Cincinnati Art Museum

Part of the museum's renowned Egypt collection.

On the day before I left Cincinnati, my parents and I headed to the Cincinnati Art Museum, located on a tree-lined hill in Eden Park and one of my favorite places to visit in the city.

The Art Museum costs nothing to enter. Thanks to a generous gift from the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Foundation, it’s absolutely free to the public! That’s one of the reasons I love going here. Another is the setting, with its surrounding trees and urban vistas (depending on where you look), which is ideal for a museum like this. Another is the architecture and design. And yet another, of course, is its permanent collection which boasts more than 60,000 works. The national and international exhibitions here tend to be really interesting, too.

The museum was founded in 1881, and its collections go back 6000 years. The museum is divided into some of the following areas: American Painting and Sculpture; European Painting and Sculpture; Classical and Near Eastern Art; Far Eastern Art; Decorative Arts; Fashion Arts and Textiles; Arts of Africa; Art of the America; Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors; Photographs; and Circus Posters.

Some of the bigger draws come from the world’s most celebrated painters, including Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Gauguin, Chagall, Modigliani, Titian, van Dyck, Wyeth, Hopper, and Rothko, among many others. There is also a Cincinnati wing of the museum, with art work depicting the city over the last 200 years.

A new policy at the museum allows visitors to use a camera, but only in specially marked areas. I took advantage of this and snapped some photos of a small portion of the museum we visited.

This is a painting called "Daily News" by the Japanese painter and lithographer Yasuo Kuniyoshi (born in Okayama in 1893), who arrived in the U.S. in his teens.

As you can see in some of the photos, there are red plastic penguins in many rooms. The penguins are there to help bring attention to 21c Museum in Louisville and the designs they have of creating a red penguin sculpture downtown. I like the red penguins. They’re quiet and don’t bother anyone. In my opinion, every museum should have red penguins.

There were several exhibitions on when we visited. Just about every month the museum brings in something new and interesting.

The museum has a pretty excellent and very reasonably priced restaurant, too, called Terrace Cafe. Although my Cincinnati Reuben was hardly mind-blowing, I’ve had good meals here before. Also, the setting is quite interesting. On warm days you can eat outside in the courtyard (it has free wifi) with the scent of blossoming pear trees adding to the atmosphere, or you can sit inside with a view of a very large mural by Joan Miro. Either way, you’ve got good options.

"The Midnight Mass" (1911) by Edward Timothy Hurley. This painting is of the Mt. Adams neighborhood in Cincinnati during winter. One sees the Immaculata church here, covered in snow and masked by haze.

The museum store is excellent. I've even bought dinner plates here by local artists.

The Cincinnati Art Museum is located at 953 Eden Park Drive. Tel: (513) 639-2995. Web: http://www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org/ Hours: Open Tuesday – Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed Mondays and major holidays. Tours are available in English, French, German, or Spanish.