Sonya Rhie Mace; and “Paper Airplanes,” Curator of Photography Barbara Tannenbaum.

“It's all kinds of different temperatures and moods, media, periods. issues. questions and voices — not only the object’s voices but also curatorial voices, for sure,” Bergh says. “I think it's the first show that we’ve all signed our wall panels on.”

"It's all kinds of different temperatures and moods, media, periods. issues. questions and voices — not only the object’s voices but also curatorial voices."

Susan Bergh, curator of pre-Columbian and Native North American art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, on "Stories From Storage"

Although she acknowledges that largely working from home and recent Northeast Ohio weather has kept her from seeing the show completely put together, she believes it could justify more than one visit.

“It’s huge, to begin with — 300 plus objects. And it came together over a very tight production schedule, and we’re all taking our hats off to the production crew — dozens of people.

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‘Stories From Storage’

Where: Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Blvd.

When: Through May 16.

Tickets; $12, adult; $9, seniors and adult groups; $6, students and children ages 5 to 17; and free for CMA members and children under 5.

Related virtual program: “Changing the Stories Museums Tell,” 6 p.m. Feb. 24.

Info: clevelandart.org; 216-421-7350.

MORE INFORMATION

+5Cleveland Museum of Art open again with new protocols

Cleveland Museum of Art open again with new protocols

Hand sanitizer stations.

Wizard World Cleveland 2021 Broken Transmitter Huntington Convention Center, Cleveland, OH

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