YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – As part of Youngstown State University, the McDonough Museum of Art’s primary purpose is to further the educational goals of the school’s art department and showcase the work of its students.

But the museum – which is in an architecturally striking building – is also a landmark that plays a role in the wider community.

Aaron Foster’s “Lumen” will be part of his show at the McDonough Museum of
Art.

It sits across the street from the renowned Butler Institute of American Art but stands alone in its artistic taste.

The McDonough is one of a scant few college art museums in the nation that is housed in a standalone building. As part of the city’s Cultural Corridor – the stretch of Wick Avenue that includes the Butler and Arms Family museums, the Main Library, WYSU-FM, St. John’s Church and the YSU campus – it welcomes avant-garde art lovers from across the Mahoning Valley.

The typical McDonough exhibition features multiple cutting-edge artists who complement each other but are quite different. Its summer show featured works by Ronald Jason Van Hoose, Jeffrey S. Piper and Mike Egan.

Up next, it will display four unique exhibitions by Michael Boyd Roman, Aaron Foster, Justin Sorensen and Aislinn Janek that will run concurrently in four separate galleries. The exhibitions will open Sept. 2 and run through Oct. 25, with an opening reception on Sept. 5 at 7 p.m. Admission, as always, is free.

Claudia Berlinski, executive director of the museum, likes to bring in bold artists who work in a variety of approaches and media.

“It provides an opportunity for our students to see artists working in lots of different ways,” she says. Because each artist gets enough space to show a body of their work, viewers can “lock in” on a particular artist.

A former instructor in the YSU art department, Berlinski has overseen The McDonough for about five years. She and Angela DeLucia, assistant director, are its only full-time employees. “We wear many hats,” Berlinski says. They rely upon student employees to help set up exhibitions.

Community Engagement

While the museum makes decisions based on what’s best for students, Berlinski says it’s also “a hot spot” of community engagement.

“When we have artist receptions, a huge percentage of the attendees are people from the community,” she says. “They love to come here.”

In the past, the McDonough has taken part in the First Friday series of after-work gatherings presented monthly by the Downtown Youngstown Partnership.

It will do so again on Nov. 7, when the First Friday event will take place in the Cultural Corridor.

There will be no shows in the museum at that time, and Berlinski says she is taking advantage of the opportunity “to do something cool.”

She is bringing in Crystal Beiersdorfer, a YSU art graduate who now lives in Chicago, to put up an interactive video installation. Beiersdorfer will produce a video that will be altered by changes in the accompanying digital music.

Before the pandemic, the McDonough Museum would welcome the public at its annual Mad About the Arts fundraiser gala, which attracted hundreds of attendees.

The event, presented in conjunction with WYSU, fell by the wayside several years ago.

Helping to make up for the lost revenue are grants from the Ohio Arts Council. Last week, The McDonough received about $12,000 from the state agency to augment its operating budget.

“We will use it to pay an honorarium to our artists, because they deserve it and also for transporting the art or shipping it, and for advertising,” Berlinski says.

That includes the exhibitions opening in September.

A Closer Look

Those who attend the shows can expect to be enlightened and impressed.

The works by Roman, who teaches art at Oberlin College, are drawings of Black men that are based on depictions from the freedom movement.

“The Smallest Giant Is in the Same Boat as You,” a painting by Michael Roman.

“I was blown away by these large-scale drawings,” Berlinski says. “They are uplifting, and the scale is really monumental, which gives importance to the figures.”

Foster, an art professor at Kent State-Stark, has created a body of work that focuses on the Ohio landscape – specifically, the Deerfield Township toxic waste Superfund cleanup site.

Sorensen’s exhibition will use a variety of media, including video, drawings and an installation. “It’s very conceptual,” Berlinski says. “He sees all of the work as being drawn from the format of a Chinese hand scroll… His approach is very interesting and intellectual, and it is all interrelated.”

The exhibition by Janek, a YSU alumnus, features pale landscape paintings with pieces stitched together on the canvas.

Pictured at top: “The Theologians” by Justin Sorenstam.