May 2025 marks the fifth anniversary of Art Climb! This high-profile landmark connects the museum’s hilltop location to the city and provides an outdoor experience combining landscape architecture and public art. This is the first of three posts celebrating Art Climb and its design, art, landscaping, and programming.

What does it take to create a landmark? It starts with a vision. The Cincinnati Art Museum began with the idea of constructing a museum to house an art collection for the public to enjoy. In 1886, five years after the founding of the Cincinnati Museum Association, a new landmark building overlooked the city from its hilltop perch in Eden Park.

Over the decades, as Eden Park’s trees grew taller and denser on the surrounding hillsides, the woods became a kind of barrier separating the museum from its adjacent neighborhoods. The “art fortress on the hill” became less accessible in the minds of many, both physically and socially.

Fast forward to 2015. New leadership under Cameron Kitchin, the Louis & Louise Dieterle Nippert Director of the museum, questioned how to remove barriers and welcome more visitors. Brainstorming meetings and design charettes led to Art Climb, a nine-story staircase zigzagging through a wooded hillside and connecting the corner of Gilbert Avenue and Eden Park Drive to the museum campus above.

Many partners contributed to Kitchin’s vision, from designers and engineers to curators and consultants. Landscape design firm Human Nature marked which trees could be saved. Strand Associates consulted on structural engineering. Brave Berlin developed ideas to create a key landmark. The team — including museum staff and board members — participated in a charette to discuss how to make the vision a reality.

Kitchin challenged charette participants to think beyond a simple staircase and envision a hillside gathering place. The result, designed by Emersion Design and built by Turner Construction, included the now-iconic 164 limestone steps incorporating landings, “art platforms,” public sculpture, picnic tables, seating, and a programmable multi-colored lighting system. The combined efforts transformed the hillside into an outdoor art experience.

After three years of construction, Art Climb opened to the public on May 8, 2020, and the museum unveiled a new Cincinnati landmark.

Today, Art Climb welcomes more than 100,000 visitors each year and serves as an integral part of a strategic plan (along with the Wyler Family Drive, multiple pathways, and outdoor sculptures) to activate the museum grounds and strengthen the museum’s physical connections to the surrounding neighborhoods and city. Plans are currently underway to make Art Climb more accessible by accommodating wheelchairs and strollers, removing even more barriers to the museum.

Next up: “Art Climb: Landscaping and Horticulture”

The Cincinnati Art Museum’s Art Climb was made possible by many generous donors including support from the Procter & Gamble Fund and the Cincinnati Development Fund.