FRONT is a large-scale and multi-venue art exhibition promoting discourse on contemporary works on display at sites across Cleveland. FRONT provides a stage for local, national, and international artists to create and share new work inspired by the most important social, political, and cultural issues of our time. Working with Project Projects, FRONT will develop a distinctive, scalable exhibition identity system, which will function as the primary mode of visual communication and the graphic voice for the Triennial across the region. This visual system will carry across media to include the design concept for the exhibition catalogue and exhibition guide. In conjunction with the artistic interventions, public programs, and residencies that comprise FRONT, these publications will examine FRONT's theme, An American City. This work will become the exhibition's permanent record of art experiences and scholarly dialogue rooted in the spirit of Cleveland and the region while connecting history and future.

Michelle Grabner is a celebrated American painter and conceptual artist. Her work has been featured in the collections of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; DaimlerChrysler, Berlin; Mudam Luxembourg; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Grabner was one of three curators who organized the 2015 Whitney Biennial. She recently curated the Portland2016 Biennial, a statewide exhibition in Oregon. Grabner is the Crown Family Professor of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. With her husband, Brad Killam, she codirects the project spaces the Suburban in Milwaukee and the Poor Farm in Little Wolf, Wisconsin. Grabner also serves on the board of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Prem Krishnamurthy, principal of Project Projects, is a New York-based designer, curator, educator, and writer. He is recipient of Cooper Hewitt's National Design Award for Communication Design (2015). Project Projects’s clients include the Art Institute of Chicago,the  Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, the Berkeley Art Museum, Carnegie International (2018), Columbia University’s School for the Arts, the Cooper Hewitt, the Guggenheim Museum, Harvard University, the Istanbul Design Biennial, the Jewish Museum, the 9th Mercosul Biennial, M+ Museum, MoMA, the Renaissance Society, RISD Museum, SALT Istanbul, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the Whitney Museum, Yale University’s Art Gallery, and others centered on identity, exhibition, publication, and interactive projects.

Chris Wu, principal of Project Projects, has led identity, exhibition design, environmental graphics, and interactive projects for New York’s Department of Parks, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Parsons the New School for Design, and M+ Museum/West Kowloon Cultural District Authority. Prior to Project Projects, he was a designer at the Taipei office of TBWA Worldwide and worked for a series of international clients, including Adidas, MUJI, and Unilever. Wu authored, translated, edited, and designed Graphic Design: Visual Comparisons (Zoar Press, 2008), a re-issue of the iconic design title, originally published in1963, with Wu's footnotes and foreword.

Fred Bidwell is a philanthropist, collector, and community leader. In 2011, he established, along with his wife, the Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Foundation. In 2013, the Bidwell Foundation opened Transformer Station, a contemporary art exhibition space on Cleveland's West Side, which alternates as an exhibition venue for the Bidwells from their renowned collection of photo-based contemporary art and exhibitions organized by Cleveland Museum of Art. Bidwell serves on the boards of Akron Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Akron Community Foundation, as well as the Visiting Committee of the Allen Memorial Art Museum.

FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art is a region-wide contemporary art event. Encompassing museum exhibitions and unique sites spread across the city, FRONT will provide a stage for local, national, and international artists to create and share new work that is inspired by and engaged with the most important social, political, and cultural issues of our time. The inaugural edition of FRONT, An American City, will take place throughout the summer of 2018 and feature new work by over 60 artists in six major exhibitions and 15-to-20 site-specific installations around the city and Northeast Ohio.