Cincinnati Art Museum announced today it will be open to the public for special engagement days on the weekends in January (Jan. 2, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, 24, 30, 31). Hours will be 11 a.m.–5 p.m. each day.

Members will have special access each Friday starting Jan. 8 (continuing Jan. 15, 22, 29), as well as “Member Mornings” each Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m.–11 a.m. The museum will not be open on New Year’s Eve or Day.

To ensure community wellness, limited hourly capacity remains reduced and advanced online registration is required. The museum will continue its safety policies requiring masks covering noses and mouths, and six feet of social distance between visitors. Increased cleaning and use of hospital-grade air filtration allow the museum to operate safely. The museum asks that all patrons limit their visit to two hours and ONLY visit with members of their own household.

This makes me happy, because yesterday — the last viewing day previously announced — I attended Frank Duveneck: American Master, which is set to run through March 28, 2021. With 90 works of art, it is a revelatory exhibition. Both comprehensive and beautifully organized, it also offers a personal view of the artist, including his friendships with other artists such as Whistler — featuring side-by-side works — the Duveneck Boys, his Art Academy students and especially with his wife, who died much too young.

It is a rare, sweeping look at Duveneck’s output in its only showing in America. (Due to Covid, it will not travel elsewhere after Cincinnati.) At CAM, it is the first major exhibition of Duveneck’s work in more than 30 years.

In a Q&A for the Business Courier, I asked curator Julie Aronson for some of her favorite works. This topped her list:

“Seeing the “three boys” hung together is going to be a great moment in the exhibition. “The Whistling Boy,” “The Cobbler’s Apprentice” from the Taft Museum of Art and “He Lives by his Wits,” still in a private collection, will be hung together.”Read More »