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Celebrating the Reimagined Akron Art Museum 1899 Building

Blog Date
Author(s)
Stuart O. Smith, Jr.
Tags
Akron
Art
Museums
Akron Art Museum
Zygote Press

After more than a year of transformation, the Akron Art Museum’s historic 1899 Building reopened September 2026 with more art, more space, and more ways to experience the Museum!
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The Reopening of the
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Building
The Renovated 1899 Building

The wait is over. Come see what’s new.
After more than a year of transformation, the Akron Art Museum’s historic 1899 Building reopens this September with more art, more space, and more ways to experience the Museum.

Join us for art, music, celebration, and community as we open the doors and welcome Akron back inside the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Building.
. . .
THURSDAY, 9/24 • Noon – 9 pm
AKRON, THE DOORS ARE OPEN!
FREE FOR EVERYONE
Come celebrate the reopening of the historic 1899 Building and experience the Museum in a whole new way. Explore new galleries and exhibitions, make art, enjoy music, food and drinks, and discover surprises throughout the Museum. Bring your friends. Bring your family. Come celebrate with us.
. . .

Renovation of the 1899 building is made possible through generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, State of Ohio, The J.M. Smucker Co., The Lehner Family Foundation, Thomas and Lisa Mandel Family Foundation, Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation, Sandra L. and Dennis B. Haslinger Family Foundation, Susie and Tony Paparella, Howland Memorial Fund, The Jean (née Polsky) Harry and Brenda Fuchs Family Foundation and The Arthur E., Elsie G. and Betty M. Kranz Family Foundation, County of Summit, Goodyear Foundation, Alan and Janice Woll Family Fund, GAR Foundation, Bill and Trish Steere, Mary & Rollie Bauer, Tom Merryweather, Sandra and Richey Smith, Edward Russell Trust, Ellen Witt Botnick, Dedee O’Neil, John Pickle and Suzanne Woods, Akron Community Foundation, Burton D. Morgan Foundation, The Chiarappa Family, Frances Bucholzer, Susan B. Kruder Trust, Roger and Sally Read, Bruce and Ann Rowland, Philip and Alexandra Vukoder, Michelle & Eliot Mostow, Joseph and Debbie Zarconi, Nancy J. Brennan, Susan and Rick Lobalzo, Harvey and Kimberly Nelson, Anonymous, John and Jill Judge, Summit Construction Company, Wade Trim, Bruce and Erica Greer, Joseph Kanfer and Marjie Moskovitz Kanfer, Robert and Regina Cooper, Sandra Selby, Mark and Cathy Schikowski, Clearstead, PNC Foundation, Richard and Tatiana Harris, Christopher Hixson, State and Federal Communications, Steve and Jeannine Marks, Steve and Laura Lederer, Dr. Duane and Mrs. Earline Roe, Janice Lessman-Moss and Alan Moss, Roxia B. Boykin and J. Stanley Boykin, Bill Lipscomb, Michael Brillhart, Karen Daverio, Robert Kerper and Susan Locke, Kendra and Jerry Myers, Dennis and Kari Danko

I want to thank the Akron Art Museum leadership and the many volunteers who made the Thursday, September 24, 2026, Community Opening Celebration a great success! It was a very enjoyable afternoon and evening! The new galleries in the museum's just-renovated historic 1899 Building are fantastic. I want to encourage you to learn more by reading the following announcement on the museum's website or the PDF file I have attached to this blog post:

 

It was particularly interesting to be attending this historic 1899 Building reopening in September 2026, since earlier this year, on April 9, 2026, I attended the Summit Artspace Grand Reopening Party. (See my photos/videos from my evening at Summit Artspace in my blog post by clicking here.) I enjoyed being part of both of these new Akron art-related developments!

