If you missed the panel discussion, The Case for William Sommer, or want to see the recap, follow the link to an engaging conversation among three prominent art historians: William Robinson, PhD (former curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art), Marianne Berardi, PhD (Heritage Auction Director), and Jeffrey Katzin, PhD (Senior Curator of the Akron Art Museum). Together, these American Art experts explore the life and legacy of this foundational Cleveland School Artist, making a case for William Sommer’s place in the canon of modernism while exploring Sommer’s life as an individual who lived during the first half of the 20th century, a period of tremendous social change and progress. Moderated by Raquel F. Vega, PhD.
William Sommer, one of America’s great modernists, is the subject of WOLFS long overdue retrospective this spring. Sommer, a master lithographer by trade, was also the most well-known and highly respected artist in Cleveland at the turn of the last century. Inspired by the avant-garde Europeans, Sommer created his own shocking palette highlighting a remarkably prolific career, often using his rural milieu to create brilliant modern compositions.
The panel discussion accompanying the show will make a case for William Sommer’s place in the canon of modernism while exploring Sommer’s life as an individual who lived during the first half of the 20th century, a period of tremendous social change and progress.
Meet the panel:
William H. Robinson, PhD, is an internationally recognized art historian, curator, and author. Born in Châteauroux, France, he earned his doctorate in art history from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and pursued further study at the Universitat de Barcelona’s Instituto de Estudios Hispánicos. After thirty-eight years of distinguished service, he retired in 2023 as Senior Curator of Modern European Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Adjunct Professor of Art History at Case Western Reserve University. He has authored or co-authored more than thirty exhibition catalogues, including Picasso and Paper; Van Gogh Repetitions; Barcelona and Modernity; Picasso and the Mysteries of Life; and Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse. His scholarship also encompasses American art, with publications on Charles Burchfield and Transformations in Cleveland Art. His work has been praised by The New York Times, The Art Newspaper, and the Financial Times for its originality, clarity, and scholarly impact. A frequent lecturer and media commentator, he has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, PBS, NPR, and the History Channel. He is currently preparing new work on Salvador Dalí and filmmakers of the Côte d’Azur.
Art historian Marianne Berardi, PhD is Heritage Auctions' Senior Expert in American Art and Director of Old Master Paintings. Marianne holds both a M.A. in 20th Century American Art and a Ph.D. in Dutch 17th-Century Art from the University of Pittsburgh. During her five-year tenure as Director of the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of American Art in St. Joseph, Missouri, she published widely on Benton and the Regionalists. In 1993, she curated a comprehensive exhibition of the work of Thomas Hart Benton and many of his pupils whom she tracked down from many regions of the United States. The exhibition, Under the Influence: The Students of Thomas Hart Benton (1993), was accompanied by her book-length catalogue of the same title. In 2010, her book on Benton pupil Margot Peet, Discovering Margot Peet, was published by Posterity Press. She currently chairs the Art Committee of the Union Club Foundation of Cleveland and the acquisitions of Cleveland School art for their collection. She was recently responsible for discovering a long lost and forgotten work by the 19th-century British artist John Constable (1776-1837) at the Jefferson Historical Museum in Texas. The work is a 6-foot-tall sketch of Constable’s famous work “The Cornfield,” which hangs in the National Gallery in London, England. The work was sent to art historians and conservators in England, where they used infrared reflectography and paint tests to confirm the work’s authenticity. She was a contributor to the catalogue of the first monographic exhibition on the work of Rachel Ruysch, the great Dutch flower painter, which traveled to the Alte Pinakothek, Munich; the Toledo Museum of Art; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2024-25).
Jeffrey Katzin, PhD is Senior Curator at the Akron Art Museum. He specializes in modern and contemporary art with research ranging from painting to photography, film, and video. Katzin has received a certificate in Art Museum Studies from Smith College, a BA from Wesleyan University, an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where his doctoral dissertation explored the history and potential of abstract photography, with particular focus on Alvin Langdon Coburn’s Vortographs of 1916–17. Since coming to the Akron Art Museum in 2019, he has curated over twenty exhibitions, including Keith Haring: Against All Odds, Michelangelo Lovelace: Art Saved My Life, Amanda D. King: Locusts, and Afterimages: Geometric Abstraction and Perception.
Raquel F. Vega, PhD is a curator at Wolfs Gallery. She specializes in modern and contemporary art of the United States, with a subspecialty on the arts of the Latino diaspora and themes at the intersection of aesthetics, identity, and place. She received her BA from Smith College, MA from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and her PhD from the University of Illinois Chicago, where she was a Mellon Fellow and graduate instructor. Her dissertation offers a new account of the media art featured in the famed culture wars exhibition, the 1993 Whitney Biennial of American Art, reconsidering how a generation of artists shaped the post-Cold War imaginary. Her scholarship has been presented at the local and national conferences and her publications include studies of the mid-century abstractionist Olga Albizu and contemporary mix-media artist Pepón Osorio.