Cultural Heritage Exhibition to Open at Beck Center for the Arts

Beck Center for the Arts will present Cultural Heritage Exhibition, featuring the work of Cleveland artists David Buttram, Rafael Valdivieso, and Gina Washington, on view August 28 through November 1, 2026, in the Hoffman-Stach Gallery.

The Cultural Heritage Exhibition brings together David Buttram, Rafael Valdivieso, and Gina Washington, three artists exploring culture, identity, memory, and lived experience through distinct artistic practices. Buttram’s paintings draw on symbolism, spirituality, and the human condition, using light, shadow, reflection, and color to explore human emotion. Valdivieso examines migration, heritage, memory, and belonging, while Washington’s interdisciplinary work explores family, community, cultural history, and personal identity.

Together their work offers diverse perspectives on how culture is experienced, remembered, and shaped by personal, and collective histories.

“What makes this exhibition exciting is the opportunity to see three very different artists exploring ideas of culture and identity in their own ways. Each artist brings a different perspective and personal history to the exhibition, which makes for a really engaging mix of work. Together, the artists offer viewers different ways of thinking about culture, while also showing how much can be shared across very different experiences,” shares Jamie Richey, Associate Director of Visual Arts.

About the Artists

David Buttram (b. 1947, Cleveland, Ohio) is a painter whose work explores the ever-changing character of the inner city. Inspired by the styles of Van Gogh, Rembrandt, the Impressionists, and the Ashcan School, Buttram creates images of natural and man-made objects through combinations of light, shadow, reflections, and color. His work has been exhibited at Karamu House, the Kettering Government Center, the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Cleveland State Art Gallery, the Mansfield Arts Center, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Buttram is a graduate of The Cooper School of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and Kent State University. A former U.S. Marine Vietnam Veteran and retired art educator in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, Buttram is retired and creates his work from his home studio.

Born in Quito, Ecuador, and a resident of Cleveland Heights for the past 23 years, Rafael Valdivieso creates intricate, richly layered compositions populated by hundreds of figures and faces.  His imagined spaces evoke a sense of teeming, untamed life, weaving together themes of human joy, struggle, connection, and transformation.

His travels throughout Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East have deeply influenced his artistic vision, while sharpening his sensitivity to line, shape, color, pattern, and the visual rhythms of diverse cultures. Drawing from memory, imagination, and observation, Valdivieso creates works that invite viewers into complex worlds where countless stories seem to unfold simultaneously.

His recent public and community-based projects include a mural for the St. Clair Superior Neighborhood; painted furniture for Cleveland Heights’ Coventry “Living Room” project; murals for the Cedar-Lee Mural Project, the Beck Center for the Arts, and Canton Mural Fest; and altars, posters, and T-shirts created for Cleveland’s Day of the Dead celebrations. He has also designed masks and costumes for Cleveland Public Theater’s Pandemonium and has been a Featured Artist for Cleveland Museum of Art events including Parade the Circle and the Chalk Festival.

Gina Washington is a Cleveland-born interdisciplinary artist and recipient of the 2025 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. She has served as a juror for the National Endowment for the Arts, Valley Arts Center’s Annual Exhibition, and Cleveland Sculpture Center’s Revealed Artists program, among others. Since 2019, Washington has been a Shorts Programmer for the Cleveland International Film Festival. She holds an MFA in Photography from Ohio University and a BA in Film Studies from the University of Rochester. Washington creates work across photography, ceramics, mixed media, and installation, guided by the belief of making art “by any means necessary.”

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