 

During the Akron Art Museum reopening, I was able to view three new exhibitions that were created through the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Ohio Arts Council:

There was so much that I saw during the Community Opening Celebration, that I created the following outline of this blog post. If you want to jump directly to one of these sections of the blog post, please click on the following links:

Explore Akron Art Museum Map
Enlarge Akron Art Museum Map

  1. Free Community Opening Celebration
    - Wave Space Studio
    - Idea Machine by CHIAOZZA
    - Zygote Press

  2. New C. Blake McDowell Jr. Gallery
    - Shana Moulton: Meta/Physical Therapy

  3. New Susie and Tony Paparella Galleries
    - The Surrealist Impulse

  4. Music by The Sonder Bombs

  5. Second Floor Previously Existing Galleries

I hope my blog post encourages readers to visit both the new space in the 1899 Building and the existing Akron Art Museum galleries.

 

 

Free Community Opening Celebration
- Wave Space Studio
- Idea Machine by CHIAOZZA
- Zygote Press

As I entered the Akron Art Museum, I could feel the excitement that was in the air! Museum volunteers welcomed me to the newly renovated James L. Knight Foundation Building (1899 Building), now a large, airy space. I enjoyed talking to the volunteers to learn about both the new galleries and the activities for the day's celebration.

Thursday, September 24, 2026 - Commemorative print of 1899 Building Opening Celebration, on black tote bag, created by Wave Space Studio.
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Wave Space Studio is proud to be a place for creative accessibility and collaboration.

In the new first floor classroom space, I met Julie Schabel, who is the founder and owner of Wave Space Studio. She was helping attendees print their own small, commemorative tote bags. I learned from her that the 1899 Building was originally the city of Akron's main post office. The print design for the bags cleverly honors this history with the message: "1899 Building Opening Ceremony - Put Your Stamp On It." (See my photos of the printing process below.) I am already making good use of my commemorative bag that I printed at the reopening.

AKRON ART MUSEUM REOPENS HISTORIC 1899 POST OFFICE AFTER $12.5M OVERHAUL
. . . The renovation creates 2,152 square feet of additional gallery space along with a new 957-square-foot dedicated classroom . . . The 1899 building itself, once the city's main post office, became the museum's home in 1981, . . . This year's renovation marks the museum's second major architectural overhaul in less than two decades.

 

I met the young daughter of one of the creators of Idea Machine by CHIAOZZA, and I had her explain to me how people can create in this new interactive art space. Thank you to Akron Art Museum Educator Maria Golden, who was staffing the Idea Machine by CHIAOZZA area when I visited. We talked for a long time about her work at the museum and in the community.

Meet CHIAOZZA, who will kick off a new era at the Museum with the first interactive installation in the new J. M. Smucker Co. Idea Machine space, opening this fall.

Art museums have traditionally been places where visitors look at carefully arranged works on walls and objects on pedestals and in glass cases. But the Akron Art Museum is reimagining that experience with the Idea Machine by inviting direct physical interaction with artwork, signaling a shift in how audiences might encounter contemporary art in Akron.

 

As the afternoon became early evening, the new first floor classroom space became a popup print shop for Zygote Press. I often see them at different arts events in Northeast Ohio. (See my Zygote Press blog posts.) It was good to talk to Community Engagement Manager Sequoia Bostick and Program Manager Chandler Mack, whom I have met previously. I had heard that Zygote Press recently moved in February 2026 to a new, improved location, which I am very much looking forward to visiting.

Today, Zygote is the largest and only green printmaking studio in Ohio, providing facilities for intaglio, relief printing, screen printing, letterpress, lithography, Risography, and digital media.

Zygote Press is an open-door community arts nonprofit . . . facility includes a professional print shop, gallery, archive, and classroom.
. . .
In February 2026, Zygote Press purchased a 19,000-square-foot building at 3907 Perkins Avenue, Cleveland, OH, 44114. On April 10, we opened our new doors to the public. As we celebrate 30 years of serving the community, we look forward to welcoming artists, students, and Zygote members into this new home — where fresh ideas, collaboration, and creativity will continue to thrive.

