Sunday, August 16th, 2008
Douglas Max Utter was educated in part at Case-Western Reserve University and has taught painting and drawing courses at the University of Akron, Kent State University, and the Cleveland Institute of Art. In addition to an accomplished career in painting and printmaking, he is an award-winning critic and essayist for many regional and national publications.  He currently is the resident art critic for Cleveland Scene. Douglas Max Utter is the author of more than three hundred articles, reviews, catalogue essays and introductory essays, published by Art Papers (Atlanta), New Art Examiner (Chicago), Dialogue (Columbus), Angle (Cleveland), The Plain Dealer, the Free Times (Cleveland), Ceramics Monthly, Fiber Arts, Northern Ohio Live, Kent State University Press, MOCA Cleveland, the McDonough Museum, and various galleries.

Sunday, November 16th , 2008
Paola Morsiani is Curator of Contemporary Art at The Cleveland Museum of Art. Until December 2007 and since April 1999, she was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Morsiani received her Laurea in art history and history of criticism from the University of Padua in Italy, and an MA in Arts Administration from New York University. She is a 2008 fellow of the Curatorial Leadership Program, New York. Prior to joining the Contemporary Arts Museum, she worked at the Drawing Center and at the Queens Museum in New York, and in Pittsburgh, PA, at the Carnegie Museum of Art. She independently curated shows in Italy, for PS122 Gallery, New York, and Art & Idea, Mexico City, among others institutions. Morsiani has also contributed critical essays to numerous exhibition catalogues and journals on artists such as Inka Essenhigh, Nader Ahriman, Adrian Paci, and Matthew Sontheimer, and on contemporary video and film.

Morsiani has curated a number of internationally acclaimed exhibitions at the CAMH, including Wishing for Synchronicity: Works by Pipilotti Rist (2006), Andrea Zittel: Critical Space (2005, co-organized with the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York), Fade In: New Film and Video (2004), When 1 is 2: The Art of Alighiero e Boetti (2002), and Subject Plural: Crowds in Contemporary Art (2001).  Among other projects, Morsiani is currently working on the reinstallation of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection of contemporary art, in the Museum’s new East Wing, which will open to the public in June 2009.

Saturday, January 24th, 2009
Ellen Rudolph is Curator of Exhibitions at the Akron Art Museum, bringing with her a diverse set of skills and a strong commitment to community interaction. Rudolph coordinates the museum's traveling exhibition schedule and originates new exhibitions for the museum. She received her Master of Arts degree from Case Western Reserve University and was formerly the Assistant Curator of the Progressive Corporation's art collection. In addition, she has worked as an independent curator and manager of private collections in the Cleveland area as well as working at Sotheby's in New York. Among other exhibitions in the Cleveland area, Rudolph organized and curated the NEO+ONE exhibition in 2005 as a response to the Cleveland Museum of Art's NEO show to great acclaim. 

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009
Dan Tranberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, grew up in Chicago, and moved to Cleveland in 1995. He received his BFA at Northern Illinois University in 1988, MA at Purdue University in 1991, and studied art criticism in the graduate school at the University of Illinois, Chicago though 1994. Since moving to Cleveland he has participated in more than 25 exhibitions. He began writing about art for The Free Times in 1997 and for The Plain Dealer in 1999, where he continues to be a regular contributing critic and writer. He has been teaching in the painting department at Cleveland Institute of Art since 2000. In 2003, he cofounded Angle Magazine, were he remained visual arts editor through 2006. He received Individual Artist Fellowships/Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council in 2002 and 2007, and has written for more than a dozen national and international art magazines including Art in America, BOMB, NY Arts, Art on Paper, and ArtUS.

Saturday, May 9th, 2009
Dr. Barbara Tannenbaum, Director of Curatorial Affairs, has been at the Akron Art Museum since 1985.  Before coming to Akron, Tannenbaum was director of OxBow (the oldest continuously operating summer art school in the U.S.) and taught at Oberlin College, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Wyoming.  Tannenbaum has organized over 50 exhibitions for the Akron Art Museum, including the groundbreaking A History of Women Photographers and the major retrospective of the photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard.  She gave internationally noted artists Adam Fuss, Aminah Robinson and Chakaia Booker their first solo museum shows.  In fall 2006 she was one of thirty-five international art professionals invited to Beijing participate in the first ever international photography reviews held in China.

Works in Progress (WIP) is a new program at Zygote Press for 2008-2009 for practicing artists to present and discuss their work, and to benefit from exchange with other artists and arts professionals in an open and productive forum. The program will culminate in a two-day symposium and exhibition in June ‘09. The symposium, “Practical Information for Professional Artists,” will feature a series of presentations which include but are not limited to: residency programs and experiences; artist web development; finding funding; hands-on art workshops, and approaching galleries. Speakers will include artists from the Northeast Ohio area as well as gallerists, curators, critics and art professionals from Cuyahoga County.  WIP has been partially funded through a grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture.