Annual Lectures at CAM

Please visit our Calendar for additional information regarding lectures. Reservations can be made online or by calling (513) 721-ARTS.

To request accessibility accommodations, please email [email protected] at least two weeks before the event.

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The 49th Annual Colonial Dames Lecture & Tea: Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories

Wednesday, May 3, 2023, 2 p.m.
Fath Auditorium
Tea to follow in the Great Hall and Terrace Cafe
Free for Art Museum and NSCDA Ohio Members. $10 for the general public.
Reservations required.

Jennifer Swope, Associate Curator of Textile and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will discuss masterworks from the MFA’s quilt and bed cover collection. Swope’s talk will focus on how this beloved art form’s intimate and tactile nature reflects nuanced narratives of the nation’s history. The presentation will include works from Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, the MFA exhibition and accompanying award-winning publication celebrating the individual artistry of quilts and acknowledging their complex legacies ingrained in the fabric of American life.

Presented by The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of Ohio.

Colonial Dames Lecture and Tea graciously underwritten by the L. W. Scott Alter Trust.

Past Annual Lectures

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The 26^th Annual Kreines Lecture on Decorative Arts and Design: Roberto Lugo

Sunday, March 12, 2023, 3 p.m.
Fath Auditorium
Reception to follow
Free. Reservations required.

Join us in welcoming ceramic artist Roberto Lugo to the Cincinnati Art Museum to hear him speak about his work and his upcoming residency and solo exhibition at the museum. 

Roberto Lugo was raised in a neighborhood of Philadelphia marked by poverty, violence, and drug trafficking. At the age of 25, he enrolled in his first pottery class. Today, he leads the ceramic department at Temple University in Philadelphia, and his art resides in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, and other prestigious institutions, including the Cincinnati Art Museum. When he is not teaching or creating, Lugo returns to urban neighborhoods with a potter’s wheel emblazoned with the words, “This machine kills hate.” Taking his art to the street, he uses clay and his wheel to teach others how to throw pots, break down cultural and social biases, and encourage the possibility that anyone can choose and achieve their dreams.

Please join us for a reception with light bites following the lecture.

Presented by Mrs. Kenneth Kreines and the Decorative Arts Society of Cincinnati in Memory of Dr. Kenneth Kreines.

Annual Benesse Lecture & FotoFocus Annual Spring Lecture

Due to unforeseen circumstances, this lecture has been postponed. Please check back for further information. 

Conversation with the Artist: Dawoud Bey

Thursday, March 2, 2023
Reception: 6–6:45 p.m.
Lecture: 7–8:30 p.m.
Fath Auditorium
Free. Reservations Recommended

The Cincinnati Art Museum is honored to present a conversation with renowned American photographer Dawoud Bey. Generously cosponsored by FotoFocus and additionally supported by the Donald P. Sowell Committee, the conversation celebrates the museum’s acquisition of an iconic work by the artist: A Couple in Prospect Park (1990). A highly regarded speaker and educator, Bey will be joined in conversation by CAM’s Curator of Photography and a small group of area photography students.

Join us for a pre-event reception beginning at 6 p.m. Light bites will be provided and a cash bar available.

Organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum.
The annual Benesse Lecture is endowed by the Benesse Corporation.
Generously co-sponsored by FotoFocus, with the additional support of the Donald P. Sowell Committee.

About the Artist

Dawoud Bey, based in Chicago, was born in 1953 in Queens, New York. Long admired for his rich, psychologically compelling portraits, Bey explores a range of photographic tools and approaches to create images and projects that connect deeply with the communities he photographs. In recent years, Bey has focused on built environments and landscapes to visualize collective experience, memory, and history, using photography as a vehicle to make these resonant in the contemporary moment.

Bey first came to attention with Harlem, U.S.A. (1975-1979)—a body of work that comprised his first solo exhibition, mounted at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. Since then, Bey’s practice has explored empathetic, nuanced, and relational depiction of underrepresented subjects. In succeeding decades and successive bodies of work, he has moved from photographing in the streets with a hand-held 35mm camera to creating more formally structured portraits using a tripod mounted 4 x 5 camera, and to working in-studio with the monumental 20 x 24 Polaroid view camera. His projects have often redefined how artists engage with institutions, striving to make those spaces more accessible to the communities they serve.

Dawoud Bey holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University School of Art and is currently Professor of Art and a former Distinguished College Artist at Columbia College Chicago. In 2017 Bey was awarded the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship. He is also the recipient of fellowships from United States Artists, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among other honors.

Bey’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions worldwide and is included in the permanent collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, High Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Museum of Modern Art, NY, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Tate Modern, Whitney Museum of American Art, and other museums internationally. Among numerous important titles on or by the artist, a forty-year retrospective, Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2018, and Dawoud Bey: Two American Projects was published by Yale University Press and SFMOMA in 2020.

Asian Art Society Lecture

The Seventh Annual Asian Art Lecture

Galloping Through Dynasties
Sunday, October 16, 2022, 2 p.m.
Fath Auditorium
Free. Seating is first come, first served.

The Cincinnati Asian Art Society presents the Seventh Annual Asian Art Lecture on October 16, 2022 at 2 p.m. in the Fath Auditorium.

The horse is one of the oldest and most interesting painting subjects in China. From the ancient Zhou dynasty (ca. 1045–771 BC) to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the horse, which played an important role in shaping the sociopolitical world of China, has formed an engaging symbolic language. In this program, Dr. Sung will explores the evolution of Chinese horse painting in both its symbolic and its stylistic aspects throughout Chinese history. This lecture will also include many of her recent research findings and decode the symbolic language of Chinese horse painting to reveal rich information about Chinese history and culture.

Please join for a reception following the lecture.

NKU Symposium

Home Waters: A Legacy Renewed

Thursday, October 27, 2022, 6:15–7:45 pm
Fath Auditorium
Free. Reservations encouraged.

In his new book, Home Waters, journalist and author John Maclean revisits his family’s ties to Montana’s beautiful and remote Blackfoot River. The family’s story was immortalized by his father, Norman Maclean, in A River Runs Through It – an instant classic when it was published in 1976 and today among the most beloved books in fly fishing’s extensive literary canon.  As described by the book’s publisher, Home Waters is a “meditation on fly fishing and life along the Blackfoot, where four generations of Macleans have fished, bonded and drawn timeless lessons from the river’s storied waters.” John will talk about his book and his father’s, read excerpts and take questions from the audience.

Schedule of Events

Doors open
6 p.m.

Welcome and introduction
Program begins with an interpretive performance by students from Northern Kentucky University’s School for the Performing Arts.
6:15 p.m.

Remarks, reading and Q&A with John Maclean
7 p.m. – 7:45 p.m.

Note: Signed copies of “Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River” will be available before and after this event.