 

Invitation to Zygote Press Tour and Jerry's Open Studio
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During the time I was writing this blog post, a friend of mine, artist Jerry Smith, invited me to his open studio event and tour of Zygote Press. He had told me that he had recently moved his home-based studio into their new space. Therefore, I will be visting the new Zygote Press location sooner than I had originally planned. I first met Jerry Smith when taking a continuing education drawing class he was teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Art. We recently reconnected at a COSE (Council of Smaller Enterprises) and Assembly for the Arts "Art at Work” networking event in March 2024.

Here are my photos of arriving at the Akron Art Museum celebration, the first floor classroom space, and the J.M. Smucker Co. Idea Machine:

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork and to read any interesting facts in the slides!!

 

 

New C. Blake McDowell Jr. Gallery
- Shana Moulton: Meta/Physical Therapy

Shana Moulton’s Meta/Physical Therapy comprises eight synchronized video projections on walls, floors, and shaped theatrical flats. . . . Moulton examines how our lives as consumers are shaped by our deepest needs—and the often absurd lengths we will go to meet those needs. Blending magical realism and physical comedy, the work finds mysticism in the everyday, as ordinary objects take on lives of their own and Cynthia’s domestic world tips into something otherworldly and dreamlike. The exhibition includes a larger-than-life penguin race, synthetic rainbows, fiber-optic flowers, and many-hued menstrual cups, all drawing on nostalgia and consumer culture, blurring the line between Cynthia’s interior emotional life and the world around her.

The location of the new C. Blake McDowell Jr. Gallery to the right, on the first floor of the 1899 Building, is where I remember the Akron Art Museum had a small, simple gallery. It is now an expansive, two-story space, whose openness reminds me of the Cleveland Museum of Art's Transformer Station. (You can learn more about exhibitions I have seen there in my Transformer Station blog posts.)

As you will see in my photos and videos from the opening, entering the large space that currently is the world of Shana Moulton’s Meta/Physical Therapy exhibition, made me feel like I was entering a fantasy world:

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork and to read any interesting facts in the slides!!

 

 

New Susie and Tony Paparella Galleries
- The Surrealist Impulse

The Surrealist Impulse will be the inaugural exhibition in the newly created Susie and Tony Paparella Galleries, on the second floor of the Akron Art Museum’s historic 1899 building. This exhibition brings together two different artistic movements from the early 1900s, Dada and Surrealism, along with closely related works by “Art Brut” (untrained or “raw”) creators working in the same time period. Dada was an international movement formed in the aftermath of World War I by artists and writers who turned their disgust at the carnage of the war into a broader, absurdist critique of the status quo in culture and society. Surrealism, another international movement that was rooted in Dada, continues to be a relevant form of expression about the very nature of reality and how it is represented, influencing the visual arts, literature, theater, film, and music for more than a hundred years.
. . .
The Paparella Galleries mark a significant new chapter for the Akron Art Museum, providing dedicated space to contextualize and deepen the Museum’s own collection through loans from peer institutions while celebrating the exceptional works already held within it.

During the reopening celebration, I was fortunate to be able to participate in an excellent tour of The Surrealist Impulse with Akron Art Museum Curator Wendy Earle. I am grateful for having an opportunity to talk to her after the tour. I highly recommend you attend a tour with her or a museum docent. It was exciting to learn the history behind the artwork in this exhibition directly from its curator!

The space of the new Susie and Tony Paparella Galleries was formerly the location of the offices for the museum's staff. The bridge that used to go from the main second floor galleries to nowhere (I assume it went to the staff offices), now goes directly into these new second floor galleries in the 1899 Building. The bridge draws the two parts of the museum together very nicely. I really like how it flows. Wendy Earle shared during our tour that the ceiling heights of the Susie and Tony Paparella Galleries are lower than normal for a museum gallery, but I found that the intimacy of the space worked very well for the Dadaistic and Surrealist artwork being shown. I highly recommend visiting the current The Surrealist Impulse exhibition!

