Past Exhibitions

In collaboration with Cleveland State University

1930s Cleveland, Ohio…labor strikes and riots…the “Mad Butcher” torso slayings…the city in the throes of the Great Depression. Hard times, but with them glimmers of hope. The Terminal Tower opened, Jesse Owens set records, Superman was created. Budding artists and performers were finding hope at a settlement that would become Karamu House, a center of community and gathering place for free expression.

Working with Cleveland State University, Karamu House, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Artists Foundation, Western Reserve Historical Society and a private collection, the Museum has gathered more than sixty-five pieces, art and artifacts that open a window to a turbulent and creative time in Cleveland.

Sponsored by Calfee, Halter & Griswold, LLP and Marilyn Cagin.

In 2008, photographer David Bergholz and his wife spent two weeks in Tel Aviv. He had expected to only shoot pictures for personal use, but day by day he became increasingly intrigued with the city and its environs and wound up with more than 700 images. He saw Tel Aviv as a vibrant metropolis of great energy and quirky beauty, with contrasts of wealth and decay and a distinct sketchiness in its infrastructure that is both charming and a little bit scary.

 

David Bergholz is a fine arts photographer who has exhibited his images and conceptual work at SPACES, Heights Arts, Murray Hill Galleries, LLC (NEO+1), The Cleveland Botanical Garden, the John F. Seiberling Gallery in the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, the Massillon Museum, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, University Hospitals, Firelands Association for the Visual Arts in Oberlin and the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh.

For the first time outside of their corporate offices, the Mayfield Village-headquartered insurance company is displaying About The Right of Being Different: The Art of Diversity and Inclusion at Progressive for an exclusive engagement at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage. Presented by Baker & Hostetler LLP, this provocative exhibition of contemporary art explores themes of diversity and tolerance, asking tough questions about our personal viewpoints and prejudices.

 

The artworks in the exhibition range from more traditional mediums such as painting and sculpture to the up-to-date technology of video installation. Works from well-established artists with international recognition will share space with pieces from emerging artists, including local talent. All of the works in the exhibition will challenge and enlighten visitors.

 

This exhibition is presented through the generosity of Presenting Sponsor Baker Hostetler with support from The Alvin, Lottie, Rachel and Azzizi Gray Fund, Toby Devan Lewis and Stewart and Donna Kohl. The Museum is generously funded by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. Additional support from the Ohio Arts Council, which helps fund the Museum with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.

Produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Nazi Olympics takes a stunning look at how world politics, sports, and racism converged in Germany. The exhibition explores the issues surrounding the 1936 Games–the Nazis’ use of propaganda, the intense boycott debate, the history of the torch run, the historic performance of Jesse Owens, and more. Video testimonials from Olympians and boycotters will be featured, along with an original torch from that year’s Games, historical photographs and film footage. The Maltz Museum has added several items of Owens’ personal memorabilia, courtesy of The Ohio State University’s collection, including his diary from the voyage to Berlin, one of his gold medals and a trophy won at East Tech High School in 1932.

 

 

Presented by the Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Cavaliers and Cleveland Indians, with support from KeyCorp.

A stunning chronicle of the brave and innovative women who played a significant role in shaping our nation, Women & Spirit reveals the remarkable story of pioneering women who established schools, hospitals and other enduring institutions and continue to work for peace and social justice. First arriving on America’s shores almost 300 years ago, Catholic sisters built and led schools, hospitals, orphanages, colleges, and other social institutions at a time when women had few professional opportunities. This fascinating compilation of first-person accounts, rare artifacts, compelling films and important photographs reveals a new perspective on American history, and includes a section of local artifacts and stories from Northeast Ohio.

 

Women with Spirit, a portion of the exhibition produced by the Maltz Museum, consists of a wall of quotes and a short film by local director Steven Hacker. The quotes are from women throughout history in the areas of faith, determination and service. Space is available for guests to add their thoughts on a woman they admire. In the film, nine women from Northeast Ohio were interviewed by Mr. Hacker to explore how women today integrate their beliefs into their lives and work. The cast features Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, Representative Marcia L. Fudge and Rabbi Sharon Marcus.

