Museum Visits // Oct 28, 02:40 PM
I took a group-trip to Cincinnati yesterday to visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and Contemporary Arts Center.
The Cincinnati Art Museum’s permanent collection highlights for early 20th c. in my view were Monet’s Rocks at Belle-Ile, Port-Dormois, 1886, Millet’s Going to Work, 1851-1853, A couple of great Singer-Sargents, a couple of equally great Bouguereaus, and only Manet’s painting in the collection, Women at the Races, 1865. Their two temporary exhibits, Vanishing Frontier and The Lure of the Arctic were also on view (dealing with native american and arctic cultures). They also had an old racing Ferrari which even I, as a huge Ferrari fan, didn’t care about much…
A great design-treat, though, was discovering Cincinnati Art Museum’s wayfinding system. Apart from the fact that their maps deserve better than B&W photocopies, environmental graphics were unique. The entire palette of directional signs was installed over the wooden molding where floor meets the wall. Out of the view but also conspicuously red, they function flawlessly by being noticeable but not distracting from the pantings and the wall space. At critical junctions there is a eye-level wall graphic which is connected to the “footnote,” in this case a directional sign. At the entrance, there is a explanatory sign explaining the “footnote” and the directional wayfinding system. Gallery identification signs were executed with raised serif lettering, positioned well above the gallery entrances. It’s revealing to see that a wayfinding system with panels well above and beyond the eye-level, not only functions well, but the compliments the art as well which in any museum lives precisely at the eye-level.
We were absolutely fortunate to visit CAC in the midst of the wall-painting art installation by Odili Donald Odita, titled Flow. The building of CAC, designed by Zaha Hadid (and if I’m not mistaking her first building completed in US), is brilliant. Odili took Hadid’s architecture as a starting point and is in the process of panting a composition which functions great in the context, is full of Hadid’s angles, and has variety of color and rhythm. Odili, who was working on the installation throughout the day, took about half hour to address the crowd of visitors, talk about his installation and answer some questions. Particularly interesting were his remarks about being born in africa, and growing up in an african home in Ohio. CAC’s website features a daily video log of the installation’s progress (as well as Odili’s introduction to the piece).
The exhibits at the CAC were skimpy though. Even the graphic design related part of the exhibit on the 2nd floor didn’t quite make it a substantial experience. It featured local graphic designers from 50s and 70s, among them wonderful Charlie Harper, which Michel Bierut recently talked about at the Design Observer
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Phil Garvey Lectures at Kent State Art School and Design Thinking