I was invited to attend the Founder’s Opening of “Beyond Pop: A Tom Wesselmann Retrospective” at the Cincinnati Art Museum, which for me, felt like both a homecoming and a reunion. It was heartwarming to see the hometown museum of one of the greatest masters of Twentieth Century Art celebrate the dedication and achievement of […]

A Farewell to J.D. Biggs by Kevin T. Kelly A quarter century ago I hitched a ride upon a comet. And although I didn’t realize it at the time, this ride would take me to the deepest recesses of inner space that I never even knew existed. Today we watch that wonderful, beautiful spark of […]

Manifest’s Tenth Anniversary By Kevin T. Kelly The November 8th opening at Manifest marked the gallery’s tenth anniversary as well as the grand opening of their much anticipated expansion, effectively doubling their exhibition space. For the past decade, Manifest has been challenging the continually shifting contemporary “brick and mortar” art gallery paradigm by defining and […]

State of the Arts By Kevin T. Kelly In observing the ever increasing polarization of virtually every facet of society, I’ve noticed the art world has also essentially split into two distinct camps: what I refer to, for lack of better terms, as the Conceptual and the Traditional. The Conceptual camp places more emphasis on […]

Ten years ago when I was teaching Intro to Painting at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, I was cutting through the galleries on the second floor of the Art Museum when “The Unwelcome Guests” by Henry Farny suddenly caught my eye for the first time. There was a luminosity in that yellow sky that jumped […]