Edward McCluney is a District of Columbia master print-maker. His works are often character studies, many infused with a wry twist of humor and often poignant. He also has a large body of architectural drawings, again often showing whimsy and humor.
McCluney studied art education at Virginia State College in Norfolk and earned an MFA in printmaking from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Teaching Print-Making
McCluney has been teaching print-making for more than fifty years. He has taught printmaking at the Art League School and the Torpedo Factory Art Center, both in Alexandria, for many years and he formerly taught at the Corcoran College of Art. Before that he spent nearly twenty years as the Director of the Student Art Association at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and more than fifteen years as an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art. In the mid-1970s McCluney was an intaglio instructor and artist-in-residence at the Santa Reparata graphics studio in Florence.
Recognition
McCluney’s leadership in the realm of print-making spans decades. In the 1990s and early 2000s McCluney was the Director of the MIT Wiesner Art Gallery. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild for more than twenty years. He has been appointed to the National Endowment for the Arts fine art panel and has often served as an art juror.
Exhibitions
McCluney has been elected to membership at Printmakers Inc. and the Washington Printmakers, and he frequently exhibits his work at both organizations. He has shown his work across the nation, from the M. Hanks Gallery in Santa Monica to the Robert Lehman Art Center in Massachusetts to Decker International in Norfolk. He has had solo shows at the Harvard University Print Gallery, Fitchburg State College, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts College of Art. He has also exhibited at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, including in the important exhibition held there entitled Massachusetts Masters: Afro-American Artists.
McCluney has also exhibited at the Parish Gallery of Art in Washington, Creative Galleries in Culver City, Boston’s Callahan Gallery, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, the Newport Art Museum, an exhibition of the works of Black American artists at the Craven Arts Gallery in North Carolina, and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Collections
McCluney’s work is held in important public and private collections nationwide. Nine of his works are held in the permanent collection of the National Center for Afro-American Artists in Boston and a large collection of his works is held in Georgetown University’s archival art collection. Among many other museums, McCluney’s work can be found at Harvard University, where his portraits of Justice Thurgood Marshall and of Professor David Shapiro are installed in the Law Library. One example of his Thurgood Marshall work is held in the collection of former President Barack Obama.
