What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine @ Cincinnati Art Museum

What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine 

Cincinnati Art Museum 

November 21, 2025 - March 1, 2026

Irreverent, iconic and wildly influential, MAD Magazine has been making generations laugh—and think—since 1952. The Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) invites visitors to rediscover the wit, weirdness and cultural critique that made MAD a publishing phenomenon in What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine.

Organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and co-curated by Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Chief Curator and Rockwell Center Director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, and Steve Brodner, foremost satirical illustrator and caricaturist, What, Me Worry? traces the illustrated history of MAD from its subversive comic book roots to its status as a mainstream force in American satire. Featuring more than 150 original works of art, the exhibition highlights beloved recurring features, unforgettable caricatures and the artists and writers behind them—collectively known as the “Usual Gang of Idiots.”

From Spy vs. Spy to the famous Fold-Ins and Alfred E. Neuman’s ever-grinning face, What, Me Worry? showcases MAD’s signature blend of visual hilarity and sharp cultural commentary. Original illustrations and cartoons by Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, Richard Williams and many others will be on view alongside ephemera, artifacts, media and rare memorabilia.

“This exhibition invites visitors, many of whom are MAD lovers, to reminisce over the magazine’s satirical history and have a good laugh but also explore the themes and critical historical moments spoofed by MAD,” said Director of Learning & Interpretation Emily Agricola Holtrop, the exhibition’s curator at CAM. “Through laughter, generations have learned about important social moments that have shaped this country—MAD did that.”

First hitting newsstands in 1952, MAD originally launched as an EC comic book series founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines, with its inaugural issue titled Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad. The publication’s now-legendary parodies of Superduperman (issue #4) and Starchie (issue #12)—takeoffs on the classic DC Superhero and Archie comics—launched MAD into the stratosphere. In 1955, with MAD #24, the comic was reimagined as an illustrated magazine, releasing it from the censure of the Comics Code Authority. Between 1955 and 2025, over 595 issues have been published, along with numerous of specials, books, paperbacks and compilation projects. Now part of the Warner Bros. Discovery family, managed by DC, MAD continues with curated reprints, compilations and some new features, and is available at Barnes & Noble’s newsstands, Bookazines or via subscription to fans nationwide.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM

Western & Southern galleries (Galleries 232 and 233)

953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott @ Cincinnati Art Museum

Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott 

Cincinnati Art Museum

October 10, 2025 – January 4, 2026

Ceramic tableware with intricate blue patterning has been a staple in dining room décor for centuries. Contemporary artist Paul Scott (British, b. 1953) carries this tradition forward, yet his designs are anything but conventional. More than 50 of his works, which present updated narratives about art, history and American experiences, will be on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) in the exhibition Recall. Reframe. Respond. The Art of Paul Scott.

Paul Scott breaks, reassembles, erases and adds details to ceramics from the 1800s and 1900s using transfer-printing and collage processes to create new “historical” patterns. In addition to these repurposed antique pieces and the artist’s new ceramic forms, Recall. Reframe. Respond. debuts Scott’s limited-edition letterpress artist book. A selection of his works will be paired with artworks from CAM’s American art collection to “reframe” the way audiences see, experience and reflect on these objects.

“This is not your grandparents’ blue-and-white china,” notes Amy Dehan, the museum’s curator of decorative arts and design. “Paul Scott’s work is subversive in the best way—witty, wry and challenging. It urges us to look critically at dominant narratives while making connections across human experience, places and time.”

Recall. Reframe. Respond. also celebrates local artists and voices, featuring responses to a selection of Scott’s works written by community members. Notably, the exhibition also presents two transferware pieces on which he collaborated with Cincinnati-based artist Terence Hammonds.

Based in the northwest English county of Cumbria, Paul Scott is an artist, author, curator and educator who is best known for his unique ability to employ extensive historical and technical knowledge of ceramics to create provocative artworks and social commentary. During a visit to Ohio State University in 1999, Paul Scott became inspired by historical British-made blue-and-white ceramic transferwares that depicted American scenes, directly engaging American consumers. After his visit, Paul Scott challenged himself to create his own versions that recontextualize the messages embedded within these historical works by focusing on contemporary imagery and subjects. Scott’s New American Scenery series reflects his personal experiences of being and traveling in America, and, in his words, the need to “rebalance the narrative with something more contemporary and inclusive.”

Paul Scott shares: “Industrial transferwares were part of the new media revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They have always carried images and patterns which have journeyed through media, time, histories and geographies, capturing and changing meanings as they have travelled. Cumbrian Blue(s) contemporary artworks reference these original wares, so I very much enjoy opportunities which allow me to juxtapose my 21st century iterations alongside the historic in visual dialogues that act to re-animate (sometimes forgotten) objects from museum stores. For Recall. Reframe. Respond., I am excited to extend this process to include paintings, prints, photographs and other artworks from Cincinnati Art Museum’s extensive collections, creating new ‘conversations’ and reanimations.”

