Art in Cincinnati

A major American city filled with light art installations, dazzling animated projection mapping projects, drone shows, live music and street food. More importantly, filled with people.

Not thousands or tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of people four nights in a row. Not just in one cool area with all the bars and restaurants at the other end of town. Even flowing into the next state.

Smiling people. Happy people.

Youth and children. adults Black and white.

“When pigs fly” you say?

Pigs do fly in Cincinnati, and the described scene can be seen during the city’s biennial Festival of light and art BLINK. In the period from October 17^thousand and 20^thousandIn 2024, downtown Cincinnati and northern Kentucky were transformed into an open-air public art museum.

However, the biggest reason for BLINK wasn’t the drone shows and installations, great as they are, but the community. A large open community that does not have the insular tribal system common in the country. It seemed like everyone was there.

A showcase for the town and the city.

BLINK demonstrates what is possible when access is open. The event was free. This happened after the normal work day and school, between 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM. Its location was within easy reach of downtown Cincinnati as well as the smaller towns of Kentucky right across the Ohio River.

The power of art and the power of cities to unite people.

Art through Cincinnati

Cincy’s art scene shines year-round thanks to an ambitious mural program that has produced a collection that rivals any American city except Miami. Cincy’s frescoes are numerous, huge and of the highest caliber. Guided and self-guided fresco tours are available Works of artthe organization responsible for many of them.

BLINK has come and gone, but another art festival is underway across town, biennial FotoFocus 2024. Celebrating photography and lens-based art, this event is the largest of its kind in the country, spanning museums, galleries, universities and public spaces in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and northern Kentucky.

The Cincinnati Art Museum presents a stunning show of iconic landscape photographers Early works of Ansel Adams through January 19, 2025, with approximately 80 photographs along with unique ephemera, including handwritten correspondence, snapshots, personal effects, and work photography. Included is the famous shot of the Grand Tetons and Snake River, the Grand Canyon, and a wonderful portrait of a young Georgia O’Keefe with an incredibly mischievous and flirtatious expression.

At the Center for Contemporary Art is an unobstructed view of life on the Diné (Navajo) reservation through photo by Chip Thomas. Thomas lived and worked as a doctor and then an artist between Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon from 1987 to 2023. He started “Painted Desert Project” in 2012, inviting street artists from around the world to explore and paint in the desert.

Thomas combines photography and street art to chronicle and celebrate Navajo life and culture, at times addressing the effects of American capitalism on the landscape and population of the Navajo reservation and other marginalized communities, particularly the impact of uranium mining in the region. hard. Watch it for free until January 5, 2025.

The Contemporary Art Center is located next to the 21c Museum Hotel. Whether you’re staying there or not, its lobby is open to visitors and well worth a visit as the best collection is constantly on display modern art of museum quality any hotel in America. Ebony G. Patterson, Myrlande Constant and Yinka Shonibare currently have works on display.

Learn the lingo

Beginning in the 1830s, German immigrants flocked to Cincinnati. In 1850 there were four German-language newspapers in the city. German influence continues to permeate Cincinnati, no more so than in the “OTR” Nad Rhine district. This is where German immigrants congregated, north of downtown and the Miami-Erie Canal, which they nostalgically called the “Rhine.” The stately, European architecture found throughout OTR Italianand OTR has the largest concentration in the unchanged state in the country.

Once one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America — for the past 15 years — today OTR shines as one of the country the most fashionable and the most attractive.

The beginning of Findlay Marketan 1852 indoor and outdoor farmers market with over 50 vendors. In the market stalls and local shops surrounding it, you will find bakeries, cheesemongers and butchers. Many butcher shops.

Sausage is a food group in Cincinnati that is once again associated with German heritage. Cincinnati stands side by side with the country’s other big sausage cities: Chicago and Milwaukee.

Be sure to try it “Goetta” hand-ground pork and beef mixed with oats, salt and pepper, pan-fried and usually served for breakfast. Eckerlin Meats at Findlay Market produces about 2,000 pounds a week. Metts or mettwurst, reminiscent of kielbasa. Meat shop LK inside the market sells what he calls “frickadellen”, German meatballs, hamburger, meat roll.

Cincy’s butchers do sausage like Eddie Van Halen did guitar; they can make him do anything.

It wasn’t just German immigrants that made Cincy the sausage capital, it was access to Kentucky hogs. That’s where flying pigs come from. Barges transporting hogs across the Ohio River were shrouded in morning fog rising off the water, obscuring the vessel, giving the appearance that the hogs were flying.

“Please?”

“What?”

Yes

Another holdover from the time when it was full of German speakers who used “please” instead of “what”.

If you ask a butcher for a pound of gotha ​​and he doesn’t hear you, he might say, “Please?” It means “what?”

Pretzels and beer are also big here, thanks to the Germans. Visit OTR Rhinegeist Brewery for outstanding sour drinks, cider and Geist teaalcoholic iced tea. When the weather is nice, enjoy the roof.

Cincinnati chili is like no other 3-sided. The Cincy 3-way refers to the easiest way to order the famous Skyline Chili: Spaghetti (you read that right) topped with a thin chili that’s more like a dark meat sauce, topped with shredded cheese. AND 4-directional adds beans to the mix, a 5-sided– or “to the end” – also onions.

One last thing to know before visiting “Who’s Day?” This chant from fans of the National Football League’s Cincinnati Bengals asks, “Who’s fighting? Who is acting? Who do you think will beat the Bengals?”

Walking tours Food at Findlay Market, OTRand beer heritage of the city will teach you to speak Cincy fluently in no time.

Walks in Cincinnati

Downtown Cincinnati can be enjoyed on foot or on the free streetcar loop that connects Findlay Market to Banks, the banks of the Ohio River.

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center on a river where one side was once “free” and the other “slave” is an unvarnished look at the region’s history of enslavement and as a beacon for freedom seekers. A look inside a slave pen, transported from northern Kentucky for museum display, will never be forgotten.

Even more encouraging is the Black Music Walk of Fame near the Freedom Center, both less than a mile from the Contemporary Arts Center.

Outside the city center, Museum of American Signs and the Cincinnati Zoo, home to Fiona the hippopotamus a new habitat for elephants opened to the public on October 1, 2024, to rave reviews.

Cincy shows off her weird side Museum of the happy cat where a local couple shares their collection of hundreds of Japanese waving cats by appointment only. Seven miles south of Cincinnati, even more strangely, the only museum in the world dedicated to ventriloquism.

Visitors crossing the Ohio River are leaving behind hot dogs, beer and the Midwest for fried chicken, bourbon and the South. Ludlow, Kentucky, four miles from downtown Cincy, makes for a picture postcard picture of a small Southern town. This is also strange.

Start with a bourbon and danish for breakfast at the harbinger distillery Spirits of second sight open at 9:00 a.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The operation is so small that its owners hand-apply labels to their bottles from the back. Oak Eye Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey, Apple Pie Moonshine and Hazelnut Liqueur is another special treat with Graeter vanilla ice cream (another Cincy delicacy) – make the visit worthwhile. Second Sight serves as a stop on the B-Line, a self-guided bourbon tour of northern Kentucky.

A hundred yards down the street find Bircus where a former Ringling Brothers clown took over an old theater building to serve small-batch craft beer and pizza while performing circus acts. Six miles from Ludlow, Fabled Brew Works draws on honey and a Dungeons and Dragons theme. “Kentucky haha” not “Kentucky ooh”, local slang that you’ll have to visit and determine for yourself.

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