Robert Stearns accepts the CGLC award for Best Exhibition

The Center for Great Lakes Culture has presented the award for the Best Exhibition on Great Lakes Regional Culture in 2001 to: Arts Midwest, Ohio Arts Council, and the Columbus Museum of Art for the exhibition, "Illusions of Eden: Visions of the American Heartland." This major collaborative project examines the cultural expressions of the region through its visual arts, past and present. Featuring over 100 paintings, prints, and photographs created between World War I and World War II. In addition, the exhibition includes the work of four contemporary artists who produced environmental installations related to the cultural view of the region.

This exhibition project also includes an impressive publication that has essays that examine the artistic cultural heritage of the region. Robert Stearns writes in the introductory essay, "The Midwest is often bypassed on tourist itineraries in favor of the coastal cities or rugged mountains. Even Americans are not sure what and even exactly where it is. Paradoxically, this may be because, as the historian, Frederick Jackson turner described a hundred years ago, it is the most American of American regions." This exhibition effectively takes up the challenge to educate others to the rich artistic heritage that exists thanks to artists who worked in this region.

Illusions of Eden has made a major contribution to the understanding and appreciation of the Great Lakes region. In addition, this ambitious project also seeks to make intellectual and emotional connections to the experience of central Europe as a region that is often overlooked and not well understood. The exhibition assumes this additional international perspective and it enriched the dialogue and understanding of regionalism in the global context of the twenty-first century. The exhibit opened in Columbus, Ohio and has travelled to Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Hungary;...and is now at the Madison Art Center in Madison, Wisconsin and will close at the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Sciences in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The CGLC award for Best Exhibition was presented by Center Director, Dr. C. Kurt Dewhurst to Robert Stearns at the CGLC Conference, "Mapping Great Lakes Identity: Past, Present, and Future" at the Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center in East Lansing on February 17th.