Cincinnati Art Museum

Whitfield Lovell: Passages
March 1–May 26, 2024
Western & Southern Galleries (Galleries 232 and 233)
Ticketed. Free for Members.
Adult tickets: $12 in-person, $10 online
Seniors, college students and children 6–17 years: $8 in person, $6 online
Children 5 years & under: free

See the exhibition for free on Thursday nights from 5–8 p.m.; Tuesdays throughout April; and during Art After Dark on April 26 from 5–9 p.m.

Whitfield Lovell: Passages urges viewers to contemplate the ordinary lives and extraordinary journeys of the African American experience, while raising universal questions about identity, memory, and America’s collective heritage. More than 80 evocative multisensory installations, conté crayon drawings, and assemblages comprise this most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work to date.

Born in the Bronx, Lovell, a 2007 MacArthur Fellowship recipient, creates exquisite drawings, finding inspiration in photographs of unidentified African Americans taken between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement. He creates assemblages by pairing his drawings—on paper or salvaged wood boards—with found objects, many weathered by the passage of time. Some of Lovell’s assemblages appear in his larger installations, while others he presents as symbolic and enigmatic stand-alone tableaux. Works from his acclaimed Kin series evolve into his more recent productions, The Reds and Card Pieces.

Two of Lovell’s experiential installations, Deep River and Visitation: The Richmond Project, are brought together here for the first time. The monumental Deep River (2013) combines video projections, sound, drawings, and everyday objects. Documenting the perilous journey freedom seekers took by crossing the Tennessee River during the Civil War, Deep River addresses the struggle for freedom and its inherent themes of abandonment, death, life, and hope. At the same time, it invites viewers to consider the larger human quest for equality and the pursuit of a better life—matters that transcend time and geography. Visitation: The Richmond Project (2001) is a profound homage to the country’s first major Black entrepreneurial community. In this emotive installation, the artist pays tributes to the lives, names, and faces of the people of Jackson Ward in Richmond, Viriginia. Lovell explains, “the installations are about memory and heritage, and the markings that the past has made—and continues to make—on who we are.”

March 29–May 12, 2024
Vance Waddell and Mayerson Galleries (Galleries 124 and 125)
Free Admission

The Cincinnati Art Museum is excited to host the annual Accessible Expressions Ohio exhibition (March 29–May 12, 2024). This opportunity comes to us as part of our long-term partnership with Art Possible Ohio, a Columbus-based nonprofit that “works with artists of all ages who have disabilities to advocate for accessibility and inclusivity, advance careers in the creative sector, build community, and improve the academic achievement of Ohio’s students through arts integration.”

One of the most accessible and diverse art presentations ever displayed at the museum, Accessible Expressions Ohio is a juried statewide art exhibition by Ohio artists, of all ages, with disabilities. A panel of practicing artists, educators, and arts administrators—who determine standards, originality, and diversity—review all submissions in Youth, Emerging, and Professional categories. This team also decides the artworks that will receive awards.

Accessible Expressions Ohio is a first for the museum. While we have previously worked with community partners to host exhibitions showcasing regional artists, this is the first time the museum has displayed an entire show of works by people with disabilities. A significant step toward the museum’s inclusion and diversity goals, Accessible Expressions Ohio builds on the museum’s standing as a leader in accessibility initiatives by sharing artwork from the disability community. It also reinforces not only the work of the museum’s Accessible Community Advisory Committee but also the work of our internal cross-divisional accessibility team. It has been their long-standing goal and dream to host an exhibition of works by people with disabilities at the museum, and we are so pleased to work with Art Possible Ohio to make that dream a reality.

After premiering at the museum, the exhibition will travel throughout Ohio with stops at the Massillon Museum in Massillon, Ohio (June 22–August 18, 2024), Dublin Arts Council (November 9-December 19, 2024) and several other venues.

For more information, please visit https://artpossibleohio.org/aeo/

Free. Some Art in Bloom-related events and programs require tickets.

