The living embodiment of gregariousness, Darl Schaaff likes to ask people who enter his private museum, “if you wanted to display what your life collected, what would that look like?” That framed quote greets visitors as they step inside The Darl Center for the Arts near the corner of East 55th Street and Broadway Avenue.
Built in 1904-1906, the Classical Revival-style, Charles Morris-designed building was originally funded by the Carnegie Foundation to house the Broadway Free Library that served Cleveland’s predominantly Czech-inhabited North Broadway-Slavic Village neighborhood. Today, the historic, ten-sided structure stands as Darl’s answer to his own question.
“I knew the moment I saw this building I wanted it because I could imagine every piece of art I owned in the place,” he says with his trademark laugh. “I thought of it as a destination, and although everyone here has been incredibly supportive, I’m sure they were surprised anyone would put a museum in the middle of this neighborhood.”
Though dripping with history, the building hadn’t served as a public library since 1987, when it was decommissioned. Roughly ten owners since had flirted with converting it into a social club and a restaurant, but it had fallen into substantial disrepair by the time Darl bought the place for $237,000 in October 2022. He has since invested $500,000 replacing roofs, replastering the entire interior, tuckpointing exterior brickwork, and installing new windows, skylights, HVAC and electrical systems to restore the magnificent red-brick beauty to its original architectural splendor.
One of the first exhibits rising near the front entrance that catches a visitor’s eye is a towering, sparkling chrome steel tree.
“You’ll see pretty quickly why I bought this place,” he states on a tour he’s given numerous times to invited guests or some who wander in when he’s there, which is almost every day. “It’s just my stuff, but I’ve lived all over the place, and I’ve traveled all over the world, and each item has a great story behind it. I always tell people when they first arrive, ‘I’m going to set the tone by telling you the story of the tree.’”
The “Story of the Tree” starts with Darl hiring a welder to construct a chrome steel tree for him. Welders, you see, were omnipresent in Anchorage, Alaska, where he was living, because of the booming oil pipeline industry. The welder created the tree to serve as a centerpiece for a client’s party for hundreds of people in a huge hall. Though he won’t mention the client’s name, their initials were BP, he slyly reveals, and they were one of many corporate clients for whom he designed and managed sizable receptions as part of the special events firm that he owned for 35 years, until the complete loss of business during the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to close.
Of course, Darl had acquired the chrome steel materials comprised of stripper poles and the kick rail from around the bar, as only Darl can do, from a friend whose strip bar had been torn down. He’d kept them in one of his warehouses for several years for just such a colorful occasion. Equally colorful, the 6’4” welder with hair down to there, a pretty face with makeup and four-days beard growth, cut arms and sinewy hands with lengthy fingernails just happened to be one who made art, as well as pipelines, and who boasted of being “the best welder you’ll ever meet,” but dreamed of working as a fisherperson.
“I tell that story because it just kind of sets the tone for what we’re looking at here,” Darl reminds, since he collects stories as avidly as artifacts. Punctuated by that hearty trademark laugh, the sheer delight Darl displays throughout tours of “his stuff” is as palpable and intriguing as the objects themselves.
Visitors quickly learn, however, that Darl’s stuff transcends fun eccentricities, like trees artfully crafted from stripper poles or dragons carved from Styrofoam by an artist for an Asian party and are beautifully balanced by costumes from the Peking Opera, carved Tibetan ritual monkey skulls, and carved Japanese furniture circa 1860 created to be sold to Europeans then rabidly collecting Asian furnishings, fashions and art.
While he points out several favorite pieces, he’s likely to stop the tour near one. “This is probably the most interesting piece in the collection,” he says, pausing to admire a roughly 200-year-old puzzle bed that was once given as a wedding gift. “I knew what it was as soon as I saw it, but the people I bought it from had it in their house for thirty years, had no idea and had never taken it apart. There’s not a nail or a screw in it. It’s completely pressure-fitted, and I slept in it for a couple of years.”
Darl’s fistful of black belts in a variety of martial arts—Korean, Chinese, Japanese styles—is on display, as well. He’s studied and competed in the martial arts since his teens, won numerous competitions including a US Championship, and was instrumental in bringing the Gay Games to Cleveland in 2014 initially through his participation in the Games’ martial arts tournaments. His kicks were always especially sharp, but he cheated, he admits, because he drew on his twenty years as a classically-trained ballet dancer, including several years studying with Carlyn Rosser in New York. He continues to serve as president of the International Organization of Gay & Lesbian Martial Arts, which he cofounded.
