Every year I see Boston's art scene through the eyes of a Clevelander and my pilgrimages give way to measuring the city's changes; distinguishing the sociology of its literary and arts community, I aim to take what I've learned to Cleveland in hopes these processes of experiences bring actualizations to this Midwestern city I love. But Boston is a city that knows how to seduce, eliciting visceral responses at every turn: Boston's Museum of Fine Art delineates its newest exhibition of Thomas Gainsborough paintings with actual props accompanying his canvases of musical instruments: real period musical paraphernalia, instruments, etc. are placed nearby and incorporated into the exhibit, effectively heightening the experience of his paintings. It's a novel idea, surrounding paintings with every day, real objects, prop-like, making the art more approachable to the every day museum patron.

Immediately, I see the ideas coming to me before I even think of the words to express the thought; what if we had this unconventional approach to exhibiting art in Cleveland at the CMA? And Boston's press was tapping into the youth market with this exhibition, savvy enough to recognize Gainsborough as 18th century portraitist in a youthfully, relevant way, tagging it "Eighteenth Century Glam" making the exhibition highly palatable to all the young wanna-be art students in town. I feel and know it is Cleveland's newest challenge to connect its own youth into our art institutions rather than separate our local art scene into categorical segments: adults or youth. Both should interlace and correspond equally. It's not accurate to assume fifteen year olds would never be interested in a 19th century marble Canova sculpture, thereby directing them to more age appropriate, simplistic art. This is dumbing down our kids. How would I know? I was one of those kids, dying to get my hands on Canova's Terpischore statue at The Cleveland Museum of Art.

Fine art aside, my second night in town was thrown immediately into indulgements of casuistry (compliments of the region's raging intellectuals), but after a couple rounds of Johnny Walker I learned two things while engaged with Back Bay's literati: the literary scene in Boston is a peculiarly fitted one with poetry slams as popular as academia's literary workshops, and secondly; they are inseparable. The varied selections of poetry groups, slams and readings segue into a corresponding creativity where you'll find slammers at poetry readings mingling with students of the iconic Robert Lowell, along with Ph D? academics reading poems written by slammers, effectively surpassing the literary boundaries which are tangibly present in Cleveland. To blur these lines causes a really good time; I found the highly proper New England Poetry Club, The Boston Women's Slam, The Subterranean Poetry Group in Cambridge along with poetry workshops conducted by Suffolk University converging on one level of solidarity if only for the love of language.

Boston's arts circuit left me reeling from its events; if I could bring back one valuable thing from this trip, it would be the city's surprisingly ardent, all encompassing love of art, both visual and written intertwined. To have touched on this, aspiring to recreate its experience here in Cleveland has become the sum of my existence. from Cool Cleveland editor Tisha Nemeth tishanemeth@hotmail.com

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