12/2/2019 25 Important Moments in the Greater Cincinnati Arts Scene from the Past 25 Years 25 Important Moments in the Greater Cincinnati Arts Scene from the Past 25 Years A quarter century of recollections from covering the city's arts scene BY MACKENZIE MANLEY, RICK PENDER, STEVE ROSEN, CITYBEAT STAFF — NOV 27, 2019 12 PM Listen to an Audio Version of the Article 22:30 Powered by Trinity Audio Cincinnati Shakespeare Company's new OTR theater PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER In the past three decades, Cincinnati’s art scene has undergone an evolution of sorts, with new galleries, theaters and organizations making their mark and Queen City stalwarts finding innovative ways to stay relevant. Founded as an altweekly with a focus on arts and culture, a piece of CityBeat’s mission has always been to delve into the latest arts happenings — be they popular or under the radar. While there’s likely hundreds of other moments we could mention, here’s a solid list of 25 in celebration of, you guessed it, our 25th anniversary. Cincinnati Shakespeare Company https://www.citybeat.com/arts-culture/article/21103631/25-important-moments-in-the-greater-cincinnati-arts-scene-from-the-past-25-years 1/22 12/2/2019 25 Important Moments in the Greater Cincinnati Arts Scene from the Past 25 Years In late 1993, some recent college grads — Jasson Minadakis and Chris Reeder, who interned at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, as well as Nick Rose, Marni Penning and others — launched Fahrenheit Theatre Company, presenting classics and new plays at Gabriel’s Corner, a church basement in Over- the-Rhine. They assembled a group of young actors who moved from venue to venue — The Carnegie in Covington and then the black box Fifth Third Bank Theater at the new Aronoff Center. Before long they became the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. CityBeat covered them steadily as they evolved into the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and moved into the onetime Real Movies cinema on Race Street in downtown Cincinnati. Now 26 seasons along, CSC has its own new theater on Elm Street just south of Washington Park. Zaha Hadid at the CAC Downtown’s Contemporary Arts Center began in 1939 as the Modern Arts Society in the basement of the Cincinnati Art Museum. In 1964 it would move to the Women’s Exchange Building and then to the Mercantile Center in 1970 where it occupied 10,000 square feet of exhibition space. But it was in 2003 that the CAC moved to its most iconic home — the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art. Designed by the late, acclaimed architect Zaha Hadid, it was named the “most important American building to be completed since the end of the cold war” by The New York Times. It also marked the first museum in the United States to be designed by a woman. With over 80,000 square feet of space, the building has remained not only a Queen City icon, but a national one, too. MusicNOW festival God bless Bryce Dessner! Rather than just forgetting Cincinnati after moving to Brooklyn and starting (with other Cincinnatians) the successful AltRock band The National, he remembered his hometown. Beginning in 2006 at the Contemporary Arts Center, and then moving to Memorial Hall, Music Hall and the Taft Theatre (with special events elsewhere), his MusicNOW Festival has attracted a national following for its mixture of adventurous Classical, AltRock, Jazz and other progressive music. The line-ups, which he curates, are memorable — guests like My Brightest Diamond, Nico Muhly, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Kronos Quartet, Dirty Projectors, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Tinariwen, David Lang, Julia Wolfe and, of course, The National. In 2018, coupled with The National’s new Cincinnati AltRock festival, Homecoming, MusicNOW moved to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and had its single best show ever — Eighth Blackbird’s collaboration with Will Oldham on composer Frederic Rzewski’s thrilling, chilling “Coming Together.” https://www.citybeat.com/arts-culture/article/21103631/25-important-moments-in-the-greater-cincinnati-arts-scene-from-the-past-25-years 2/22 12/2/2019 25 Important Moments in the Greater Cincinnati Arts Scene from the Past 25 Years When both festivals were then put on hold in 2019, the fear was Dessner had moved on. But both MusicNOW and Homecoming will be back in 2020. BLINK 2019 PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER BLINK BLINK — a four-night light and art experience spanning 30 city blocks through Over-the-Rhine, downtown and, new in 2019, across an illuminated Roebling Bridge into Covington — first took over Cincinnati in 2017. Its inaugural year drew in over an estimated one million attendees and cost $3 million to stage. The stakes were upped for BLINK 2019, which featured new large-scale murals, light installations, interactive sculptures, performance