Shonibare has not designed a labyrinth that stores, arranges, and conceals knowledge like the Aedificium in The Name of the Rose. The American Library is installed in Brett Hall, shown below open for business as usual and as transformed for FRONT this summer. It is a counterpart to Shonibare’s British Library, which was unveiled in 2014 at the British Library. Their spines are stamped in gold with the names of first- or second-generation immigrants to America who have influenced their adopted country’s culture. It is designed as two monumental back-to-back rows of book stacks, which contain some 6,000 books bound in myriad patterns of colorful batik fabrics. It was perfectly appropriate that librarians of the “People’s University” at Cleveland Public were involved in the creation of this new work. The first installation my husband and I had to see was Yinka Shonibare’s The American Library, in the downtown branch of the Cleveland Public Library, a beautiful historical building on Superior Avenue, which FRONT commissioned. I can’t claim to have taken in all eleven cultural exercises, which translates into 110 artists showing in twenty-eight venues across the city from the emerging Hingetown district in Ohio City to Gordon Square arts district, from the Cleveland Museum in the elegant University Circle area to the Akron and Allen museums outside the metropolitan area. Last weekend I attended the preview for FRONT International, the first Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art.
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