If you hadn’t been paying close attention you might have missed it. There is a moment in Christopher Backs’ new solo exhibition Firmament (with Sass) where, underneath one of the hard, heavy folds of his stuffed “clouds” the surface erupts into the pure malerisch. Just beyond this exuberant mass of pigment and binder, on a separate piece within eye shot of the viewer...

Traditional Approaches to Radical Art Mark Harris is an artist, critic, curator, and the current Director of the School of Art at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning. His diverse range of works include mixed media, sound installation, cut paper, artist books, and paintings. For his recent exhibition at Country Club Gallery, Harris created five graphite-on-paper drawings and five...

“A young Californian has come out of the west. . .to take over the curator’s post in the Print Department of the Cincinnati Art Museum” reported the art columnist for the Cincinnati Post, September 24, 1971. The new curator was Kristin Spangenberg, this month marking her thirty-ninth year at the Museum, and I was the art columnist.

How might a contemporary artist respond to an art space that is rich in historical allusions such as the Taft Museum? Only the second “Emerging Artist” invited to exhibit her work, Kristine Donnelly found that an appealing question when she visited the museum’s inaugural Keystone Contemporary Series show last year for Emil Robinson’s exhibition, Axis Mundi. Compared to Robinson’s Contemporary Realist studio paintings however, Donnelly’s post-studio sculptures are more inconspicuous in their connection...