The Canton Museum of Art Announces Fall Exhibitions Opening

The Canton Museum of Art (CMA) kicks off its 85th Anniversary Season with the featured exhibition ReTooled: Highlights from the Hechinger Collection, an engaging and thought-provoking look at the unexpected subject of tools, through more than 40 inspiring paintings, sculptures, works on paper and photographs.

Curated by Jared Packard-Winkler and organized for tour by International Arts & Artists, Washington D.C., ReTooled will be on view at CMA beginning August 25 through October 25, 2020. Three additional original exhibitions - Approaching the Shift: Drawings by Judith Brandon, Stories: BIPOC Artists from the CMA Collection, and Industry, Innovation, and Progress - will also be on view.

While the Museum's galleries will be open for regular hours, with time-ticketed advance reservations, a virtual "opening" via Facebook Live is anticipated for First Friday, September 4, 2020, from 5 - 7pm. Watch for more details on the CMA website and social media platforms.

Beginning Tuesday, August 25, CMA will return to regular operating hours for its galleries: Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. The Museum will be closed to the public on Mondays.

Under CMA's COVID-19 protocols and procedures, masks, social distancing, and limited capacity attendance remains in effect. Advance, timed-ticketed reservations are required through the CMA website at cantonart.org/reservetickets. Regular CMA admission prices apply. Free Thursdays offer free admission to all, courtesy of PNC Foundation. CMA members always receive free admission.

CMA continues to follow guidelines from the Ohio Governor's Office and Ohio Department of Public Health, CDC, the American Alliance of Museums, and best practices set forth by museum directors across the state and country for safe operations amid COVID-19. To learn what to expect for a comfortable and safe visit, please read "Visiting CMA with COVID-19 Precautions" at cantonart.org.

ReTooled: Highlights from the Hechinger Collection

ReTooled celebrates the prevalence of tools in our lives with art that magically transforms utilitarian objects into fanciful works that speak of beauty, insight, and wit. Providing a dynamic entry point into the rich themes, materials and processes of 20th century art, ReTooled profiles 28 visionary artists from the Hechinger Collection including major artists such as Arman, Richard Estes, Howard Finster, Red Grooms, Jacob Lawrence, Fernand Léger and H.C. Westermann; photographers Berenice Abbott and Walker Evans; as well as pop artists Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, and James Rosenquist.

ReTooled is a dynamic exhibition with a compelling mission: to celebrate an overlooked subject by engaging audiences with wildly creative and thought provoking works that highlight formative trends of 20th century art.

The exhibition consists of four sections: Objects of Beauty; Material Illusions; Instruments of Satire; and Tools: An Extension of Self.

ReTooled: Highlights from the Hechinger Collection was organized by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC. Gift of John and June Hechinger.

International Arts & Artists in Washington, DC is a non-profit arts service organization dedicated to increasing cross-cultural understanding and exposure to the arts internationally through exhibitions, programs and services to artists, art institutions and the public. Visit www.artsandartists.org. MEDIA CONTACT: IA&A to 202.338.0680, TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org

Approaching the Shift focuses on several of Judith Brandon's large-scale drawings, rooted in emotion. About the works chosen for the exhibition, the Rocky River-based artist says, "The shifting world of 2020 is flooding our conscious and unconscious lives. The economic world doesn't know whether to be open or closed, and the emotional world is reacting with fear to a pandemic and to social upheavals. Within each of us is the ability to change the way we view our circumstances, and when we do, it begins to change the environment around us."

Each piece of Brandon's nature- and emotion-fused work begins with scribed elements on cotton rag paper. The scribed lines become geometry, text, and framework that initially define each piece. Colored washes of inks and dyes become an abstract underpainting. Washes saturate the paper, flowing through the incised lines, enhancing them, and creating the emotional framework. Pastels, charcoal, razors and graphite are all used to create top layers of imagery defining the final subject.

This exhibition of works from the Canton Museum of Art's Collection seeks to present some of the beauty and complexity of works created by BIPOC artists during the last century. The work of BIPOC-Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-artists in the last century has reflected the struggle of Native Americans, Black Americans, and People of Color to receive the legal protections, rights, and privileges afforded to white Americans. This has been seen throughout the last century in the form of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s, the work of the American Indian Movement (AIM), the recent Black Lives Matter protests, and the outcry over the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on Native American and African American communities.

In response to these unique historic developments, Native American and African American artists have continually sought to showcase through their art the joys and pains of everyday life, the richness of culture, and their resiliency in the face of immense cultural, monetary, and human loss. Through their work, every BIPOC artist represented in this exhibition, including works by Dean Mitchell and Romare Bearden, presents a complex statement on their own experience and perception of race in the United States.

Industry, Invention, and Progress highlights the progressiveness of America and its innovations, while examining the shifting economy and ecology of a region, and a nation, undergoing tremendous changes. Depicted in this exhibition are laborers, railroads, automobiles, coal yards, and more. City life and suburban life are also depicted, due to the heavy impacts of manufacturing. During the last century, symbols of industry such as factories, smokestacks, towers, cranes, and trains became icons of the landscape. These themes are detailed through various styles of art, such as Realism. Included in this exhibition are artists from the CMA Collection such as Lawrence Blazey, Arnold Boedeker, Emerson Burkhart, Carl Gaertner, and more.

In addition to pieces from the CMA Collection are items on loan from Hoover Historical Center and William McKinley Presidential Library & Museum. Paintings created to be used as advertisements for Hoover vacuums will be on display, as well as other products that Hoover made, such as parachutes. On loan from McKinley are prints of workers inside of Timken Steel. All pieces join together to create a cohesive look at how important the industrial revolutions and advancements are to our current day.

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