Over the last three decades, Paul Scott has established an international reputation. His work can be found in public and private collections around the globe including The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Norway, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

Transfer-printed ware, or transferware, describes industrially produced ceramic tableware that has a decorative pattern applied by transferring a print first from an engraved copper plate to specialized paper and finally to the ceramic’s surface. This term also applies to modern wares with printed graphic surfaces made using more recent printmaking techniques and decal transfer technologies.

The exhibition will be on view in the Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell Gallery and the Manuel and Rhoda Mayerson Gallery (124 and 125) located across from the Terrace Café. Several works will be displayed in other museum galleries, to be in conversation with the collections.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM

953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

East Asian Art Rediscovered Treasures @ Cincinnati Art Museum

Rediscovered Treasures 

Cincinnati Art Museum

September 19, 2025 — January 18, 2026

This exhibition reveals the untold stories behind East Asian masterpieces long housed in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s (CAM) collection. Featuring approximately 60 objects—ranging from Japanese armor and Chinese scrolls to Korean lacquer—Rediscovered Treasures brings to light transformative discoveries made possible by decades of scholarship, archival research and conservation efforts. 

While many of the featured works entered the museum in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they remained un-accessioned or misidentified due to a lack of staff expertise in Asian art at the time. Since 2002, when the museum formally established its Asian art department, ongoing research led by Hou-mei Sung, PhD, Curator of East Asian Art, has dramatically improved the understanding of these objects. Their rediscovery has not only reframed the museum’s collection, but has also illuminated Cincinnati’s early cultural ties to East Asia.

Among the exhibition’s highlights are three exceptional works: the fan-favorite Japanese bronze “magic mirror,” which reveals an image of Amida Buddha under special lighting, making CAM one of the few museums in the world to house such an object; a Qing dynasty portrait of a court lady, identified through research as an imperial portrait of Lady Nian, possibly painted by the Jesuit artist Giuseppe Castiglione; and a Meiji period sumo wrestler’s embroidered apron, recently linked to the tragic career of Otokoyama Osuke, a promising young wrestler immortalized in a ukiyo-e print by Utagawa Kuniaki II. Each piece offers a unique story of rediscovery that enriches the understanding of East Asian art and culture.

“This exhibition is both a reflection of CAM’s mission to preserve and interpret cultural heritage and a celebration of the exciting process of rediscovery,” said Hou-mei Sung. “Many of these works, once overlooked or mislabeled, now tell vibrant stories of art, of individual lives, and of historical connections that extend far beyond Cincinnati.”

The exhibition is organized in three thematic sections. Uncovering Hidden Gems spotlights artworks recovered from storage and newly identified, including Japanese scrolls linked to Cincinnati artist Robert Frederick Blum and samurai armor tied to CAM’s early supporters and a trailblazing Japanese doctor. Revealing Identities feature reclassified works with newly attributed artists, corrected origins and uncovered meanings. Preserving Legacies highlights the scientific and technical efforts behind preserving these treasures, with insights from CAM conservators Cecile Mear and Kelly Rectenwald.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM

Thomas R. Schiff galleries (234 and 235)

953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Frank Duveneck @ Cincinnati Art Museum - American Master

Frank Duveneck: American Master

Cincinnati Art Museum

Through March 28, 2021

FRANK DUVENECK (1848–1919), United States

He Lives by His Wits, 1878

Oil on canvas

Collection of Gates Thornton Richards and Margaret Kyte Richards

The Cincinnati Art Museum presents a major re-evaluation of the work of FRANK DUVENECK, the most influential painter in Cincinnati history.

Through his brilliant and inspiring work as a painter and printmaker and as a charismatic teacher, Frank Duveneck’s impact on the international art world of his time was substantial and enduring. More than 90 examples across media from the holdings of the museum, the leading repository of the Kentucky native’s work, and 35 pieces on loan from collections across the United States, provides a fresh, in-depth look at this important artist.

Once Cincinnati’s most celebrated artist, Frank Duveneck was born in Covington to Westphalian immigrants in 1848. He studied in Munich, Germany, where he became an influential teacher, and spent nearly two decades in Europe. His work reflected the impact not only of modern German art, as is widely acknowledged, but also French and Italian work. His paintings’ lack of finish and assertive brushwork parallel Impressionism, and his work as a printmaker positioned him centrally in the period’s etching revival.

A captivating educator of men and women, Frank Duveneck counted John Henry Twachtman and Elizabeth Boott among his pupils and James Abbott McNeill Whistler among his collegial friends. Returning to the United States in 1888, Duveneck taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where he became director of the faculty in 1905. As a mentor and esteemed advisor to collectors and the Cincinnati Art Museum staff, Duveneck’s impact on the Cincinnati art world remains unparalleled.