 

A project of The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in association with Cincinnati Museum Center. It comes to Cleveland through the generosity of lead sponsors Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland, Notre Dame College, PNC and Ursuline College/Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland, with support from The Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, Cleveland Foundation, Marymount Hospital/Cleveland Clinic, the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation, The John P. Murphy Foundation, the Samuel H. and Maria Miller Foundation, Sisters of Charity Foundation of Canton, and The Thomas and Sandra Sullivan Family.

Celebrate Cleveland’s cultural heritage with an exhibition on the delightful Cleveland Cultural Gardens; artifacts, costumes and items from various cultures and traditions; and events, activities, food and performances throughout the month. From African American, Irish and German settlers in the early 1800s to Italian, Hungarian, Chinese, Polish, Ukrainian and many others in the mid and late 1800s and since, Cleveland draws strength and interest from our diverse mix of ethnic populations and neighborhoods.

 

Leo Weidenthal, editor of The Jewish Independent, felt each of the city’s national communities should have a garden site, and conceived the Cultural Gardens in the early 1900s. The celebration promotes the Museum’s mission of building bridges of understanding with other cultures, and ties in with the Museum’s permanent collection, An American Story, tracking the arrival of immigrants and the region’s
early settlers and neighborhoods, and The Temple-Tifereth Israel gallery with 180 priceless artifacts and art from around the world.

During both world wars, our nation used posters to recruit, raise funds and exhort civilians to conserve. A collection of vintage war propaganda posters, shown together for the first time at the Maltz Museum, World War Posters features exquisitely designed examples of wartime and period art. Often created by famous illustrators like Howard Chandler Christy and James Montgomery Flagg, these posters are prized for their rarity, use of color and creative use of imagery.

 

 

Loaned by The Berger Family from their private collection.

From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terrorism, The Enemy Within provides unprecedented perspective into terror on American soil. The exhibition uncovers forgotten stories of domestic terrorists and foreign agents, militant radicals and saboteurs who have threatened America’s sense of security over the past 200 years. It explores how we identify enemies, and how we keep the country safe without compromising the civil liberties upon which it was founded.

 

Travel through time to discover dramatic stories and see artifacts, replicas, historic photographs and film footage, interactive displays, polls, video and much more.

 

Created and loaned by the International Spy Museum, and presented with support from the Citizens of Cuyahoga County through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and The Ohio Arts Council, and media sponsorship from WJW-FOX8.

Visitors are immersed in an interactive world of Superheroes and illuminated to the creative processes that drove their mostly-Jewish creators to provide America with timeless icons such as Superman, Batman, Captain America and Wonder Woman. The Maltz Museum presents this exhibition with a proud nod to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Glenville High School students who created Superman, and their importance in the development of comic book art and narrative.

 

In addition to rare, never-before-displayed comic book art and memorabilia, the exhibition features 1940s serials, video interviews, a vintage, child-sized Batmobile ride, an interactive phone booth, a drawing studio, and try-on superhero costumes for children.

 

Sponsored by BNY Mellon, Irv & Gloria Fine, RSM McGladrey and ShoreBank and ongoing support from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Israel: 60 Years – Memorable Photographs by members of the Magnum Photo Agency
The history of modern Israel is the latest chapter in what Abba Eban once called “the miracle and mystery of Jewish history – self preservation, resonance, suffering and renewal.” The Sixtieth Anniversary of its 1948 founding offers a cause for celebration and a pause for reflection. This exhibition features 60 stunning photographs in black-and-white and color.

 

The Magnum Photo Agency was launched as a photographer’s cooperative in the aftermath of World War II, only a few months prior to the birth of the State of Israel in 1948. The exhibition includes photographs of three of Magnum’s founding fathers, Robert Capa, David “Chim” Seymour and George Rodger. Capa and Seymour, themselves Jewish émigrés from central Europe, shared an enormous enthusiasm for the struggle of the new arrivals and covered the story with deep affection. Israel’s struggles and triumphs, tears and laughter, have been recorded in each subsequent decade by leading lights in Magnum’s international roster of photojournalists whose work is included.

 

Israel: A Look Forward
Tomorrow’s Technology and Northeast Ohio’s Role

 

Hopes and Dreams: Remembering the Birth of the State of Israel
A Film by Steven Hacker

From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany’s government led by Adolf Hitler promoted a nationalism that combined territorial expansion with claims of biological superiority, promoting an “Aryan master race”. Enlisting physicians, geneticists, psychiatrists and anthropologists who believed that the control of heredity could enhance the human race, they implemented public health and population policies aimed at “cleansing” German society of biological threats. Victims included not only Jews, deemed “racially foreign”, but also mentally ill and disabled persons, homosexuals, and others seen as sources of “biological degeneration.”

