It’s an exciting time for Nadiah Rivera Fellah . Associate curator of contemporary art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Fellah has seen the openings at CMA in recent weeks of two passion projects: “Rose B. Simpson: Strata” and “Picturing the Border.
” Let’s start with the former, as a museum visitor would have to work to miss it. Residing in CMA’s wide-open, naturally lit Ames Family Atrium, “Strata” consists of two huge sculptures by New Mexican Artist Simpson made with her signature clay, along with metalwork, porous concrete and cast bronze, according to CMA press materials. The museum commissioned the exhibition, marking only the second time — following 2019’s “Ámà: The Gathering Place” — it had done so for the space that opened in 2012, Fellah says in a recent phone interview.
“A few years later, we wanted to do it again because — you know if you’ve been to the CMA — the Atrium is such a great large space,” she says. “And we’ve found that visitors really love when it’s activated with artwork. It’s free to enter, and people meet there; you can read, relax, get a meal — so it’s a great place to encounter art.
” The art visitors will encounter there through mid-April stands tall, with each figural sculpture reaching 25 feet into the air. The pieces are, at least in terms of size, a contrast to the work of Simpson that impressed Fellah and other CMA personnel in the multi-artist exhibition “Picturing Motherhood Now,” w.