The Cincinnati Art Museum’s Art in Bloom, a bi-annual celebration of floral artistry, takes place April 26–28. This weekend fundraiser features floral arrangements by some 60 artists, each inspired by a different work of art in the museum’s collections.

Driving the themes and programming of 2024’s Art in Bloom is the work of Natasja Sadi, an Amsterdam-based floral artist who creates arrangements from natural materials and photo-realistic sugar flowers, all inspired by Dutch-masters paintings.

The weekend promises to be filled with delightful educational programs and activities designed to engage a variety of audiences, ages, and interests. Check out cincinnatiartmuseum.org/artinbloom for more information and individual event tickets.

Free. Reservations not required.

CAM Kids Day is bigger and better than ever! Each CAM Kids Day celebrates a new exhibition in the museum with themed activities. From 11 a.m.–1 p.m., families with preschool aged children (ages 3–5) enjoy hands-on gallery activities, art making led by community artists, story time with the Cincinnati Public Library, and a special age-appropriate performance. In the afternoon from 1–3 p.m. families with children ages 5–12 can experience collaborative activities, art experiments, games, art making stops, and a family performance.

This month, enjoy our inclusive family event celebrating the exhibition Accessible Expressions Ohio, featuring artwork by Ohioans of all ages and abilities, in partnership with Art Possible Ohio.

Activities include:

Storytime with the Cincinnati Public Library |11 a.m.–1 p.m.
Art-making activities with Visionaries and Voices and Happen Inc. | 11 a.m.–1 p.m.
Bucket drumming with Band in a Bus | 11:30 a.m.
All-Abilities dance class with Julie Sunderland | 1 p.m.
Interactive stations with artists Lisa Merida-Paytes and Eric Vandenoever | 1–3 p.m.
American Sign Language Lesson with Emma Kist | 2 p.m.
ASL interpretation, wheelchairs, strollers, See Play Learn Sensory Kits, braille, and large print will be available. This event will be busy and noisy, but a quiet space and sensory headphones will be available. If you need accessibility accommodations, please contact us in advance at access@cincyart.org.

Free. Reservations not required.

Art on The Rise in May celebrates the exhibition Whitfield Lovell: Passages. This powerful body of work explores issues of identity, personal narrative, and memory. Participants can explore these themes with Art on the Rise partners, Poems While You Wait with the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Guests can create tableau portraits with found objects, inspired by Lovell’s work, courtesy of the Cincinnati ReUse Center. Live music provided by Cincinnati Music Accelerator. Food for purchase. Parking is limited. Weather permitting.

Free Admission

Woo Chong Yung 吳仲熊 (1898–1989), also known in the United States as C.Y. Woo, was a highly accomplished painter, calligrapher, and poet from Shanghai. From the 1920s to 1949, Woo was at the center of China’s cultural world, recognized in the art circles of both Shanghai and Beijing. Faced with political persecution in the 1960s, Woo migrated to Columbus, Ohio right before the Cultural Revolution. Once in the United States, Woo became an active presence in the local community, teaching classes in Chinese painting and martial arts and contributing his talents to local arts councils and ethnic festivals in Columbus and central Ohio. By the end of his life, he had essentially become a living legend in Columbus.

From Shanghai to Ohio: Woo Chong Yung (1898–1989) features 88 works, including painting and calligraphy, carved seals, and a Taiji sword drawn from the collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum and The Frank Museum of Art at Otterbein University. Few of these paintings have ever been published or publicly displayed. Woo’s lifetime body of work illustrates how his remarkable experiences of emigrating from China and becoming an American utterly transformed and reshaped both his life and painti

Reservations required.
CAM members: $20
General public: $30

Tickets will be available one month prior to the event date.

Create Plus: We are all the continuum of our ancestors
How do we learn more about ancestors we’ve never met and how do we honor their stories in art? Connect past with present in this artmaking workshop designed for adult audiences. First, participate in gallery activities and discussion throughout the exhibition Whitfield Lovell: Passages to explore multiple narratives in Lovell’s work. Then head to the Rosenthal Education Center (REC) to create artworks inspired by your own stories, memories, and ancestors. In the spirit of Lovell’s work, participants will create memory jar assemblages with everyday objects and learn portrait drawing techniques to capture their personal likenesses or a likeness of an ancestor. Taught by local artist and educator, Ryan Leary. All materials are provided, but participants may wish to bring their own small objects or photographs representing personal memories and people from their past.

