More to Discover

Dive Deeper

Discover more about the art, history, and experiences that bring the Taft Museum of Art to life—within and beyond its walls!

Balancing Wanderlust with Stay-at-Home: Two Works by JMW Turner

18 May 2020

English landscape painter J.M.W. Turner found endless inspiration in his travels. On his journeys through the United Kingdom and Europe, Turner filled hundreds of sketchbooks with tens of thousands of drawings and watercolor sketches. Back in his studio, he used this material—along with his memory and imagination—to create detailed oil paintings and watercolors. The Taft Museum of Art has brilliant examples of both in its collection.

Solved: The Mystery of the Unknown Cabinet Maker

08 February 2020

A slew of tantalizing questions surround this 18th Century furniture maker. First, was this the same Porter Clay who made the Taft Museum of Art's early Kentucky sideboard? If so, where did Clay run off to? Was he captured? When did he come back to Lexington? Finally, did he avoid a jail sentence, and if so, how? Such questions abound in an intriguing story featuring a runaway furniture maker, spiked with notes of nepotism and Kentucky luxury.

Cincinnati’s Changing Landscape: Lytle Park Neighborhood

15 September 2018

Like the images in the Taft’s upcoming exhibition, Paris to New York: Photographs by Eugène Atget and Berenice Abbott, which document Paris and New York amid change, the illustrations seen here provide a glimpse of what has been lost and what remains of Cincinnati’s ever-changing landscape.

Limoges Enamels During the Reformation

18 August 2017

Small and shiny, Limoges enamels glow like jewels in the Taft Museum of Art’s Medieval and Renaissance galleries. Workshops of skilled artisans in Limoges, France, produced these decorative objects by delicately fusing layers of vividly colored glass to copper. By the 16th century, influenced by the Italian Renaissance and aided by a newly developed enameling technique similar to painting, enamellers replaced medieval modes of decoration with dynamic storytelling.

"Life in Quietness and Ease": Thomas Gainsborough’s Landscapes

21 April 2017

Two paintings by Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788) hang opposite each other in the Taft Museum of Art’s Music Room. On the south wall, two boys dressed in finery look out from a canvas measuring nearly seven feet high. On the north wall, a more modestly sized painting features livestock and rustic peasants dramatically lit within a shadowy copse of trees. This pastoral scene embodies Gainsborough’s true passion: the landscape of England’s countryside.

Cincinnati and the Tafts in the 1880s

17 June 2016

In 1888, the city celebrated its 100th birthday with the Centennial Exposition, held in Music Hall and in two temporary structures built especially for the occasion. In that year, at least 6,000 manufacturers in the city employed 93,500 workers. Cincinnati was a world leader in soap production, carriage manufacturing, beer brewing, whiskey distilling, and lithographic printing. In Over-the-Rhine, hundreds of small businesses flourished, each employing a handful of skilled craftsmen who made fine products—including musical instruments, wood carvings, and blown glass—many in the space of their own homes. The city had also become a center for the arts and art education.

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