Cincinnati Art Museum history

However, control was transferred to the Cincinnati Museum Association in 1884, beginning a 114-year relationship between the two institutions.

In November 1887, the Art Academy of Cincinnati moved into a new building—also designed by James W. McLaughlin—alongside the museum in Eden Park.

Consisting of an exhibition hall linked to the main building by a corridor gallery, the new wing was endowed by financier and philanthropist Jacob G. Schmidlapp in memory of his daughter who, along with his wife, had died in a train crash in February 1900.

The most popular of these were the free Saturday morning art classes introduced in 1921.

However, by 1931 the library’s ever-expanding collection had outgrown this area and it was forced to move to the basement of the Hanna Wing – now unglamorously the site of one of the Museum’s air-handling units.

Library Reading Room, Alms Wing, 1937 (from the Cincinnati Art Museum Archives)

The first docent-led tours of the museum began in April 1961.

The Adams-Emery Wing opened in October 1965, named in honor of the museum’s director, Philip Adams, and John “Jack” Emery, president of the Board of Trustees.

The museum’s gift shop, which opened in March 1969, was set up by a group of dedicated volunteers: Carol Haile, Ann Casey, Nancy Coith, and Mary Gores.

However, the earliest confirmed use can only be traced to 1971 when it was employed as the title of a television documentary about the museum hosted by then director Philip Adams.

An extensive two-year, $13 million project to restore the grandeur of the museum’s interior was completed in January 1993, during which almost all the public spaces were refreshed or remodeled.

By 2000, the museum numbered over 60,000 objects and, today, is the largest in all of Ohio.

In 2012, artist Todd Pavlisko planned to have a sniper shoot a rifle inside the museum, during the opening of Pavlisko’s solo exhibition “Crown”. The bullets would be fired into a chunk of bronze, while Pavlisko himself filmed the whole ordeal with high-speed cameras.

The vacant building underwent an ambitious renovation project, conceived and overseen by Cincinnati firm Emersion DESIGN, which was completed in 2013.

The Rosenthal Education Center opened in March 2015.

The Schmidlapp Wing’s gallery space underwent a radical transformation in 2017.

A venue for safe, open-air activity was also provided by the opening of Art Climb in May 2020.