PJ and I spent the weekend in Cleveland. He was giving a paper at the Midwest Modern Language Association, and I tagged along for fun. Two of our friends drove up with us — one of them was also giving a paper. It was a lot of fun to get out of Athens and celebrate the end of the quarter.
PJ and I had visited Cleveland once before; he gave a paper at the same conference six years ago. At the time, he was teaching in Michigan, so meeting up in Cleveland for a weekend was a fun way to see each other. This time, we revisited the restaurants and museums that we saw six years ago. It was interesting to see what has changed and what hasn’t.
We arrived in Cleveland on Friday. Our friends were staying at a different hotel, so we dropped them off and then checked into our hotel, the Cleveland Renaissance Hotel. I forgot to take a picture of the hotel while we were there, so here’s a picture from the hotel’s website. I liked the hotel. Our room was spacious and clean. The bed was comfortable, and hooking up to the Internet was easy to do. After we checked in, we logged onto the Internet to see if there was anything in particular that we wanted to do on Friday night. While looking at a page that listed bars and entertainment opportunities, I found a couple of reviews of our hotel. I thought it was funny that one of the reviews complained that the hotel had been overrun by conference participants while they stayed there. I honestly never considered that “regular people” stay the same hotels where our conferences takes place. I can’t imagine some poor sap who accidentally gets a room during the MLA! They’d be surrounded by miserable job candidates lurking about in the hallways trying not to make eye contact with anyone! As a conference hotel, the Renaissance was just fine. We had no complaints.
Our main reason for going was to see the Glenn Ligon exhibit, entitled “
The exhibit is small but fascinating. One of the works that stood out to me was End of Year Reports, a series of “thoughtful and brutally honest critiques of Ligon at age 12 and 13,” to quote the brochure. Here’s a picture that shows how the work looks hanging in the museum. It’s a collection of report cards in which his teachers comment about such issues as his refusal “to talk about his own recognition of his own sexual urges.” This refusal is interpreted as a kind of immaturity, and the teacher concludes that he will become more comfortable with his body and sexual desires within the next year, at which point he’ll interact with the other students — especially the girls — on a more social level. (We, of course, know that he in fact turns out gay instead, making the reports even more interesting.) What kind of teachers are these that they comment on his sexuality so directly? At first, PJ thought that these must be Ligon’s imagined recreations of his teachers’ thoughts, but the brochure indicates that they are his genuine report cards. They’re really crazy to read. It really makes me wonder what I’d say about my students’ sexual development (and so glad that I don’t ever have to)!
This exhibit is mostly of her recent paintings but also includes Benning’s 29-minute animated film, titled Play Pause. I didn’t watch it all, but the part I saw was fascinating. I wish I had stayed to see it all. It’s kind of simplistically drawn (or so it seems at first) and combines music, dual screens, and a non-narrative form to follow a group of characters around in bars, at home, at the airport, etc. We see various aspects of these characters’ lives, including their sex lives. As I’ve subsequently read online, this movie is a response to 911 and the loneliness she feels is intrinsic to her sexuality. Like I said, I really wish I had stayed and watched the whole thing. I did buy the book that accompanied the exhibit, so at least I’ll get to learn more about it.
![IMG_8341[1]](https://live.staticflickr.com/8644/27753735444_2ca20d29d0_s.jpg "IMG_8341[1]")
This Gaudy Gilded Stage 