This is the first exhibition in 30 years to dive deep into Frank Duveneck’s artistic development, his working methods, and the historical and social context of his subjects. Presenting abundant new research, the exhibition upends many common misconceptions and reveals the artist’s accomplishments across subjects and media, including oil paintings, drawings, watercolors, pastels, etchings, monotypes, and sculpture.

The paintings of streetwise kids and informal portraits for which he is renowned are accompanied by society portraits, Bavarian landscapes, Venetian harbor views, depictions of Italian city and country folk, renderings of the nude figure and more. A profusely illustrated catalogue published with D. Giles Ltd is available.

Dr. Julie Aronson, curator of American Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum since 1999, has been working on the exhibition for several years.

“We are excited to celebrate Frank Duveneck with this exhibition that illuminates one of the unique strengths of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s collection: its deep concentration in the works of one of the towering figures of American art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Side by side with our stunning Duveneck masterworks are key paintings on loan from across the country, presenting a fresh approach to the compelling story of one of our regional heroes. Duveneck’s bravura painting shines in this exhibition as never before!” said Julie Aronson.

Advanced online registration is required.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM

953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202

www.cincinnatiartmusem.org

Kimono: Refashioning Contemporary Style @ Cincinnati Art Museum

Kimono: Refashioning Contemporary Style
Cincinnati Art Museum
June 28 – September 15, 2019

Toshiko Yamawaki (1887–1960), Japan

Evening Dress with Wave Motif, 1956

Silk taffeta with gold-thread embroidery 

Collection of The Kyoto Costume Institute 

Inv. AC12555 2011-8-35AB

Gift from Yamawaki Fashion Art College

Photo by Takashi Hatakeyama

In Kimono: Refashioning Contemporary Style, at the Cincinnati Art Museum, visitors can experience more than 50 ensembles by Japanese, European and American designers including Coco Chanel, Christian Louboutin, John Galliano, Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, Rei Kawakubo, Iris van Herpen and Issey Miyake.

Organized by the Kyoto Costume Institute in Japan and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the exhibition features fashion from the 1870s to the present day along with kimono, Japanese prints, paintings and textiles.

Kimono—literally translated “thing to wear”—has impacted international fashion since Japan opened its ports to the world in the mid-1850s. The form and silhouette of kimono, its two-dimensional structure and motifs used as surface embellishment, have all been refashioned into a wide array of garments. Kimono revealed new possibilities in clothing design and helped lay the foundation for contemporary fashion design.

The exhibition explores these themes in four sections. The first explores the influence of Japanese aesthetics, called Japonsim, on artists, specifically painters, of the late nineteenth century, who depicted kimono in many of their works. The second section examines kimono’s influence on fashion from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, when couture designs were inspired by the shape and cut of kimono and incorporated Japanesque motifs in their surface decoration. Two of the pieces included in this section address the use of kimono by Westerners as dressing gowns with a Cincinnati connection. The third section examines contemporary fashion and the continued use of variations on the kimono silhouette along with traditional weaving, dyeing and decorative techniques. The final section demonstrates how Japan continues to inspire the world of fashion through popular design, including manga and anime.

From a nineteenth century gown decorated with Japanese-inspired floral motifs to a 1960s dress tied with an obi-like sash to couture designs as recent as 2016, Kimono: Refashioning Contemporary Style, is a product of international collaboration between Japanese and American institutions. It makes clear that kimono has had a strong presence in fashion and continues to be an inspiration for designers worldwide.

“We are excited to partner with Kyoto Costume Institute (KCI) and Asian Art Museum to tell the story of the influence of kimono on contemporary fashions. KCI is renowned for their collection of Western dress and more than 15 exceptional examples of traditional and contemporary fashion have been added to the exhibition from the museum own permanent collection. The Cincinnati Art Museum have also supplemented the show with paintings, works on paper and examples of Rookwood pottery that help tell this story. From the 1870s to today, the kimono has continued to be a touchstone for fashion couturiers on a global scale,” said Cynthia Amnéus, Cincinnati Art Museum’s Chief Curator and Curator of Fashion Arts and Textiles.

The Cincinnati Art Museum is the third of three venues in the United States to present this exhibition. It was previously on view under the title Kimono Refashioned at the Newark Museum in New Jersey and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

This exhibition’s Cincinnati presentation is organized with the generous support of Huntington Bank and Toyota of Cincinnati. Kimono: Refashioning Contemporary Style will be on view in the Western & Southern galleries (galleries 232 and 233).

