Included with the cost of general admission.

We’re excited to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Think Outside the Brick: The Creative Art of LEGO®. CMA’s annual holiday celebration of the creative potential of LEGO® bricks returns, featuring an enormous model of Columbus built collaboratively by the Ohio LEGO User’s Group (OhioLUG). The exhibition includes the return of familiar landmarks, imaginative creations, and new additions.

This year includes fantastic creations by Ohio Lego Users Group, artist Emiko Oye, CMA Docents, and more.

Activities in and near the exhibition include:
• A museum-wide scavenger hunt.
• A LEGO® bricks building area.
• A design-your-own Minifigure drawing station.

Presenting Sponsor
The Huntington National Bank

Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak is a special exhibition and requires an additional fee.

Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak will be the first major retrospective of Sendak since his death in 2012, and the largest and most complete exhibition of one of the most celebrated and original artists of our time. On view from October 21, 2022 through March 5, 2023, the exhibition is organized by the Columbus Museum of Art in conjunction with The Maurice Sendak Foundation. An international tour is planned following its presentation in Columbus.

The exhibition is comprised of more than 150 sketches, storyboards, and paintings by Sendak drawn from the collection of The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Highlights include original work for Sendak’s most famous books: Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Outside Over There. Sendak was influenced by writers ranging from William Shakespeare to Herman Melville. Alongside landmark pictures for Sendak’s own books will be examples of artwork he created for such celebrated publications as The Bat-Poet by Randall Jarrell, A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss, The Little Bear Series by Else Holmelund Minarik, and Zlateh the Goat by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Designs for many of Sendak’s opera, theater, film, and television productions are also featured in the exhibition.

Wild Things Are Happening is guest curated by Jonathan Weinberg, artist, and Curator of The Maurice Sendak Foundation. Weinberg also edited the lavishly illustrated catalog that brings together a diversity of perspectives, including Sendak’s own words about his career and a major essay by distinguished art historian Thomas Crow. Both the book and the exhibition are notable for their scope, their focus on Sendak’s emulation of other artists, and the role played by art history in his creative process. As Sendak himself said, “if there must be more to life, then it is surely what art provides.” In this spirit the retrospective highlights the relationship of Sendak’s pictures to the art that he collected and loved including works by William Blake, Walt Disney, Winsor McCay, George Stubbs, Beatrix Potter, and Philipp Otto Runge.

Nannette Maciejunes, CMA executive director and CEO observes, “So many of us grew up with Maurice Sendak’s illustrated books. This exhibition not only gives you the chance to see original drawings for his beloved books, but to discover Sendak’s range as an artist and the true depth of his creativity.”

Sendak’s impact on the broader world of the performing arts is illuminated through his collaboration and friendship with directors, composers, playwrights, and visual artists, such as Carroll Ballard, Frank Corsaro, Spike Jonze, Tony Kushner, Twyla Tharp, and Arthur Yorinks. The exhibition will also highlight Sendak’s love of Mozart and the way the composer’s life and work influenced not only Sendak’s designs for Mozart’s operas, such as The Magic Flute, but also key books including Outside Over There and Dear Mili. As Sendak stated, “I love opera beyond anything, and Mozart beyond anything.”

The Columbus Museum of Art is proud to be the only American venue for the exhibition Raphael—The Power of Renaissance Images: The Dresden Tapestries and their Impact, on display from July 15 through October 30, 2022. The exhibition is centered around six tapestries, woven in the 17th century, on loan from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery of Dresden), Germany, one of Europe’s most renowned museums.

Working in partnership with the Old Masters Picture Gallery (part of the Dresden State Art Collections) located in Columbus’s sister-city of Dresden, CMA will present for the first time to American audiences these monumental and historically significant works, woven directly from cartoons (painted compositions) by the Renaissance master Raphael. The Dresden tapestries underwent extensive restoration in the 1990s but had not been on display since 2008. Following their début in an exhibition for European audiences at the Dresden Picture Gallery last year, this will be the tapestries’ first ever trip to the United States. The exhibition focuses on the creation of the Dresden tapestries and introduces their various patrons and owners through the centuries—in particular, Charles I, King of England, and Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland—while also highlighting Raphael’s broad impact and influence on later artists.

