Visitors walking into the Cleveland Museum of Art next year will be met by something entirely new: two towering ceramic murals made of thousands of tiny glazed tiles, shimmering across the walls of the museum's north entrance. The piece, called Soil Horizon(Cleveland), is a site-specific commission by New York City artist Teresita Fernández, and it's set to become the very first artwork guests see when they walk through the door starting in February 2027.
The museum announced the acquisition of the work on Monday, according to Cleveland.com, which first reported the news. As artdaily.com reported, the museum announced the acquisition of Soil Horizon(Cleveland), describing it as a site-specific commissioned work by the acclaimed artist. The piece comprises two large-scale glazed ceramic wall murals, built from thousands of tiny square ceramic tesserae arranged across floor-to-ceiling panels that the outlet says glimmer and transform as visitors move past them.
Set to rise in the Jane and Jon Outcalt Family Concourse, the murals will occupy a key passage connecting the museum's Horace Kelley Art Foundation North Lobby with its Ames Family Atrium, according to the same report. Its imagery draws on landscapes and vistas native to Ohio, as well as on pieces from the museum's own collection, artdaily.com noted.
Completing a Years-Long Lobby Overhaul
The new commission completes a transformation of the museum's north lobby and adjoining spaces that began in 2024, the report states. That renovation marked the final piece of the museum's long-running 2005 expansion project, which wrapped up in November 2024 with work on the north entrance, lobby areas and the Outcalt concourse, according to the Cleveland Museum of Art. The goal of that overhaul, per the museum, was to improve the visitor experience while respecting architect Marcel Breuer's original design for the building.
CMA director and president William M. Griswold framed the lobby project around accessibility when it concluded nearly two years ago. “By enhancing the visitor experience, we make the museum more accessible and wayfinding more informative,” he said, per the museum's own account of the renovation. Soil Horizon(Cleveland) is described as offering a luminous, ethereal counterpoint to the weight and heaviness of Breuer's architecture, according to the museum.
A Title Rooted in Layers of Earth
The mural's title nods to the horizontal layers of earth that run from bedrock to topsoil, the museum has said. Curator Nadiah Rivera Fellah described the piece as responding to site, place and architecture through Fernández's distinctive visual language, according to the museum. Fernández herself has said that earth layers suggest a place's history and its potential — a theme that has run through her work for decades.
That approach tracks with how Fernández talks about her broader practice. “I love thinking of land and place as a living thing, rather than as a stage set for humans,” she told news.artnet.com. The outlet notes her work ranges from massive public installations to delicate, intimately scaled pieces, and that she has spent three decades exploring landscapes and earthen materials through her sculptural practice. One earlier piece, Sky (Burial), was made of 7,500 glazed ceramic cubes, the site reported.
Fernández's Long Reach Into Landscape and Sculpture
Fernández, a 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, has worked across public art, sculptural installations, film and works on paper, and her output has long challenged conventional ideas about landscape, according to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Her approach to translating two-dimensional imagery into sculptural, earth-derived form has drawn attention elsewhere too; brooklynrail.org has described her method as using the literal materials of the earth to translate two-dimensional painting into sculpture.
Cleveland isn't the only museum tapping Fernández for large-scale site work. A 2021 expansion of the New Orleans Museum of Art's sculpture garden included new site-specific commissions from Fernández alongside artists Maya Lin and Elyn Zimmerman, according to a report from Metropolis at the time.
A Public Lecture Set for February
Fernández is scheduled to discuss the concept and creation of Soil Horizon(Cleveland) during the museum's Fran and Warren Rupp Contemporary Artists Lecture, set for Feb. 19, 2027, in the Gartner Auditorium at the Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center, running from 6 to 7 p.m., according to the museum. A reception will follow the talk, the museum says, and tickets — free but required for admission — are expected to become available soon. The lecture series is supported in part by the Fran and Warren Rupp Contemporary Art Fund, per the museum.