The exhibition was initiated by Akiko Fukai of the Kyoto Costume Institute, and was jointly curated by Rie Nii of the Kyoto Costume Institute, Yuki Morishima and Karin Grace Oen of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Katherine Anne Paul of the Newark Museum, and Cynthia Amnéus of the Cincinnati Art Museum—all of whom contributed to the exhibition and exhibition catalogue.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM
953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202
cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Saul Steinberg @ Cincinnati Art Museum

Saul Steinberg: Mural of Cincinnati
Cincinnati Art Museum
Debut: February 16, 2018

Saul Steinberg 

Mural of Cincinnati

© The Saul Steinberg Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Saul Steinberg’s Mural of Cincinnati will be on view to the public in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s newly renovated Schmidlapp Gallery beginning on February 16, 2018. Sponsored by the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Founders Society in honor of its 30th anniversary, the mural will be on display long-term for the first time since 1982.

Saul Steinberg’s Mural of Cincinnati has a one-of-a-kind history. It adorned the wall of the Terrace Plaza Hotel’s Skyline Restaurant, an icon of modernism, starting in the late 1940s. Cincinnati businessman John J. Emery, Jr. commissioned a mural for the hotel’s Gourmet Room from Joan Miró and a mobile for the lobby from Alexander Calder. Saul Steinberg’s mural was the third commission.

Saul Steinberg, a Romanian émigré artist known principally for his witty drawings for The New Yorker, was also expanding his reputation through the exhibition of his work at art galleries and museums. This validation by the art world, combined with his success as a commercial artist, led to commissions for murals. The Cincinnati mural, his second, created a delightful atmosphere in its chic setting by including city landmarks—Tyler Davidson Fountain, the Roebling Suspension Bridge and the Mount Adams incline—amid imaginary architecture and whimsical vignettes of urban entertainment.

When Thomas Emery’s Sons, Inc. sold the hotel to the Hilton Corporation, Emery donated the three works of art to the Cincinnati Art Museum. In 2006, a prestigious Save America’s Treasures Grant funded the conservation of the Steinberg mural, restoring the balance between the delicate linear design and the white background. Steinberg’s Mural of Cincinnati will be reunited with the Terrace Plaza’s Miró mural and Calder mobile, both on view nearby in the Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr., Gallery adjacent to the museum’s Terrace Café. 

The museum re-opened the modernized Schmidlapp Gallery on October 12, 2017. The innovative transformation was funded partially by a $1 million grant from the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Trusts, Fifth Third Bank, Trustee along with additional financial support from the State of Ohio.

Installation of the Saul Steinberg mural was generously sponsored by museum Trustee Barbara Weyand and the many donors who matched her gift in honor of the 30th Anniversary of the Founders Society.

The new space includes a wall of windows for natural light, couches and chairs to encourage congregation, individual looking lounges and detailed curatorial interpretation around singular artworks, new flooring to visually connect to the Bimel Courtyard, lighting and state-of-the-art temperature and humidity systems for the artwork. It also includes MyCAM, which features touch tables to help visitors create thematic art hunts to personalize their museum experience. 

“Adding Steinberg’s Mural of Cincinnati to the new Schmidlapp Gallery reflects our mission of inspiring people, connecting communities, and creating a more vibrant Cincinnati,” says Louis and Louise Dieterle Nippert Director Cameron Kitchin. “Combined with the gallery’s innovative design, we are excited to continue to welcome patrons in a new way to discover, discuss and connect with the museum’s encyclopedic art collection.”

In celebration of Steinberg’s mural, over 200 of the museum’s donors and supporters will attend a special private Schmidlapp Gallery Opening event, including dinner by-the-bite, a cocktail hour, live entertainment and a ribbon cutting ceremony the evening of February 15. 

This winter, six 7½-foot-square Formica laminate mosaics by Curtis Goldstein and Matt Lynch have occupied the north-eastern wall of the gallery. In June 2018, these works will be shown as part of a suite of 10 artworks by Goldstein and Lynch at the Weston Art Gallery presented in conjunction with an exhibition of studies, photographs and historical material from the Reiss project.

The Schmidlapp Gallery, originally part of the Schmidlapp Wing or Schmidlapp Extension, was the first expansion beyond the museum’s original 1886 building. The gallery has been home to sculpture, antiquities and, more recently, museum “icons” by Van Gogh, Gainsborough, Warhol and Tiffany.

Cincinnati Art Museum
953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Vincent van Gogh @ Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio - "Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth" Exhibition

Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio
October 15, 2016 – January 8, 2017

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)

Undergrowth with Two Figures, June 1890

Oil on canvas, 19 ½ x 39 ¼ in. (49.5 x 99.7 cm)

Cincinnati Art Museum; Bequest of Mary E. Johnston, 1967.1430

Centered on Vincent van Gogh’s Undergrowth with Two Figures, the Cincinnati Art Museum’s new exhibition, Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth, will take visitors up close with celebrated woodland landscapes.

This exhibition—presented only at the Cincinnati Art Museum—brings an important group of artworks on loan from around the world together for the first time.