About the Artist:
Ryan Leary 
Ryan Nichole Leary is a visual artist/historian/educator and Cincinnati native dedicated to educating, sharing, and celebrating the narratives of people who are part of the African Diaspora. Leary works as a visual artist, specializing in portraits, lectures on art history at local institutions, and blends her love for creativity and activism in her work. She describes her work as “Obnoxiously Large, Unapologetically Black." It is through Leary’s artwork, lectures, and teachings that she hopes to correct false narratives and celebrate the brilliance of the Diaspora. Learn more about her work at ryannicholestudios.com. 

Celebrate Mother’s Day by having brunch at the Terrace Café, enjoying the exhibits, and grab a gift in the Gift Shop.

Mother’s Day Brunch Menu
Pricing:
$45.95 per adult
$19.95 for children 12 & under
Children under 3 are free

Omelet Station:
Choice of fresh eggs or egg whites with choice of:
Cheeses: Cheddar, Swiss, Feta, Cheddar Jack
Veggies: Mushrooms, Onions, Tomatoes, Peppers, Scallions, Spinach
Meats: Ham, Sausage Crumbles, Canadian Bacon, Bacon

Homemade Baked Goods
Assorted muffins, scones, cinnamon rolls, fruit pastries, and croissants
Delicious, assorted muffins, Scones, Cinnamon Rolls, Fruit Pastries, and Croissants
Roasted Vegetable Platter
Seasonal Fresh Fruit Display
Fruit & Yogurt Parfait
French Toast Casserole
Applewood Smoked Bacon and Sausage Patties
Creamy Mac and Cheese
Lemon Chicken

Fresh assorted fruit Juices:
Apple, Orange, Grapefruit, Cranberry Juice
Mimosa and Bloody Mary Special $8

Reservation needed. Please Call the Terrace Café at (513) 639-2986 or online.

Reservations required.

Members: $10

General public: $20

College students: $5

Let’s end our Evenings for Educators season with some fun! Are you familiar with Wearable Tracy? Come learn about Lee Kim and how a birthday present turned into a several years-long project. First, enjoy dinner, then hear from Obie Lynn our Textile Conservator about hats and fascinators in our collection. Use these as inspiration to create your very own Wearable Tracy!

For each program attended, you can earn CEU’s and 1–2 graduate credits for an additional fee through Ashland University. 

About Evenings for Educators

Evenings for Educators is the museum’s monthly teacher professional development program. Through the lens of the museum’s collection and exhibitions, Evenings for Educators supports all subjects taught in the classroom. It also encourages a STREAM approach as well as Twenty-First Century Learning strategies. The program is offered for teachers of all grade levels and disciplines, art appreciation volunteers, pre-service education majors, teaching artists, as well as community and museum educators. 

For more information, email schoolandteachers@cincyart.org

Members: Free
General public: $20
Students: $5
Reservations required. Reservations will open one month before the event. Limited tickets available.

Join us for a special presentation by Adrienne L. Childs, PhD, esteemed independent scholar, art historian, and curator celebrating the opening of the exhibition, Rodin | Response: FIELD Family Secrets. Dr. Childs will draw on her deep experience exploring the connections between the birth of modernism and contemporary art—across lines of culture, race, gender, and power structures—to address the underpinnings of this exhibition. Her talk examines the contemporary artistic and curatorial practice of response: how artists interpret, expand, and reorder the history of art.

*Please note: Museum lectures will take place in Gallery 105 during the renovation of the lower level.

About the Guest Speaker:
Adrienne L. Childs is an independent scholar, art historian, and curator. She is Senior Consulting Curator at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. Her current book project is an exploration of Black figures in European decorative arts entitled Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts, forthcoming from Yale University Press. She recently co-curated The Colour of Anxiety: Race, Sexuality and Disorder in Victorian Sculpture at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, England. She was the guest curator of Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition at The Phillips Collection in Washington DC, 2020.

