Imagine: Your father is Tiberius, Rome’s moody second emperor (r. 14-37 AD); he, with your colorful cousin Caligula, regularly retreats to Capri to watch tortures and executions. Your adoptive grandfather,...

Like a scene from Swift’s classic “Gulliver’s Travels,” the Reinberger Galleries at the Cleveland Institute of Art this month may have you feeling dwarfed, or at the very least disoriented. “The...