Cleveland

FRONT International Triennial Opening Day Press Conference!

The BIG day is finally here!

Since I had received press accreditation back in January 2018, I received a password for the FRONT VIP Portal, and the following details from the SUTTON PR firm:

... our opening day press conference on Thursday July 12th, 2018 at 10:30 am. William M. Griswold, Director and President of the Cleveland Museum of Art, will join both Fred Bidwell, Executive Director of FRONT, and Michelle Grabner, Artist Director of the inaugural edition, to provide remarks, alongside the leadership of FRONT’S presenting partners. The event will take place at The Cleveland Museum of Art in the Gartner Auditorium at 1150 East Blvd, Cleveland OH 44106.

I enjoyed talking to several people at the reception -- it was great to see so many people here from all over the country.

We were excited to be invited to attend the Saturday, July 7, 2018, Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors preview.

Here are our photos from the preview, followed by the tweets we shared as we toured the exhibition. We enjoyed seeing this special presentation of Yayoi Kusama's work, and even walked through the exhibition a second time to see everything from a different perspective.

Photos can't do it justice. The Infinity Mirrors installations of Yayoi Kusama are something you truly need to experience. It is great that we have an art museum in Cleveland that features great diversity, from the Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe exhibition we saw in the spring, to today's Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors.

After attending the inaugural Common Ground on July 30, 2017, I knew that I would want to make a point of attending future Common Ground community conversations and related events. When I learned that the Cleveland Foundation planned to have the 2018 Common Ground on June 24th, which was during a week I had planned to be out of town, I delayed the start of my vacation. I am glad that I stayed in Cleveland that day to attend Common Ground 2018!

With so many interesting topics, I had a problem. It was great to have the problem of having to choose from so many options. In the end, I was able to take the 13+ sites that had topics that interested me, and decide on four that I would really like to attend. With the very full agendas happening at each location, I ended up only having time to visit two sites:

• Sunday, June 24 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM - Social Enterprise: Uplifting the Underserved at Cosmic Bobbins

• Sunday, June 24 1:00 PM - 3:30 PM -Why Do Parks Matter? - The Trust for Public Land

On June 9, 2018, we had a great day that we want to share with you. This blog post includes 152 tweets from before and during the Cleveland Museum of Art's Parade the Circle, and from our evening activities on the Cleveland Metroparks' waterfront. Writing this post reminds us of the fun we had, and we hope it encourages others to explore these and related activities in the future.

We were able to attend the Parade the Circle together again in Cleveland's University Circle, and wanted to share our experience and photos from our @sos_jr tweets and retweets. If you never attended Parade the Circle, it is a must-attend Cleveland event!

We started off June 2018 with some great activities and music. We often go to the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Metroparks, and we wanted to share in this blog post some of the unique things we did on June 1 and June 2, 2018.

What we needed was a simple day to get away -- thank you, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, and the Cleveland Zoological Society, for providing the perfect venue.

Earlier in the month, we had learned from tweets by Etsuko Dunham, Danielle Garbo, and Kelly Manderfield about some incredibly beautiful Japanese cherry tree blossoms in the Cleveland Metroparks' Brookside Reservation, which is very near the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.

There is always something going on that you can learn about by following the right organziations on Twitter. I saw a tweet by @ShareTheRiver that linked to Cleveland Water Tour of the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant

The Share The River event post stated that in celebration of American Water Works Association's Drinking Water Week, Cleveland Water was hosting an open house of their Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant. This was the final event of Cleveland Water's Drinking Water Week 2018 activities.

I am very interested in the subject of water treatment and city resource infrastructure. 

2018 marked the fifth year for Station Hope, which I have enjoyed for the past two years. It is an incredible event to experience!

Congratulations to Cleveland Public Theatre and all the Station Hope 2018 organizers for the grand success of this annual Cleveland event!

Julie and attend most of the MIX at CMA events during the year. We enjoy both the general party atmosphere in the Ames Family Atrium, and the themed tours through the galleries led by art experts from the Cleveland Museum of Art.

My CMNH friends, adult programs coordinator Ashley Hall, and preparator and lab manager Lee Hall, had often recommended that I attend a Cleveland Museum of Natural History Members Behind-The-Scenes Night. They told me that attendees get to explore the normally off-limits lower levels of the Museum.

Therefore, when Spike Radway invited me to attend with him and Henry Lee, I knew I needed to make time to go.