CLEVELAND, Ohio — Rose B. Simpson, a nationally prominent Native American artist based in New Mexico, was tired and anxious during her visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art Tuesday morning.
There she was in the museum’s soaring, sky-lighted atrium, watching as her biggest sculptures ever — a pair of totemic figures standing 25 feet tall, made of steel, high-figured clay and aluminum — were being assembled by art handlers using a crane to stack big, interlocking pieces together gently so their bolt holes lined up.