CINCINNATI — Those of us who love to travel often are guilty of the "grass is always greener" syndrome. A beach is pristine only if it's on a tropical island; a sidewalk café is romantic only if it's on Paris' Left Bank; a village is picturesque only if it's in Great Britain; and museums, galleries and theaters are the real deal only if they are in New York.
I will admit that Bora Bora's beaches are spectacular, Left Bank bistros do have a certain je ne sais quoi, and Britain does seem to have cornered the market on picturesque villages. But I definitely disagree that you have to fly to New York to have a satisfying arts experience. For instance, if you want to get out of Central Kentucky, you can make a short drive north to Cincinnati and spend a weekend overdosing on all the Queen City has to offer culturally.
Perhaps the best place to begin your cultural odyssey is in Eden Park, the rural retreat atop one of Cincinnati's seven hills. Home to several cultural gems, including the Krohn Conservatory and Playhouse in the Park, its real jewel is the Cincinnati Art Museum, one of the nation's oldest (1886) and most respected art repositories, with some 60,000 works spanning 6,000 years of civilization.
A visit to the museum will expose you to the usual suspects — European Old Masters (Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck) as well as 20th-century legends, both European (Picasso, Chagall, Miró and Modigliani) and American (Wyeth, Hopper and Rothko). But it also will expose you to the art of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, including the only collection of ancient Nabatean art outside the kingdom of Jordan.
The museum staff is insistent that art comes in all shapes, sizes and forms. A multi-colored blown glass creation by Dale Chihuly is every bit as artistic as an Egyptian tomb relief from the Middle Kingdom, and while the intricate statue of the serpent king and queen from 9th-century India is certainly art, so are the creations of designers Halston, Givenchy, Christian Dior and Issey Miyake in the museum's wonderful Fashion Art and Textiles wing. And whatever you do, don't miss the Cincinnati Wing, which, upon its opening in 2003, became the nation's first permanent display dedicated to a city's arts history. Take that, New York.
While I've made several visits to the Cincinnati Art Museum over the years, this trip to Cincinnati marked my first visit to the Taft Museum of Art and the Contemporary Arts Center, but I hope it won't be my last. The two museums couldn't be more different, but they are equally deserving of an afternoon spent acquainting yourself with their treasures.
The Taft Museum would be lauded for its classic architecture —built in 1820, it is the oldest wooden structure in Cincinnati and considered one of the finest examples of Federal/Palladian architecture in the country. Or for its history — in 1908, William Howard Taft, a relative of the then-owner, accepted the presidential nomination here. But when you factor in the art the family has collected over the years, you have a museum any city would be proud to claim.
The galleries are set up in individual rooms of the house, with the most impressive being the ornate Music Room with its portraits by Rembrandt and Frans Hals. But you shouldn't overlook the smaller galleries, especially the beautifully displayed Fabergé collection and the room devoted to the works of 19th-century African-American artist Robert Duncanson. You also shouldn't leave without taking a stroll through the lovely gardens.
Outside New York and Los Angeles, much of the rest of the United States was slow to accept contemporary art as "real art." Manet and Monet they got; Mapplethorpe and Motherwell, not so much. Cincinnati was an exception. In 1939, the city's Contemporary Arts Center opened, becoming one of the first in the country devoted exclusively to the art of its time. The museum's early exhibitions featured such now legendary names as Picasso, I.M. Pei, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol.
The current museum location opened in 2003 and has built on the founding premise of "stimulating thought and introducing new ideas" with its four floors of exhibition space dedicated to painting, sculpture, photography, architecture and performance art.
If you make it to the Contemporary Arts Center before Sept. 6, you can be among the first to see the inaugural solo museum showing of Japanese painter Aya Uekawa, whose works have been described as "executed in a Renaissance hand, with the flavor of Eastern iconography, a dash of surrealism, and a nod to both pop and op art." That might sound like the hype of an overzealous publicity machine, but Uekawa's introspective drawings are truly exceptional.
Art not only needs to be seen to be believed, it also needs to be heard, and Cincinnati is one of the best places to hear it. Founded in 1920, the Cincinnati Opera is said to be second only to New York's Metropolitan Opera among U.S. companies. For half a century following its founding, the opera performed at a most unlikely venue, the Cincinnati Zoo, during which time it gained such a reputation for excellence that it had no trouble luring such luminaries as Beverly Sills and Placido Domingo.
In 1972, the opera moved to Music Hall, a National Historic Landmark in the city's Over-the-Rhine district, an area known for its collection of Italianate buildings. In truth, upon entering the massive chandeliered foyer of the Music Hall, one might think he or she had been transported to Milano's La Scala.
The hall's elaborate foyer, ballroom and auditorium have given it a reputation as one of the most beautiful concert venues in the world, but it is the quality of productions such as Don Carlo, which I attended, that have earned it its reputation. If you can't make it to any of this season's performances — the opera mounts its productions in June and July only — there's always next year, when the schedule features Otello, Die Meistersinger and the perennially popular La Boheme.
The next time you're tempted to buy a plane ticket to the Big Apple for a heaping helping of cultural stew, why not consider a much easier trip: right up Interstate 75 to the Queen City.
