John Ewing, Associate Director, Film
In 1986, John Ewing became the first person hired by the Cleveland Museum of Art to do nothing but program films. 1,900 films later, he's still at it.
Ewing came to the museum after having run various film series in Granville, OH; Canton, OH; and Cleveland. He programmed his first films as director of the 1973 January Term film program at his alma mater, Denison University, in Granville. He was also an officer of the Denison Film Society. Between 1975 and 1983, Ewing was the director of the Canton Film Society, a program of the Stark County District Library that presented free international films every week. From 1984 to 1986, he ran the weekly Monday Cinema series at the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library -- a program he founded. The mid-eighties also saw Ewing booking films for the Canton Palace Theatre and working as a freelance film presenter at such venues as the New Mayfield Repertory Cinema, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and the Allen Memorial Medical Library.
Ewing co-founded the Cleveland Cinematheque in 1984, and started showing films under the auspices of the Cinematheque at Case Western Reserve University in 1985. In 1986, Ewing moved the Cinematheque to the Cleveland Institute of Art, where it continues to this day, screening 250+ different films annually. In addition to working two days a week at the art museum, Ewing is also the full-time Director of the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque.
Ewing is a
cum laude graduate of Denison University with a double major in English and Theatre & Film. In the fall of 1972, he was a full-time student intern in the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He began writing film reviews in high school and, in college, was the film critic for
The Denisonian, the student newspaper. After graduation, Ewing wrote weekly film reviews for
The Geauga Times Leader in Chardon, OH, and freelanced for
The Plain Dealer,
The Akron Beacon Journal,
Scene,
Sojourners magazine, and other publications. From 1981 to 1986 he was Contributing Editor and regular film reviewer for
Northern Ohio Live magazine. In 1991, he wrote the essay on Kent filmmaker Richard Myers in the Cleveland Museum of Art publication
The Invitational: Artists of Northeast Ohio.
In 1987, Ewing received the
Northern Ohio Live Award of Achievement in the category of Film. In 1994, he won the same prize in the category of Outreach. In 1995,he won one of
Northern Ohio Live's "15 Year" Awards (for extraordinary contributions to the region's arts and culture); as well as a Cleveland Arts Prize Special Citation. He has served on the jury of the Cleveland International Film Festival and is a frequent guest on WCPN's "Around Noon" program.
At the museum, Ewing has increased the number of film screenings to two per week. He oversaw the acquisition and installation of a pair of new 35mm projectors in Gartner Auditorium in 1988, and--11 years later--installed a second set of 35mm projectors in the museum's Lecture Hall, making the Cleveland Museum of Art one of the few art museums in the country with two fully functional film projection booths.
To see a current schedule of films, click
here.