 

‘Science as salvation’ in the years leading up to and during the Holocaust is explored in this traveling exhibition that features fascinating objects, photographs, film footage and eyewitness and survivor testimonies to tell a chilling story.

 

Where Would You Draw the Line?

 

This stunning collection of contemporary art makes it U.S. premiere at The Maltz. Spanning from just before the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the present, the art mirrors Hungary’s tumultuous past, with portraits, emotion-filled genre scenes, landscapes, abstracts and group scenes, some reminiscent of the Impressionist and Cubist movements.

 

The Honorable Nancy G. Brinker began this collection while Ambassador to Hungary. She took her post soon after September 11, 2001, and unable to receive artwork from home, invited Budapest artists to display their work in the American Residence. She came to love the art of Hungary, and returning home decided to tour her collection to give visibility to the artists and provide a creative new method of support for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, which she founded in memory of her sister, Suzy.

Accompanying the exhibition, a three-week celebration of Hungarian art and culture featured food, music, displays of embroidery and porcelain and Hungarian books and literature.

A selection of extraordinary paintings from the Renaissance through Romanticism by world- renowned artists including Rembrandt, Rubens, Turner, El Greco and more. Recently featured at The Frick Collection in New York, many of these important paintings have not been on view in Cleveland for more than two years due to the expansion of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

 

 

Organized by The Cleveland Museum of Art in collaboration with the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage. Presenting Sponsor: KeyBank.

The Maltz Museum celebrates women in sports with a special exhibition panel on view as Cleveland hosts the 2007 NCAA Women’s Final Four tournament. Jewish + Female=Athlete shares stories and pictures of 26 outstanding female Jewish athletes. These women faced many trials and tribulations to achieve their hopes and dreams.

 

 

Presented by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and locally coincides with the Women Rock series of community programs sponsored by The Greater Cleveland Sports Commission.

The tragedy of the Holocaust has never been portrayed more forcefully than in the series of 45 unforgettable wall hangings by internationally-renowned artist Judith Weinshall Liberman. With consummate skill, profound emotion and a remarkable depth of understanding, Liberman creates a world of fear, loss, hope and redemption in works of fabric—works that raise questions demanding reflection and self-exploration by all who view them.

 

Accompanying the wall hangings is a selection of portraits from 50 Faces, a photographic documentary by acclaimed Cleveland photographer Herbert Ascherman, Jr. that captures faces and stories of Northeast Ohio Holocaust survivors, POWs and concentration camp liberators.

 

Made possible through the loan of the Holocaust Wall Hangings from the collection of The Temple Museum of Religious Art at The Temple-Tifereth Israel and 50 Faces from the collection of the Western Reserve Historical Society.

An extraordinary collection of Christian and Jewish biblical treasures, on view in the United States for the first time, this blockbuster exhibition features archeological artifacts deeply significant to religious beliefs and practices today—including important Dead Sea Scrolls.

 

Excavated in Israel, these artifacts come together to reveal a story of intertwined roots and shared history. Cradle of Christianity examines two periods of major consequence for Christianity and Judaism, inviting visitors to explore the final days of the Second Temple—a time when Jesus of Nazareth lived—and discover the shared history of Christianity and Judaism as they developed in the Holy Land side by side.

 

Organized by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem and the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, Cleveland, Ohio and made possible in part by the generous support of Glenmede, KeyBank, Ulmer and Berne LLP, Wachovia Securities, Mellon, RMS McGladrey, George Blumenthal and the Center for Online Judaic Studies, and The Gries Family.

From Rome to New York, Sarajevo to Jerusalem, French photographer Frederic Brenner chronicles the Jewish Diaspora in more than 40 countries across five continents. His stunning images challenge traditional stereotypes and portray the scope and variety of Jewish life at the end of the twentieth century.

 

Organized by the Brooklyn Museum and made possible by the Righteous Person’s Foundation and other generous friends of the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition at the Maltz Museum is made possible by the generous support of National City.