The Cleveland Museum of Art opened two major spring exhibitions this month: “Martin Puryear: Nexus,” the most comprehensive retrospective of the sculptor’s career in nearly two decades, and “Epic of the Northwest Himalayas: Pahari Paintings from the ‘Shangri’ Ramayana,” which reunites forty works from a dispersed eighteenth-century pictorial series. The Puryear show opened April 12; the Pahari exhibition opened April 19.

“Martin Puryear: Nexus,” co-organized with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was developed in close collaboration with the artist and spans work from the early 1960s to the present. The exhibition features new works alongside iconic sculptures not publicly displayed in decades, as well as prints, drawings, and documentation of outdoor commissions. An accompanying catalogue includes contributions from Maya Lin, Kerry James Marshall, and Charles Ray. Tickets are required; weekly tours run Saturdays and Sundays at 1 p.m. through July 26. The show runs through August 9, 2026.

The Himalayan painting exhibition presents forty panels depicting the Hindu epic of Rama, painted around 1700 for a royal collection in what is now Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. New research drawing on previously unpublished folios suggests a more collaborative production process than scholars had recognized, with an estimated triple the previously known number of works in the original series. Three digital stations display more than 100 animated images from the dispersed manuscript. Admission is free. The exhibition runs through August 16, 2026. Both shows are presented at the CMA’s main University Circle location.

Source: Cleveland Museum of Art