Is Generosity a Cleveland Value?
A friend’s memorial service showed how dressing well is part of what we give to others. It also added to the reasons why I want to visit her hometown someday.
I learned much about my friend Corinne at her memorial service.
Never one to brag, Corinne had not told me much about her dogged reporting in her days in television news. She won Emmys for that work. I hadn’t known about how much she liked skiing. I had not appreciated how wide her circle of friends was. People she knew growing up in Cleveland and in college in Indiana traveled far to attend the service in Washington, D.C. Among the dozen of her former colleagues in attendance was Barton Gordon, who represented a Nashville-area district in the House from 1985 through 2010.
My favorite among all of the wonderful stories about Corinne was one told by her husband. Like George, Corinne was a night owl. A fun and vivacious duo, George and Corinne might go to three parties in one evening in Washington, or run around on the Delaware Shore late on summer weekends. They would want to keep going long after others were ready to call it quits.
Deep into the night, Corinne would sometimes take a bit of fine cognac to the beach and look at the stars — by herself, as even George by the point had gone to bed. As George told this story, I could picture Corinne’s bright eyes looking into the dark sky over the ocean for stars, that terrific smile on her beautiful face.
To search for an illustration for this essay, I made a virtual trip to Corinne’s hometown and found this image that reminded me of George’s story.
The Cleveland Museum of Art’s website was the right place to go — for several reasons.
One is the breadth of its collections. The museum routinely lands in the top ten on rankings of U.S. art institutions. Its diverse holdings include works by some of the biggest names in European art, including Botticelli, Caravaggio, El Greco, Rubens, Dalí, Matisse and van Gogh, as well as one of my favorites, French painter Henri Rousseau. The museum also has notable collections of Asian and African art.
Notably Generous
The Cleveland Museum of Art is notably generous about allowing open access to works in its collections.
In 2019, the museum announced that it would make many images of its art works available for the public through the Open Access program. The museum partnered with the nonprofit Creative Commons to make it easier for scholars, artists and writers to share these images.
William Griswold, president of the Cleveland Museum of Art, wrote that this was a “logical and exciting outgrowth” of the work the museum had done for decades. The Cleveland Museum of Art was founded in 1913 “for the benefit of all the people forever.”
“ The time is right to firmly bring our mission into the 21st century,” Griswold wrote.
In writing about art as a hobby, I often check the Cleveland Museum of Art website for images. I hope to visit it someday. To me, it seems an institution noted for beauty and generosity.
At the memorial service for Corinne, there were many stories about her generosity and kindness to others. People remember how she helped coworkers and kept up family ties.
And there were many reference to her love for nice clothes and dedication to looking good. As a young television news reporter, for example, she found one of the first portable curling irons on the market. She could fire it up in her car and fix her hair before going on camera. She was a natural beauty who took great care with her appearance.
And that is a form of generosity as well, a way to give one’s best self to others.