Exploring the works of the Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries, the exhibition traces the evolution of the Dutch artist’s love of the natural world, powers of observation and mastery of detail through this special group of landscape paintings spanning his career.

This exhibition is the first to take a close look at Van Gogh’s poetic depictions of the forest floor, known as sous-bois, the French term for “undergrowth.” These odes to nature were a reaction to the increasing industrialization and urbanization of society.

The exhibition allows visitors to compare Van Gogh’s treatment of this theme with examples by those who influenced and inspired him, including Théodore Rousseau, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin. Twenty artworks are borrowed from museum collections in Canada, The Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Japan and more, and are joined by works from the Cincinnati Art Museum’s own important collection of French paintings and works on paper.

“Visiting this exhibition is like taking a walk in the woods with Van Gogh and fellow artists,” explains Julie Aronson, Curator of American Painting and Sculpture. “Vincent van Gogh’s Undergrowth with Two Figures is widely recognized as one of the great masterpieces of Van Gogh’s late career. It is also a visitor favorite—often the favorite—among the many extraordinary works in the Cincinnati Art Museum’s galleries. This exhibition is a revelation that puts this significant work in the context of the art of its time.”

Since the Cincinnati Art Museum’s acquisition of Undergrowth with Two Figures in 1967, the museum has made this treasure available in major exhibitions around the world. It will travel to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2018.

In Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth, the painter is brought to life for visitors with his own words about the intimate relation between nature and art and the artists he admired, extensively quoted from his voluminous correspondence with his brother Theo. These letters serve as inspiration for the exhibition’s interactive activity, which involves a hands-on letter-writing experience. Another interactive will employ Google technology to allow visitors to explore Undergrowth with Two Figures on a touch screen, revealing the texture and brushstrokes of the painting in greatly enlarged detail.

With this exhibition, the Cincinnati Art Museum is leading the way with original scholarship in one of the few areas of Van Gogh study that remains to be explored. The accompanying catalogue, also titled Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth, examines Van Gogh’s engagement with the sous-bois subject from various perspectives. Co-published by D Giles Limited, it will be available for sale at the Cincinnati Art Museum and online this fall. Cornelia Homburg, art historian and one of the world’s foremost Van Gogh experts, is among the authors. She will be speaking at the Cincinnati Art Museum on October 16.

To shed further light on Van Gogh’s artistic milieu, the exhibition will also include Unlocking Van Gogh's World, a rich display of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist prints from the Cincinnati Art Museum’s collection. In addition to Van Gogh, Artists Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edouard Manet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Camille Pissarro, James McNeill Whistler and others will be included in this supporting exhibition.

Cincinnati Art Museum
www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Roe Ethridge @ Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio

Roe Ethridge: Nearest Neighbor
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio

October 7, 2016 – March 12, 2017

Roe Ethridge

Nancy with Polaroid, 2003-2006, C-print, 40 x 32″

Courtesy of the artist, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, and Greengrassi, London

As part of the FotoFocus Biennial 2016, the October-long celebration of photography and lens-based art in Cincinnati, FotoFocus announced the major museum exhibition Roe Ethridge: Nearest Neighbor at the Contemporary Arts Center. The exhibition leads the programming for the FotoFocus Biennial 2016, exploring the theme Photography, the Undocument. Organized by FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator, Kevin Moore, Roe Ethridge: Nearest Neighbor is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States and will present over 15 years of photographs drawn from Ethridge’s comprehensive body of work. This mid-career survey documents the disparate concepts and photographic methods evident in Ethridge’s broad range of processes, focusing on his shifts between the realms of commercial, fine art, and personal photography.

“Roe Ethridge is one of the most innovative and influential photographers of his generation,” said FotoFocus Executive Director Mary Ellen Goeke. “FotoFocus is delighted to be welcoming Ethridge to Cincinnati as part of our 2016 Biennial programming. With Kevin’s vision, we will continue to bring our audiences the finest in contemporary photography and continue to stimulate the discourse around lens-based art.”

Titled after the photographic term “nearest neighbor”, referring to the type of sampling used when resizing a digital image, the exhibition also alludes to the personal nature of Ethridge’s work, evident beneath the commercial façade. Ethridge regularly invests his editorial assignments with familial content by including his family and friends, as well as himself, as subjects in his photographs. His photographs explore the ways in which our daily immersion in layers of photo-based imagery both mediate and generate meaning in our lives.

Roe Ethridge: Nearest Neighbor highlights this year’s biennial theme: Photography, the Undocument. The Undocument questions the documentary character of photography, exploring the boundaries between fact and fabrication.

“For the 2016 Biennial, we hope to break apart assumptions about photography as a medium often understood to be used for truth-telling and documentation by emphasizing photography’s natural tendency to alter the visible world,” says Kevin Moore. “Ethridge’s work deliberately careens outside of the parameters of photographic systems like journalism and commercial assignments. His work offers a synthetic version—part document, part fantasy—of the reality we think we know. Such alternative understandings of photo-documentation will be explored in various shows during this year’s Biennial.”

