Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 2010

Publication Title

Journal of Social History

Abstract

Perhaps the world's first peace garden, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens embody the history of twentieth-century America and reveal the complex interrelations between art and place. This essay uses the Cleveland Cultural Gardens as a lens through which to explore how art and place have intersected over time. It explores how communities have negotiated questions of national, ethnic, and American identity and embedded those identities into the vernacular landscape. It considers how the particulars of place were embedded into a public garden and asks whether it is possible for public art to transcend its place both in terms of geography and history. In some sense, the Gardens have transcended their place, but in others respects, their fortunes were bound inextricably to that place, to the economic, demographic, and cultural contours that shaped and reshaped Northern Ohio. As works of art, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens both have reflected the history of Cleveland and American industrial cities during the 20th century and revealed something of the dynamics that underscored the changing character of public art and gardens in American cities.

Original Citation

Mark T. Tebeau, "Sculpted Landscapes: Art & Place in Cleveland's Cultural Gardens, 1916-2006," Journal of Social History 44 no. 2 (2010): 327.

Volume

44

Issue

2

DOI

10.1353/jsh.2010.0062

Version

Publisher's PDF

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