Darl has run multiple arts programs throughout his life, including the Special Arts Festival in the late ’70s while serving as program director at the Anchorage Arts Council. (When the national model was established, he became the director for the state.) One of the perks was he got to have dinner with folks like JFK’s sister Jean, Andy Warhol, and Elizabeth Taylor. In addition to every piece his collection having great stories behind them, they often have fascinating people involved.
“You know he collects people, too,” confirms his long-time pal and collaborator Janie Odgers, retired state director for the March of Dimes in Alaska, who worked on a fiber festival with Darl, among other arts projects. Currently, she serves as chair of the board for the Darl Center for the Arts. “He was involved in every major event that ever happened here in Anchorage, so his leaving is a huge loss for us but a huge gain for Cleveland.”
In Alaska, where he lived for more than forty years, Darl ran the Fourth of July festivities in Anchorage for 25 years and directed the 50th Anniversary of Statehood for Alaska in 2009. He also oversaw their Salmon on Parade program, where people make statues out of salmon-shaped figures—somewhat akin to Cleveland’s GuitarMania public art project featuring ten-foot-high Stratocaster guitars.
“We’d sell the giant salmon for lots of money and donate all of the proceeds to the senior programs in Alaska,” says Darl, pointing to the red, white and blue fish named Uncle Salmon and one other: “My favorite salmon, and I got into a huge bidding war for it, was Marilyn Monroe, because how can you get any better than that?”
The Alaska section of the Darl Center for the Arts includes several towering totem poles, so important to the state’s indigenous population. They’re not real because authentic totem poles are meant to be buried in the woods and left, according to Darl, so they carved these out of Styrofoam in his workshop.
“We went to enormous amounts of trouble to work with Native Americans,” he says. “So with the consent of a lot of people, they’re all in the right order, carved correctly and painted correctly.”
However, his favorite piece in his Alaska collection is a mask created by Drew Michael, who was eighteen when Darl met him, and under Darl’s mentorship went on to become a highly regarded and popular artist. Michael was an indigenous child adopted by a white family and moved from his Native village to Anchorage. He was also gay and wrestling with all of the conflicting cultural elements of his life, which Darl believes were the inspiration for his stunning masks, including one called, Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
“That title was a joke for me because I kept telling him you have to let all of that stuff inside you come out, so this mask was his reconciliation to all of that” Darl says. “Now, there are four museums buying all of his stuff as soon as he makes it, so he’s doing well.”
After several decades in The Last Frontier, Darl migrated to The North Coast in 2020, which provided the ideal situation to open up his warehouses jam packed with all of the amazing and exotic treasures he had collected. The pandemic conditions had forced him to close his corporate and special events business. He was approaching his 75th birthday. It was time for a change.
“I gave everything away and said time for the next adventure,” he recalls. “I think I want to go to Cleveland. I have lots of friends there. I can buy an old building there. I’ve never owned a great big, old building, so that will be fun. I’ve never had my collection in one place. Most of it has been in storage.”
After searching for a building for three years, he bought the former library and did significant clean up—approximately 120 cubic yards of trash—and restoration. Finally, he was able to enjoy unpacking all of those crates and cartons into roughly 20,000 square feet of exhibit space.
“There’s no rhyme or reason to the collection,” Darl says of his art works and personal effects. “I can honestly say I never bought anything that I thought would become valuable. My motivation was always that I just liked it.”
Never one to remain idle for long, Darl has numerous plans for the space. Among them, he’s going to: Create a panoramic display of the history of the building near the entrance. Utilize his lower-level theater space to hold benefits for nonprofit organizations, as well as occasionally premiere groundbreaking new plays. Hold fundraising dinners at a stunningly beautiful carved wooden table and chairs that he has purchased from a family for $20,000, mainly because he had bought a beautiful palace rug that was the perfect place to set such a table; the luxurious dinners will feature a high-profile chef and vintage wines. Host a big 75th birthday party in September with more than a dozen out-of-own friends flying in. Host an international fabrics, quilting, and wearable art show next March that will probably spill over into another cool space in Cleveland. If nothing else, Darl always dreams big.
“This building and I have both led glamorous lives, and then we both got old, so now we’re reinventing each other,” concludes Darl, who threw a first-year anniversary party last October that guests are still clamoring about, especially the part where he emerged dressed as a circus ringmaster and invited everyone to attend the Crooked River Circus performance on the lower level.
“I have the best job you can have when you retire,” Darl continues. “I do nothing but talk about myself all day long and show people the stuff that I love. My friends say, ‘Now, if you could just get people to pay for that, it would be a really great job.’”
The booming, joyous laughter that follows provides the ideal way to conclude this tour of The Darl Center for the Arts.