Around 1516 Raphael completed his cartoons for tapestries commissioned to hang in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican. The Dresden tapestries are one of numerous sets woven from Raphael’s cartoons after his death. The tapestries depict scenes from the New Testament, most from the book Acts of the Apostles, focused on the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul. Their stirring themes and powerful style inspired future generations of artists for centuries to come. The tapestries’ impact is examined in the second part of the exhibition, which includes drawings by the hand of Raphael that were studies for his cartoons. Numerous other works—paintings, prints, drawings, and ceramic ware—were created by artists influenced by Raphael’s designs. Noted renaissance and baroque masters such as Rubens and Poussin are represented in the exhibition. One section focuses on the journey of the cartoons and tapestries through the centuries and across geographic boundaries. Portraits of major figures like Charles I and Augustus the Strong in both painting and sculpture highlight their respective roles in preserving the timeless legacy of the Raphael tapestries.

An accompanying catalogue, published in both German and English editions, provides a deeper examination and explores the art-historical legacy of the tapestries. Essays by noted scholars provide detailed discussions of the conception, creation, and restoration of the tapestries, as well as their reception across time. Raphael—The Power of Renaissance Images is a testament to the importance of the visual arts, especially textiles, as fundamental components in the understanding of history and culture. The Columbus Museum of Art is proud to bring these extraordinary works to new American audiences.

Thank you sponsors

Presenting Sponsors
Peggy & Bob Walter

Premier Sponsors
Hugh Westwater & Linda Larrimer

Major Sponsors
Brent Bishop
Beth Crane & Richard McKee
Ann & Tom Hoaglin
Elizabeth S. Johnson Family Trust

Champion Sponsors
Carol Andreae & Jim Garland
Dareth Gerlach
Mike Petrecca & Heather Grant
Anne Powell Riley
Holly & Steve Wittmann

Experience Sponsors
Deborah M. Anderson
Barbara Hackman
Drs. Lawson & Mitchell
Nancy & Tom Lurie
Dr. Annegreth T. Nill
Miriam & Bernard Yenkin

Friend Sponsors
Lucy Ackley & Robert Collier
Ben Addison
Bette & Jerome Dare
The James Dicke Family
Dresden Sister City, Inc.
Alexa Konstantinos & Courtney Miller
Nannette & George Maciejunes

The exhibition is supported by the Charles Kleibacker Endowed Fund for Excellence
Additional funding provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the HumanitiesThrough March 5, 2023

The Columbus Museum of Art will present LA Woman: Kali, Artographer, the first museum exhibition of the work of Kali, the recently discovered photographer from the 1960s. LA Woman, which will be on view from September 10, 2022, to March 12, 2023, features more than 50 vintage and contemporary prints by the artist.

“The Columbus Museum of Art is very proud to present the first museum exhibition of Kali’s work”, said Nannette V. Maciejunes, CMA Executive Director and CEO. “The discovery of a new artistic voice, particularly one that was overlooked during the artist’s own lifetime, is particularly exciting. Kali was not only a talented photographer; she also was an early practitioner of experimental and alternative photography with which we are so familiar today. Columbus also is pleased to be the first art museum to acquire works by the artist.”

The exhibition is organized by the Columbus Museum of Art in collaboration with the artist’s estate. The show is co-curated by Nannette Maciejunes, CMA Executive Director and CEO, Tyler Cann, former CMA Pizzuti Family Curator of Contemporary Art and Acting Chief Curator, and photographer Len Prince. A national tour of the exhibition with Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California, follows the show in Columbus.

This exhibition is supported by the Columbus Museum of Art’s William and Sarah Ross Soter Endowment for Photography.Admission Information

As part of FotoFocus biennial, CMA presents I Hear America Singing: Contemporary Photography from America at the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art. Encompassing more than 100 photographic projects at participating venues across Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, Dayton, and Columbus, the 2022 FotoFocus biennial is presented under the theme of World Record. The theme considers photography’s extensive record of life on earth, humankind’s impact on the natural world, and the choices we now face as a global community.

Curated by Ashley Lumb, I Hear America Singing was originally conceived for the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in Amman, Jordan, where it was presented in 2021. Using a variety of formats and approaches, the fifteen photographers in this exhibition challenge the monolithic concept of American identity to highlight the diversity of lived experiences in the United States.

Featured artists in I Hear America Singing: Contemporary Photography from America include Matthew Brandt, Mercedes Dorame, Lucas Foglia, Wen-Hang Lin, Michael Lundgren, Alex Maclean, Griselda San Martin, Pamela Pecchio, David Benjamin Sherry, For Freedoms, Greg Stimac, Millee Tibbs, Wendel White, and William Wilson.Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak is a special exhibition and requires an additional fee.