As an older Midwestern city, Cleveland has a rich cultural heritage from music, theater and art. Make sure to add these to your list:
Cleveland Museum of Art: Opened for over 100 years, The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of the world’s great art museums with a collection of over 30,000 works spanning 5,000 years from ancient Egypt to the present. It is located in the University Circle neighborhood. Make sure to visit the website for the current exhibition schedule. It also features tours, music and performances, lectures and films. It has a lovely atrium, plus has the Provenance Cafe and Provenance Restaurant for more fine dining. I loved seeing American works by Bellows and Church, contemporary art by Warhol and others, European paintings by Goya, Turner and Corot and Impressionist paintings by Monet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Caillebotte, Cezanne, van Gogh and Gauguin.
The Cleveland Orchestra: Celebrating its 100 anniversary in 2018, the Cleveland Orchestra is considered one of the world’s best symphony orchestras. It divides its time each year across concert seasons at home in Cleveland’s Severance Hall and each summer at Blossom Music Center. Additional portions of the year are devoted to touring and to a series of innovative and intensive performance residencies. These include an annual set of concerts and education programs and partnerships in Miami, Florida, a recurring residency at Vienna’s Musikverein, and regular appearances at Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival, at New York’s Lincoln Center Festival, and at Indiana University.
Playhouse Square: Located in downtown Cleveland, Playhouse Square, consisting of nine individual theaters and performance spaces, is the largest performing arts center outside of New York. It offers a diverse performance schedule featuring Broadway plays and musicals, lectures, concerts, dance and comedy performances and other theater events.
You might also check out the performance calendar for the Cleveland Play House. It has been a local institution since the early 1900’s. They perform at three theaters in Playhouse Square.
On my next visit, I will definitely visit MOCA Cleveland or the Museum of Contemporary Art located at 11400 Euclid Avenue and the 78th Street Studios, the largest art and design complex in Northeast Ohio, featuring 170,000 square feet of art galleries, artist studios, performance spaces, and music recording studios. They have Third Fridays, where each month there are visual exhbiits, music, food and pop up vendors.