art, live entertainment and projection mapping works. An extension of the now-ceased Lumenocity — which fused the sounds of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra with dazzling light projections — BLINK was a reach for something more. As outlined in their manifesto: It’s meant to envision a “future city.” Produced by local creative agencies Brave Berlin, AGAR and ArtWorks, with support from the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, the Carol Ann & Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation and a number of other sponsors, if BLINK’s hype is any indication, we can bank on its return. The Cincinnati Art Museum Gets Cutting Edge https://www.citybeat.com/arts-culture/article/21103631/25-important-moments-in-the-greater-cincinnati-arts-scene-from-the-past-25-years 3/22 12/2/2019 25 Important Moments in the Greater Cincinnati Arts Scene from the Past 25 Years The Cincinnati Art Museum has been through some action-packed recent years, beginning in 2006 when Aaron Betsky became the director. Trained as an architect and also a provocative writer, he led the museum’s quest for a major expansion and chose the Dutch firm Neutelings Riedijk Architects to build, as part of a campus expansion, a flower-shaped tower that would become a civic landmark. But the recession stopped that project. Betsky had other ideas, many very good, but he elicited great opposition when he approved a 2014 project by artist Todd Pavlisko to have a sharpshooter fire bullets into a brass cube in the Schmidlapp Gallery. The event and resultant show occurred, but he left before the year was out. Cameron Kitchin arrived from Memphis’ Brooks Museum of Art as a successor and, although much less outspoken, supported a succession of exhibitions that were both very successful and, often, cutting-edge — work by Gillian Wearing, Ragnar Kjartansson, Iris van Herpen and William Kentridge, plus a visit from China’s Terracotta Army. In 2019, he supported what became the museum’s most popular show ever: No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man. Swing House PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER Swing House From the exterior, Mark de Jong’s Swing House doesn’t appear any different from neighboring homes. CityBeat’s Steven Rosen described the 1880s three-story residential brick building in Camp Washington as “an ambitious and unusual house-sized sculptural installation.” Inside awaits lofty ceilings — de Jong removed the interior walls and upper floors — and a single suspended swing in https://www.citybeat.com/arts-culture/article/21103631/25-important-moments-in-the-greater-cincinnati-arts-scene-from-the-past-25-years 4/22 12/2/2019 25 Important Moments in the Greater Cincinnati Arts Scene from the Past 25 Years the home’s center. “It represents freedom from architectural convention — it’s a radical departure from our expectations of everyday domesticity,” wrote Rosen. “It is, thus, not merely a swing. It is an experiential and experimental artwork — as is the house that surrounds, complements and is named for it.” From April to September 2018, the home and its ephemera — plus new work by de Jong — were the subject of an exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center. Keep an eye peeled for open tours of the house and, if you’re looking for a quirky staycation, you can rent the one-bedroom, one- bathroom space on Airbnb. ArtWorks' James Brown mural PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER ArtWorks’ Murals ArtWorks has been a Queen City force since its inception in 1996. But it’s perhaps best recognized today for its mural program, which kicked off in 2007 and has been behind over 180 murals in neighborhoods across Greater Cincinnati. That effort was first spurred by a request from then-Mayor Mark Mallory, who was inspired by a trip to Philadelphia; their mural program, at the time, had completed over 3,000 murals. We’re not there yet, but the nonprofit organization has a lot to be https://www.citybeat.com/arts-culture/article/21103631/25-important-moments-in-the-greater-cincinnati-arts-scene-from-the-past-25-years 5/22 12/2/2019 25 Important Moments in the Greater Cincinnati Arts Scene from the Past 25 Years proud of, from a vibrant larger-than-life portrait of King Records artist James Brown to a flock of birds soaring above a wintery Cincinnati Zoo in “Martha the Last Passenger Pigeon” to renderings of works by Cincinnati Modernist naturalist Charley Harper. Know Theatre and the Cincinnati Fringe Festival In 1999, CityBeat began covering the itinerant “Know Theatre Tribe,” a new company launched by Jay B. Kalagayan and other recent Xavier grads who presented their first productions of drama and poetry in art galleries and bookstores. Eventually they settled into Gabriel’s Corner in OTR and sharpened their focus to cutting-edge new works. Jason Bruffy, a young actor with Cincy Shakes, mapped out and launched a Fringe Festival in 2003.