CINCINNATI, OH.- The Cincinnati Art Museum has never had as many artworks on view in as many galleries as it will starting on Dec. 19. With the reopening of the third-floor contemporary gallery and the recent reopening of the Cincinnati Wing pre-Civil War galleries, Antiquities, and new first-floor galleries, there will be more for Art Museum visitors to see than ever before.
“We are excited to make the Cincinnati Art Museum more open than ever,” said Cameron Kitchin, the Louis and Louise Dieterle Nippert Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum. “With 65,000 artworks under our care, we hope to put as many on view as possible to fulfill our mission to bring people and art together. We are enriching the museum experience with both quantity of art, but more importantly, quality of experience.”
Third-floor gallery
There will be approximately 20 works on view on the third floor, all contemporary, including many by female artists. Artworks previously on view, including large-scale painting-sculpture hybrids by Judy Pfaff and Frank Stella, will join pieces from storage by Ellsworth Kelly, Alex Katz, Donald Judd, Mary Miss, and others. Ana England’s large Night Sky Spiral II (2003), originally commissioned for the Terrace Café, will once again be on view. The Art Museum will also debut a newly acquired large-scale painting by local artist Thom Shaw.
“We’re putting out some of the ‘old favorites’ while giving other artworks from storage the chance to shine,” said Brian Sholis, Cincinnati Art Museum Curator of Photography, who is coordinating the display. “Every artwork, including ones that were on view in previous third-floor installations, is getting a new label, and the new juxtapositions will hopefully draw out new connections and stories,” he added.
The third floor closed in fall 2012 to facilitate the move of The Mary R. Schiff Library and Archives and Art Museum staff into the Longworth Wing.
Changes on the Art Museum’s first floor also allow for greater art exposure, with new and repurposed galleries now connecting first-floor areas and eliminating dead ends.
New galleries on the first floor
With the temporary exhibition Field Guide: Photographs by Jochen Lempert, Galleries 103, 104 and 105 opened to the public for the first time this Fall. After an upcoming exhibition next Spring, one gallery will be dedicated to permanent-collection artworks—including fashion and textiles, works on paper, and photography, and the other two galleries other artworks from the permanent collection not currently on view.
Antiquities galleries
On the first floor, to the left of the Great Hall, the Art Museum’s permanent collection of Western antiquities was reinstalled in October 2015. Now known as the Sherie and Len Marek Family Gallery and Millard F. Rogers Jr. Gallery (G101-102), they are adjacent to the Rosenthal Education Center (REC), an engaging and interactive space for families that opened in March 2015.
Cincinnati Wing galleries
The Cincinnati Art Museum’s early Cincinnati galleries reopened in August 2015 to tell the first chapter in the story of the Cincinnati Wing. These galleries detail the city’s rise as an artistic center from its founding in the late eighteenth century through the years leading to the Civil War. Recent renovations allow for these galleries (G106-108) to now lead chronologically into the remainder of the Cincinnati Wing for the first time since the Wing’s debut in 2003. The refreshed and reoriented galleries feature some recent acquisitions and items not previously on display presented with new interpretation. A special emphasis on the story of art patronage in Cincinnati has also been added.
