Distant Vistas and Closer Looks: “The Poetry of Nature: Hudson River School Landscapes from the New-York Historical Society” at Taft Museum of Art, October 5, 2019-January 12, 2020
I grew up in New York, and so the Hudson River was the river of my childhood. As a child, I thought of it starting in New York City rather than ending there, and then it went, straight and broad, some 300 miles north into the mysterious territory those from the city called “upstate.” It […]
Stride Piano on Canvas: Robert Colescott at the Contemporary Arts Center
More than thirty years after Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center staged a mid-career celebration of Robert Colescott, the arts center has assembled the first survey of his life’s work. Art and Race Matters features 85 pieces produced over more than five decades, taking the viewer from his early studies at Berkeley to his sojourn at the […]
"Women Breaking Boundaries" Cincinnati Art Museum from October 11–April 12, 2020
In this the one-hundredth anniversary of the Women’s Suffragette Movement, the Cincinnati Art Museum joins numerous museums across America to focus on and celebrate women’s equality. But the Cincinnati contribution is oh-so-different. The curator, Ainsley M. Cameron, Curator of South Asian Art, Islamic Art & Antiquities at the Cincinnati Art Museum explained that all eight […]
Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia & Resistance at the 21C Museum Hotel Cincinnati
In the exhibition “Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia & Resistance”, 21C Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites assembles an impressive group of international artists whose work subverts, reinterprets, and reframes representations of cultural power, communal dignity, and personal agency through costume and its context. While regalia is a familiar term, indicating a formal outfit or ornament […]
“Paintings by Bessie and Herman Wessel from the Estate of Helen Wessel,” Cincinnati Art Galleries, through November 23, 2019
“They (Herman and Bessie Wessel) believed that recording the infinitely varied pageantry of the visible world with paint was an exceedingly and challenging pursuit; one that dwelled not on the ebb and flow of any fashionable modernist creed, but rather on the simple and timeless of joy of living.” 1 That is the beginning of […]
The Bent and Biologized Bodies of Oktay Ince’s Breakages
In my home country, Turkey, the amorphous term “terrorist” has adopted folk-lore speculative projections: from a baklava magnate to journalist dissenters and high school teachers, from professors to artists, the unpredictability of being labeled a “terrorist” blankets all such dissenters who dare problematize the ruling AK Party/President Erdoğan. One such case is that of Oktay […]
IMPACTFUL INTERSECTIONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Intersectionality, a deconstructionist critical theory that attempts to identify how different aspects of political and social discrimination overlap and impact marginalized members of our society, is a term that was coined by black feminist scholar, Kimberle’ Williams Crenshaw in 1989. It includes various forms of social stratification, such as class, race, sexual orientation, age, religion, […]
Enduring Attractions: Ritual and Play at the Caza Sikes Gallery
The Art of the Automaton at Caza Sikes Gallery in Oakley boasts an array of interactive machines designed by seven artists from across the United States. They have honed their craft as builders since childhood, traveling to such places as Bali, Tanzania, Nigeria, Senegal, and Peru to develop their technique. Works by Dewey Blocksma, Randall […]
The Company You Keep: “Tiger Lily Press 40th Anniversary Exhibition” at Kennedy Heights Arts Center, August 3-September 14, 2019
Some art work we are likely to do alone, as little outside assistance is required: street photography, for example, or sketching wildflowers in the woods, or singing in the shower. Other types require support systems of various sorts: a string quartet or bronze casting. Artists frequently pool their resources to draw nude models, though they […]
“Emanate”: Light, Time and Art
Through October 10-13, the city will roll out the massive, citywide light-based art spectacle BLINK for the second time after a successful first go around in 2017. The outdoor festival, however, isn’t the only attraction that people should gravitate toward to view interesting light-based work. It’s perhaps appropriate that the smaller exhibition, “Emanate,” is featured […]