Under the leadership of Mary Ellen Goeke, the FotoFocus Biennial 2016 will run through the month of October across the greater Cincinnati region at participating museums, galleries, universities, and community organizations, featuring exhibitions in over 50 locations. In addition to Moore’s curated exhibitions, participating venues throughout the region are invited to address the Undocument theme.

About Roe Ethridge

Roe Ethridge (b. 1969) is an artist and photographer based in New York. Drawing upon the descriptive power of photography and the ease with which it can be accessed, duplicated, and recombined, Ethridge orchestrates visual fugues, collapsing distinctions between commercial, conceptual, and personal uses of photography.

Roe Ethridge’s work has been shown extensively in venues around the world including MoMA/PS1 (2000); The Barbican Center, London (2001); The Carnegie Museum of Art (2002); The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2005); The Whitney Biennial (2008); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010) ; and Les Rencontres d’Arles, France (2011). In 2011 he was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. His first major retrospective, curated by Anne Pontégnie, was exhibited at Le Consortium in Dijon before traveling to M – Museum Leuven, Belgium, in 2012.

www.fotofocuscincinnati.org

Fotofocus 2016, Cincinnati, Ohio - "Photography, the Undocument"

FotoFocus Biennial 2016:
Photography, the Undocument
Cincinnati, Ohio
October 1 - 31, 2016

FotoFocus ArtHub 

Photo by Tony Walsh

The FotoFocus Biennial 2016 celebrates October as the month of photography in Cincinnati, Ohio, with featured programming October 6-9, 2016.

FotoFocus, a month-long celebration of photography and lens-based art in Cincinnati, Ohio, is pleased to announce the theme for the third edition of its Biennial: Photography, the Undocument. The Undocument questions the documentary character of photography, exploring the boundaries between facts and fabrications. The FotoFocus Biennial 2016 will run through the month of October in Cincinnati at participating museums, galleries, organizations, and in the ArtHub. The FotoFocus Biennial will include four days of concentrated programming and events to be held October 6 - 9, 2016.

Under the leadership of Mary Ellen Goeke, Executive Director of FotoFocus, the Biennial will feature exhibitions, film screenings, lectures, and performances by artists, curators, critics and art world professionals all focused on one theme: Photography, the Undocument. Curated by Artistic Director and New York-based curator Kevin Moore, the Biennial will offer an exploration of alternative understandings of the documentary photograph, both questioning its claims to objectivity and observing its

tendency toward subtle fantasy. In addition to Moore's curated exhibitions, participating venues throughout the region are also invited to address the Undocument theme. The ArtHub, a temporary pavilion designed by Argentinian-born, Cincinnati-based architect José Garcia will return and feature programs and events throughout the month-long celebration.

“We are thrilled to have Kevin Moore again as Artistic Director and Curator to lead the curatorial charge for the next Biennial in 2016," said FotoFocus Executive Director Mary Ellen Goeke. "With Kevin's vision, we will continue to bring our audience the finest in contemporary photography and lens-based art and stimulate discussion of the essential aspects of photography."

According to FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator Kevin Moore, “With the next Biennial we hope to break apart assumptions about photography as a truth-telling, documentary medium by exploring photography's natural tendency to alter the visible world, creating other realities similar to--though not quite the same as--the one that we see."

Further information about FotoFocus can be found at www.fotofocuscincinnati.org

Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh: Impressions of Landscape

Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh: Impressions of Landscape

Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio

February 20 - May 29, 2016

Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Pushing the boundaries of traditional landscape painting, Charles François Daubigny (1817-1878) was a vital touchstone and mentor for the subsequent generation of avantgarde artists now widely celebrated as the Impressionists. In the 1850s and 1860s, Daubigny routinely painted outdoors to directly capture qualities of light and atmosphere, launched a floating studio boat on French waterways that fundamentally changed the way artists could frame their compositions, employed radical painterly techniques and exhibited sketch-like works that critics assailed as “mere impressions.” Though an inspiration to artists such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Vincent Van Gogh, Daubigny is now relatively unknown. Until this year he has never been the subject of a major international exhibition, and no exhibition has previously examined Daubigny’s profound influence upon the Impressionists and in turn their influence on his late style.

Co-organized by the Taft Museum of Art, the Scottish National Gallery and the Van Gogh Museum, Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh: Impressions of Landscape revises our understanding of the origins of Impressionism by reconsidering Charles François Daubigny as a central figure in the development of 19th-century French landscape painting, including Impressionism. The groundbreaking exhibition will be on view at the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, the sole U.S. venue, from Feb. 20 through May 29, 2016. It will travel to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam later in 2016 and in early 2017.