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork and to read any interesting facts in the slides!!

 

 

Music by The Sonder Bombs

The Sonder Bombs
Cleveland, Ohio
sonder - n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own

Musical entertainment at 6:30 pm and 7:30 pm was provided by The Sonder Bombs. Small world -- the next day (Friday, September 25, 2026), I talked to their drummer (Jer Berkin) and keyboard/guitar/ukulele player (Willow Hawks) as they were attending Ingenuity Cleveland's IngenuityFest. It was great to be able to thank both of them for their performance at the Akron Art Museum. (Watch for my IngenuityFest 2026 blog post and see past posts by clicking here.)

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.

 

 

Second Floor Previously Existing Galleries

In the evening, between and after The Sonder Bombs' musical sets, I explored the Akron Art Musum's existing galleries:

Naudline Pierre: May the Light Reach You September 23, 2026 – April 18, 2027 | Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries Naudline Pierre conjures fantastical worlds full of movement, transformation, and emotion. Her artwork features airy figures among delicate, jewel-toned washes of color, swirling lines, and skillful application of paint or ink, as well as adventurous experimentation with metal. The content of Pierre’s work is deeply intimate, with a pantheon of female spirits conveying an impressive range of expression—from anger to resilience, tenderness, and more. She calls on viewers to imagine their way into her unfamiliar realities, and thereby to imagine how their own reality might also change and grow.

Alice Pixley Young: Half Life August 8, 2026 – January 31, 2027 | The Judith Bear Isroff Gallery Cincinnati-based artist Alice Pixley Young draws inspiration from many sources, including formal gardens, geology, deep time, resource extraction, the nuclear age, and the ecological history of Ohio. Young’s installation at the Akron Art Museum forms an immersive environment featuring new works in video, glass, paper, and light. Her layered landscapes dramatize the entanglements of time, land, geology, and biodiversity. Visitors are invited to use this space to step outside their normal routines and think about time on a variety of scales. Young engages with several different time spans. The Ordovician fossil beds in southern Ohio contain numerous fossils of invertebrates that lived in a shallow tropical ocean 450 million years ago. Today, visitors to the region can easily find these fossils in riverbeds.

Barbara Kasten: Threshold August 8, 2026 – January 31, 2027 | Beatrice Knapp McDowell Grand Lobby and Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery Barbara Kasten: Threshold includes both new work and career-spanning selections by one of photography's most innovative practitioners, presented across two interconnected sites at the Akron Art Museum: a sculptural installation in the Beatrice Knapp McDowell Grand Lobby and a survey of photography and video in the Fred and Laura Bidwell Gallery.

A Growing Conversation: Artworks From Our Collection Ongoing | The Haslinger Family Foundation Galleries The Haslinger Family Foundation Galleries feature artworks selected from the Museum’s collection of over 7000 objects. The works are arranged by theme, rather than by historical period, resulting in new, unexpected, and exciting connections. Recently, these galleries have been reinstalled under the title A Growing Conversation: Artworks from Our Collection— a truly fitting description. Contemporary art is always expanding, and the Museum’s collection is always growing with it. This new presentation draws inspiration from a variety of recent acquisitions, and a small number of loans from outside the collection are also on view, helping to enrich the groupings.

I recommend viewing videos in full screen mode.
Please feel free to pause the video to look more closely at the artwork and to read any interesting facts in the slides!!

 

Related Blog Posts

I always like to include in my blog posts a list of related posts that may be of interest to my readers:

You can find more related past blog posts under the following categories:

 

I feel so fortunate to have been able to attend the opening of two renovated Akron art venues in 2026 -- the Summit Artspace Grand Reopening Party in the spring and now the autumn Akron Art Museum Community Opening Celebration. I look forward to visiting these Akron art venues again very soon! I hope this blog post encourages you to attend future Akron art events. You can learn about my travel journeys and the venues I explore in Cleveland and Akron at: sosAssociates.com/Blog