Turning city streets into a gallery—and every ride into a story
This summer, the Maltz Museum is transforming buses and trolleys into mobile exhibitions that carry more than passengers—they showcase Cleveland’s history. Wrapped in bold, captivating visuals and featuring extraordinary artifacts from our collection, each vehicle is a traveling invitation to explore stories of creativity, resilience, and identity at the Maltz Museum.
Max Kalish, 1926
Collection of Western Reserve Historical Society
Kalish, the son of Eastern European immigrants, emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio, and later studied sculpture at the Cleveland School of Art. This series honored the American laborer with modernist sculptures. The Engineer celebrates industry, dignity, and the Jewish-American pursuit of progress, while The Reaper represents the harvest or culmination of labor and production.
Joe Shuster, ca. 1947–1948
Created by Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, two Jewish teens from Cleveland, Superman became a global icon and a powerful symbol of justice. This early sketch reveals how Jewish identity helped shape the world’s first superhero.
Mid-to-late 1800s
Collection of Western Reserve Historical Society
This exquisite wedding dress belonged to Bertha Stearn, who married into one of Cleveland’s most prominent Jewish retail families. The garment offers a rare glimpse into Jewish life, love, and prosperity in 19th-century America.
Alexander Warshawsky, 1920
Collection of Western Reserve Historical Society
Warshawsky’s vibrant impressionist painting captures a Venetian vista and the artistic talent nurtured in Cleveland’s Jewish community. Warshawsky and his brother, Abel, were two of the most talented Cleveland-trained artists of the early 20th century. He was the child of Jewish immigrants from Poland, and the family settled in Cleveland, where Alexander and his brother were formally trained in art at the Cleveland School of Art.
Ephraim Moses Lilien, 1909
Robert Hays Gries Collection, Congregation Mishkan Or Museum, 1991.14
This artwork illustrates the famous passage in the Book of Genesis when God promises the childless Abraham an offspring as numerous as the stars. Lilien, a prominent Art Noveau Jewish artist, offers an expressive and elegant interpretation of the mysterious and overwhelming sensation of the nocturnal divine revelation. From here Abraham will proceed to forge his Covenant with God, the starting point of all Abrahamic religions to follow.