In April 2022 the High Museum of Art awarded Childs the 2022 Driskell Prize in recognition of her contribution to African American art and art history.

Childs co-curated The Black Figure in the European Imaginary at the Rollins Art Museum at Rollins College in 2017. She is co-editor of the volume essays Blacks and Blackness in European Art of the Long Nineteenth Century, Routledge. She also contributed an essay on art and activism to Volume V, part II of The Image of the Black in Western Art edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and David Bindman.

As former curator at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, she curated many exhibitions including Her Story: Lithographs by Margo Humphrey; Arabesque: The Art of Stephanie Pogue; Creative Spirit: The Art of David C. Driskell and Tradition Redefined: The Larry and Brenda Thompson Collection of African American Art.

Childs holds a BA from Georgetown University, an MBA from Howard University, and a PhD in the History of Art from the University of Maryland. Learn more at adriennelchilds.com.

Rodin | Response: FIELD Family Secrets is organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum in collaboration with Supermrin and the School of Art, University of Cincinnati, and with the generous support of Iris Cantor.

Sponsored by the Harold C. Schott Foundation.

Image credit: Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917), Jacques de Wissant (detail), 1885–86, cast 1989, bronze, h. 83 7/8 in. (223.2 cm), Courtesy of Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, Photo Addison Doty.

Reservations required. Capacity is limited.
Members: $7
General public: $15
Tickets will be available for purchase one month prior to the event.

Join us for a gallery chat and yoga flow in Gallery 229. This class is accessible to participants of all levels and abilities, and various modifications will be offered.

Guests must bring their own yoga mats.

Water bottles are not allowed in the galleries.

In celebration of hip hop’s remarkable, decades-long impact and influence on society, the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) will host the groundbreaking exhibition The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, on view from June 28–September 29, 2024.

The multimedia exhibition showcases more than 90 works of art by some of today’s most important and celebrated artists–such as Banksy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roberto Lugo, Carrie Mae Weems, Mark Bradford, William Cordova, Hassan Hajjaj and Hank Willis Thomas–and fashion brands, with looks from Chanel, Gucci, Cross Colours, Vivienne Westwood and Virgil Abloh’s collections for Louis Vuitton. A range of music ephemera will also be on display.

Discovering Ansel Adams
September 27, 2024–January 19, 2025
The Thomas R. Schiff Gallery (Gallery 234 & 235)
Ticketed. Free for Members. Save $2 when purchasing tickets online.
Adult tickets: $12 in-person, $10 online
Seniors, college students and children 6–17 years: $8 in person, $6 online
Children 5 years & under: free

See the exhibition for free on Thursday nights from 5–8 p.m. and during Art After Dark on September 27 and October 25 from 5–9 p.m. FotoFocus passport holders have free entry from September 27–October 31.

Premiering at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Discovering Ansel Adams provides an unprecedented exploration of the early career of Ansel Adams (1902–1984), demonstrating how, between 1916 and the 1940s, Adams developed from a 14-year-old tourist with a camera into America’s most celebrated photographer. Drawn from the definitive Adams collection at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, the exhibition brings together approximately 80 virtuosic photographs with unique ephemera including the artist’s handwritten correspondence, snapshots, personal possessions, and photographic working materials. Featured works range from small, one-of-a-kind photographs from Adams’s teenage years to jaw-dropping mural-sized prints of his most iconic mature views. Join the artist on his journey from teenage musician to young mountaineer, as he makes his first pictures at Yosemite, experiences the American Southwest, learns how to communicate with a broad national audience, and undertakes an epic quest to photograph America’s national parks. Along the way, discover how Ansel Adams became Ansel Adams.

Founded in 1975 by the President of University of Arizona and Ansel Adams, the Center for Creative Photography is one of the world’s finest institutions for the study of the history of photography, and a singularly important archive for Ansel Adams studies. Discovering Ansel Adams presents a rare opportunity to encounter the CCP’s Ansel Adams collection outside of Arizona.