In addition to one of the Taft’s Daubigny paintings, which prompted the exhibition, Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh: Impressions of Landscape will also feature spectacular loans from numerous North American and European museums—including the Art Institute of Chicago; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; National Gallery, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Bordeaux; Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam—and private collections.

“Conceived at the Taft, this very special exhibition reflects the museum’s strength in European art and its strong relationships with a host of distinguished international institutions,” said Taft Director and CEO Deborah Emont Scott. “We are thrilled to bring this stellar group of European works of art to our greater Cincinnati, regional and national audiences.”

Of the 55 paintings in the exhibition, approximately 40 masterpieces by Daubigny will showcase the full range of the artist’s achievements over four decades, including both small easel paintings created outdoors and grand-scale paintings completed in the studio for exhibition. The remainder of the works on view will offer fascinating and often surprising comparisons with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Vincent Van Gogh, revealing Daubigny’s impact on and importance for two subsequent generations of artists, the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionist Van Gogh.

“This exhibition stakes a claim for Daubigny’s inadequately recognized achievements as a powerful innovator and precursor to one of the most original art historical movements of all time,” said Lynne Ambrosini, Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of European Art at the Taft Museum of Art. Ambrosini is the initiating curator (and one of five curators) of the exhibition.

In the vanguard of artists who privileged and embraced the immediacy of open-air painting, Charles François Daubigny invented the studio boat and was the first to paint views surrounded by water instead of from the riverbanks. This pioneering compositional technique of stripping away conventional foregrounds to more directly observe nature and capture the effects of light, as well as his radically unfinished painting style and brighter palette, had a powerful influence on the young Impressionists.

Highlights of the exhibition include Daubigny’s images of silvery light and reflections along the Seine and Oise rivers, stormy atmospheric effects at the Normandy coast, dramatic moonlit landscapes, views of lush fields and scenes of blossoming orchards in the countryside outside Paris—the last another subject he invented. These subjects were soon taken up by Monet and Pissarro, whose similarly themed works will also be featured, for example Pissarro’s The Banks of the Oise near Pontoise (1873, Indianapolis Museum of Art), which echoes Charles François Daubigny’s compositions, and Monet’s Autumn on the Seine, Argenteuil, (1873, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia), which was painted from Monet’s emulative studio boat. Daubigny’s panoramic views of the sunny grain-fields near Auvers were admired by Van Gogh, who adopted Daubigny’s then famous double-wide canvas formats for his own pictures of the plains near Auvers. The final section of the exhibition presents five masterpieces by Van Gogh that reveal his debt to Daubigny, including Daubigny’s Garden (1890, R. Staechelin Collection, Basel, Switzerland), which exhibits Van Gogh’s signature swirling intensity.

Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio

www.taftmuseum.org

The Etching Revival from Daubigny to Twachtman, Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

The Etching Revival from Daubigny to Twachtman 
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio
February 13 - May 8, 2016

Charles-François Daubigny

French, 1817-1878

Le Gué, 1865

Etching

Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Greer French

1940.174

Explore the renaissance of etching from the late 1850s through the turn of the century in Europe and the United States with the new Cincinnati Art Museum exhibition The Etching Revival from Daubigny to Twachtman, on view February 13–May 8, 2016. Featuring more than 100 monochromatic prints from dozens of artists, the exhibition also includes a wood etching press from the early 1900s, along with plates and tools used to create the etchings. Etching is one of the first original art movements in America and it played an important role in developing the public’s aesthetic appreciation of the graphic arts. 

Charles Meryon

France, 1821-1868

The Admiralty, Paris, 1865

Etching (fifth state)

Cincinnati Art Museum, Bequest of Herbert Greer French

1943.625

The Process

Etching involves using a substance to bite into metal surfaces with acid in order to create a design. Etching was attractive to painters because it allowed them to capture the fleeting effects of nature rapidly with freedom and spontaneity. The process coincided with artist’s desire to work directly from nature, to sketch en plein air to create landscapes and seascapes. 

Ties to Cincinnati

Cincinnatians featured in the exhibition include early etching practitioners Mary Louise McLaughlin, Henry Farny, Lewis Henry Meakin and John Twachtman. Working abroad in the 1880s, Covington, Ky.-born Frank Duveneck and his students, known as the "Duveneck Boys,” pursued etching in Venice with James McNeill Whistler. Some of Duveneck’s gifts will also be featured in the exhibition.

The Cincinnati Etching Club, the second etching club in America after the New York Etching Club, was founded in 1879 and actually gifted a group of prints to the Art Museum in 1882. These etchings were among the first pieces of art acquired by the Art Museum.

