Free admission.

Galloping Through Dynasties explores the evolution of Chinese horse painting and sculpture throughout 3000 years of Chinese history. The 60 works of art on display—drawn from the collections of leading U.S. and Asian museums—decode the symbolic language of horses in Chinese art and reveal rich information about China’s history and culture.

From the ancient Zhou dynasty (circa 1045–771 BCE) to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), images of horses form an allegorical language through which many political and social aspects of Chinese history are reflected. The Chinese emperors’ passion for fine horses further enhanced its prominent status in Chinese art. Over time, the rich symbolic content of horse imagery was matched by the increasingly diversified styles and personal expressions of the artists who painted this iconic animal.

Galloping Through Dynasties is the first of its kind to present to museum audiences the many recent research findings on Chinese horse painting and sculpture. Through carefully selected examples, this exhibition—only at the Cincinnati Art Museum—illustrates how the horse played an important role in shaping the sociopolitical world of China and provides museum visitors with new insights into unique aspects of Chinese art and culture.

Free Admission

Commissioned by the Cincinnati Art Museum, Natural World is a collaboration between artists John Edmonds and David Hartt, poet and scholar Jason Allen-Paisant, and organizing curator Nathaniel M. Stein. The project explores meanings of nature and naturalness through overlapping dialogues with history, collections, and institutions. Hartt’s and Edmonds’s photography-based installations are presented in two dedicated galleries and selected sites throughout the museum. A companion book puts their work in conversation with new writing by Stein and Allen-Paisant.

Edmonds’s project, Father’s Jewels, is a profound meditation on family, reflecting on themes of identity, community, and belonging. Conceived in dialogue with works from the museum’s collection of African art and with the European artistic tradition, Edmonds’s pictures explore wounding, conflict, reverence, and love within and between generations of Black men. Hartt’s project, The Garden, examines ways of seeing and picturing that are rooted in European artistic, political, and intellectual traditions. Synthesizing concerns he has explored throughout his career, Hartt focuses on plant life as it negotiates the environment outside human-assigned physical parameters and social meanings. Both artists offer pivotal statements about what it might look like to include silenced positions in a shared conversation about the nature of the world.

Ticketed.
 
The exhibition Beyond Bollywood: 2000 Years of Dance in Art considers the compelling visual language of dance in the arts from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayan region from the first to the twenty-first century. Through religious, courtly, and everyday objects, the exhibition illustrates how dance occupies a uniquely important place in the region. The dance of the gods can provide religious and ethical lessons and can also symbolize power and majesty. In daily life, people have long danced for worship, for festivals, for the entertainment of emperors and princes, and for their own enjoyment. Experience the exceptional importance and power of dance in religious thought, literature, politics, and societal structures. Dance was–and is–not only for delight.

Jointly organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Asian Art Museum, the exhibition premieres in Cincinnati before travelling to San Francisco in 2023. Beyond Bollywood: 2000 Years of Dance in Art is accompanied by an interdisciplinary, multi-author publication – available now from the museum shop in person and online.