The visual arts are in full flower this month with new exhibits from major regional museums: Cincinnati Art Museum, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and the Taft Museum of Art.
Cincinnati Art Museum: ‘Farm to Table: Food and Identity in the Age of Impressionism,’ June 13-Sept. 21
This new artful celebration explores the intersection of art, food and identity during the last decades of the 1800s in France through paintings and sculptures by Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and others. The exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Chrysler Museum of Art.
The last quarter of the 19th century was a transformative time for agriculture, dining and the arts in France. The transformation of the culinary world was a natural theme for artists committed to depicting daily life. A universal subject, depictions of food were uniquely suited to considering the state of the nation.
According to Peter Bell, curator of European paintings, sculpture and drawings at the CAM, “Looking at food production and consumption and how it intersected with the national identity of France – both the prowess and insecurity felt by the nation – through the works of its artists has not been done before.”
The exhibition – previously presented at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, and Nashville’s Frist Art Museum – offers an unmissable opportunity to witness the intricate tapestry of food culture that has shaped French identity.
A 224-page book published by Yale University Press and edited by scholars Andrew Eschelbacher, who conceived the exhibition, and Lloyd DeWitt accompanies the exhibition.
Taft Museum of Art: ‘The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick,’ June 7-Sept. 7
“The Crafted World” presents the innovative work of Wharton Esherick (1887–1970), the famed American artist best known as the father of the Studio Furniture Movement, which saw artists bringing their unique voices to handmade, functional objects and craft traditions, often reinventing them with bold, experimental techniques and forms.
This exhibition details the artist’s career from his early woodcut illustrations for books by the avant-garde literati to his revolutionary reimagining of furniture forms as organic sculpture – from painting, sculpture and printmaking to woodworking, furniture making and illustration.
Esherick’s hillside home and studio in southeastern Pennsylvania is now the Wharton Esherick Museum and houses a treasury of work from seven decades of artistic practice – more than 3,000 works. Detailing the artist’s career from his early woodcut illustrations to his revolutionary reimagining of furniture forms as organic sculpture, the exhibition explores Esherick’s fascination with the natural world and intimate connection to its materials, his sense of humor, skillful design-thinking and problem-solving, interest in performance and the body, and enduring imaginative spirit.
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center: ‘In This Place,’ new exhibit
A new permanent exhibit within the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center serves as both an introduction to guests and a tribute to the thousands of freedom seekers who crossed the banks of the Ohio River, just yards south of its front door.
“In This Place,” opening on the first floor of the Freedom Center, is an immersive gallery featuring a sweeping media experience as well as artifacts and an interactive table where historic moments flow by as if in the river itself. Guests can “pull” those moments from the river “current” to learn more. Historic photos, footage and artifacts punctuate the region’s critical role as a borderland between slave and free states and the ongoing dynamics of justice and injustice that intersect here in Cincinnati and across the country.
“The story of the Freedom Center is rooted in this power of place and the legacy of the land we stand on,” said Woodrow Keown Jr., president & COO of the Freedom Center. “This new gallery will serve as an important introduction to the Freedom Center, our region’s history and the stories guests encounter as they journey through our museum.”
The new gallery is the first permanent exhibit to open at the Freedom Center in 15 years.
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