Imagineers • Impresarios • Inventors: Cincinnati’s Arts and the Power of Her Written by Kathy Merchant
Hot off the press! A new book, produced by ArtsWave and edited by Kathy Merchant, celebrates nearly 200 women who shaped Greater Cincinnati’s arts organizations across three centuries. Imagineers is central to an 18-month collaboration among organizations across the Greater Cincinnati region called the POWER OF HER. Inspired by the women’s suffrage movement and the 19th amendment centennial celebration, ArtsWave viewed the book as a way to celebrate and amplify women’s voices in the arts, salute the women who came before us, honor female leadership and woman-centric works, and underscore creativity as a vehicle for inclusion and equality by celebrating the female voice. The book is extensive, but by no means comprehensive. It was quite a challenge to narrow a massive field of fantastic candidates into a collection of 120 essays highlighting the many women who worked together to launch our arts organizations. The essays themselves are works of art, written by 31 of the region’s best journalists, freelance writers, and authors. The featured women demonstrate the significance of contributions to the arts over a sustained period of time, as well as their leadership of arts organizations, influence on the vibrancy of the arts sector, and/or production of an important body of art works. Taken together, these stories illustrate and lift up the major roles that women have played in making Greater Cincinnati such a vibrant community. Many of the women who were artists and art patrons of the past are familiar names— Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Ruth Lyons, Anna Sinton Taft, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Maria Longworth Storer, Irma Lazarus, Louise Nippert, and many more. Contemporary artists, patrons, and executive leaders such as D. Lynn Myers, Victoria Morgan, Rhoda Mayerson, and Nikki Giovanni will also ring a familiar bell. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The photo essays accompanying this story give a taste of the POWER OF HER and explain why that lights up our lives. The perennial question of how Cincinnati’s arts sector compares to major and other mid-sized cities— and whether we can legitimately claim bragging rights—pops up from time to time. There isn’t much data, only impressions, especially when the question is about women artists and women-led organizations. While Impresarios doesn’t provide a definitive answer, it provides a small window into understanding that our artists and arts organizations are lasting jewels in the region’s crown. Three dozen arts organizations were started and/or led by Cincinnati’s women over a period of 150 years, and those organizations are all still in business! Consider this little gem from the Big Apple. The National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) was founded in New York in 1889 as the Women’s Art Club of New York to gain recognition for professional women fine artists. A 1982 reference asserts that it was “the first group of women artists to band together to fight discrimination and gain recognition for its members.” True? Maybe not. Cincinnati’s history shows that our associations of leading ladies started even earlier. The Ladies Academy of Fine Arts, founded by Sarah Worthington King Peter in 1854, paved the way for the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1869. The Women’s Art Museum Association, founded in 1874 by Elizabeth Williams Perry, was integral to creating the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1886. And the Woman’s Art Club was established in 1892 (three years after NAWA) as a counterpoint to the maleonly Cincinnati Art Club. And that was just the 19th century. Take that, New York! Order Imagineers directly from ArtsWave at http://artswave.org/imagineers. All proceeds benefit programming for women artists and arts organizations.
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