Mary Louise McLaughlin

American, 1847-1939

Beeches in Burnet Woods, 1883

Etching

Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of The Cincinnati Etching Club

1882.257

John Henry Twachtmann

American, 1853-1902

Cincinnati Landscape, 1879-80

Etching

Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of Frank Duveneck

1917.453

John Henry Twachtman

United States, 1853-1902

Snow Landscape, 1879-83

Etching

Cincinnati Art Museum, The Albert P. Strietmann Collection and various funds

1983.24

The Artists and History

The American Etching Revival was inspired by the earlier French and British mid-century etching revivals by Barbizon artists, such as Charles François Daubigny, Camille Corot, and Jean-François Millet, who made preparatory drawings for etchings out of doors to capture natural landscapes and romanticized scenes of peasants at work at the time of the industrial revolution. 

The etchings of Whistler and Sir Francis Seymour Haden influenced the next generation of artists. In 1862, the Society of Etchers organization in France inspired a new generation of independent etchers including Edouard Manet, Charles Meryon, and Maxine Lalanne, and Impressionists Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt. The success of this movement was fostered in both Europe and America by publishers, artistic printers and critics. 

“It’s fascinating to look at these etchings and to learn the history behind them,” said Cincinnati Art Museum Curator of Prints Kristin Spangenberg. “They showcase an emerging art form and also the very beginnings of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s permanent collection.”

The exhibition, generously supported by the Sutphin Family Foundation, is located on the second floor in the Schiff Gallery (G234). 

The Etching Revival from Daubigny to Twachtman coincides with the Taft Museum of Art’s exhibition, Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh: Impressions of Landscape (February 20 – May 29, 2016). 

Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio
www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org

Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Cincinnati Art Museum

How Small the World is: Selected Photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo 
Cincinnati Art Museum
May 18 - October 28, 2002

The Cincinnati Art Museum presents an exhibition of the powerful photographs of Manuel Alvarez Bravo that span his career of nearly 80 years. The exhibition is drawn entirely from the permanent prints, drawings and photographs collection at the Museum. 

Manuel Alvarez Bravo's life and work have coincided with radical changes in the twentieth century; he is the last of a generation of artists with direct ties to the avant-garde movements in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. While growing up in the midst of the Mexican revolution (1910-1920), Manuel Alvarez Bravo witnessed the horror of nearly one million Mexicans' deaths due to starvation and the fighting between rebel factions struggling for power. This experience compelled him to become part of Mexico's national search for identity by capturing with his camera the daily life activities of humble people and focusing on the subtleties of human interaction.

Two primary factors characterize his work: an early openness to artistic influence from outside Mexico and a thoroughly Mexican subject matter. The effort to establish a unified Mexican cultural identity in conjunction with the emergence of Mexico City as an international center for artistic and intellectual exchange provided the backdrop against which Manuel Alvarez Bravo pursued his lifelong vocation. His photographs capture the eloquent images of dreams, death and transient life, juxtaposed with the everyday existence of street signs, cafes, shop windows and street vendors.

The photographs Manuel Alvarez Bravo made on the streets of Mexico City in his career were taken with the hand-held Graflex camera, which gave him two very desirable qualities in his pictures: the Graflex is a large-format, single-lens reflex camera which gives the photographer the ability to render surface, texture and detail; it also has a larger negative that provides for more detail in the finished print. This was particularly suited for Alvarez Bravo because his pictures appear to derive from a thoughtful, more deliberate matter of picture making. Through his work, he encouraged a way of looking at the world that emphasized the form of isolated images and artifacts, and his camera was the most essential tool for doing this.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo's images are timeless descriptions of a community that came back to life after a period of devastation. He has had an immeasurable influence on Mexican and Latin American photography. His insistently ambiguous irony and redemption of common folk and their daily subsistence have marked out a path of high standards for photographers from his area.

Born in Mexico City, 1902, Manuel Alvarez Bravo attended a Catholic school from 1908 to 1914, but left in 1915 to work. At this time, he began to educate himself in photography while asking for advice from photography suppliers. The 1923 arrivals of Edward Weston and Tina Modotti to Mexico were crucial to Alvarez Bravo's development, and he bought his first camera in 1924. In 1935 he won his first major award and decided to pursue photography as a full-time career. Alvarez Bravo met Andre Breton in 1939, and his work was included in a Paris Surrealist exhibit.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired their first works by Manuel Alvarez Bravo in 1942, and in 1955 his photographs were included in Edward Steichen's Family of Man. During 1959, Alvarez Bravo became the photographer of important art books for the Gondo Editorial de la Plastica Mexicana, of which he was the founder. Manuel Alvarez Bravo left the Fondo in 1980 to work with the Mexican-based media empire, Televisa, where his collection of photography was exhibited and published in a three-volume set. In 1996, his collection was moved to the newly created Centro Fotografico Alvarez Bravo in Oaxaca City, Mexico. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, hosted a retrospective exhibition, Optical Parables, or Alvarez Bravo's work this past winter.

CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM
953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202
cincinnatiartmuseum.org