Nikki Woods: New director of Reinberger Gallery

Nikki Woods, a 2012 graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, has been named director of Reinberger Gallery by CIA President + CEO Grafton Nunes. She has been the gallery’s acting director for six months and will assume her new post January 1.

Woods was formerly CIA’s project and visiting artist coordinator, where her duties included managing gallery operations and exhibitions, maintaining art registries, and curating CIA’s annex gallery spaces. She also has coordinated the college’s Lunch on Fridays lecture series.

Most recently, she curated The Art of Exchange: Contemporary Cuban Art in Cleveland, a Reinberger Gallery exhibition that grew out of the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion artist exchange program.

Woods was a painting major at CIA and has shown work in numerous exhibitions, include a solo show, Regrets Only, at Hedge Gallery, in fall 2017.

Please describe your vision for the Reinberger Gallery.

I would like the Reinberger Gallery to be a place that serves as an educational resource to our students and community. I believe it also should help tell the story of the Cleveland Institute of Art, who we are, where we’ve been, and what we do.

What’s your first memory of being impressed in any way by a piece of artwork when you were a kid?

My mom used to take my brother, sister, and myself to the Cleveland Museum of Art for classes during the summer. I remember always wanting to go back to the Contemporary Art section, it was my favorite. Lot’s Wife by Anselm Keifer, Lee Krasner’s Celebration, and Phillip Guston’s Scroll stand out in my mind. These are still some of my favorite pieces from the museum, though they hold different meaning to me now. I remember liking them at the time because of their material qualities, the way paint moved on the surface and how much I wanted to touch it. It was the first time I understood that art was more than just pictures/images. It was supposed to make you feel something.

What are you working on these days in your own practice?

Right now, I’m working on a few commissioned paintings, and beginning research for a new body of work.

What’s one interesting thing that people don’t know about you?

I love a good ghost story. Most of the podcasts I listen to in the studio have something to do with the occult and the paranormal.