I keep hearing terrific things about the Cleveland Museum of Art’s largest-ever fashion exhibit, Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses, and I’ve got plans to go there next week.
But the museum has plenty of other holiday activities if fashion isn’t your thing. Here’s a rundown of a few. Check their website for more. Just a reminder: admission is free, but some exhibits (like the fashion one) have a fee; others are free but require a ticket.
Holiday Musical Performances
Holiday Traditions Tours
Step into the spirit of the season with the Holiday Traditions Tour. Celebrate light, gifts, parties and family gatherings while discovering how winter holidays have been marked across time and cultures. From ancient festivals of the solstice to modern celebrations, this tour highlights art and objects that tell stories of warmth, generosity and togetherness during the darkest months of the year.
- Weekly on Wednesdays, 5:45–6:45 p.m., through Dec. 17
- Weekly on Saturdays, 3:00–4:00 p.m., through Dec. 27
- Weekly on Sundays, 3:00–4:00 p.m., through Dec. 28
- Ames Family Atrium
- Free; Ticket Required
No tours on Wednesday, December 24; the museum closes at 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve. To schedule private tours for adult groups of 10 or more, contact
[email protected] or call 216-707-2752.
Visitors can also explore free exhibitions and favorite galleries, eat in the museum’s Provenance café or restaurant, relax in the Ames Family Atrium—Cleveland’s largest free interior public space—and snap a photo with family and friends in front of the holiday wreath, tree, menorah, and kinara.
now through Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall
Fashion as a medium undeniably addresses ideas that transcend time from the past into the present. Through the majestic creations of more than 100 modern and contemporary Italian fashions and accessories in dialogue with Italian fine, decorative, and textile arts from the 1400s to the early 1600s, Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses examines the art historical inspirations that fuel recent creative Italian lexicon, expanding fantasies of the Renaissance, Mannerist, and early Baroque periods.
More than 500 years ago, families, or “houses,” who ruled the states across the Italian peninsula, such as the Medici of Florence and the Sforza of Milan, used fashion as a form of power and influence, from dictating fashionable styles that were immortalized through painted portraits to controlling textile production as a form of currency. Conversely, since the turn of the 1900s, rising Italian fashion companies, also called “houses,” have been founded by prolific individuals and families who dominate global style with unmatched design craftsmanship, quality fabrics, and enthralling aesthetics. From Versace and Valentino to Ferragamo and Capucci, these houses have interpreted Italian early modern–period aesthetics to develop fresh perspectives throughout the fashion landscape.
This exhibition illustrates how fashion, in all of its change, is a continuous thread that uncovers history’s complexities as it materializes contemporary beauty.
CMA is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Wednesdays and Fridays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. The museum is closed on Mondays.
