The Inside Story

As the title of the Taft Museum of Art’s summer exhibition suggests, photographs are perceived as capturing a “moment in time.” In reality, a photograph is the culmination of many steps, beginning with a photographer’s vision and, for the earliest images, a camera exposure time ranging from several seconds to several minutes. Technology, chemistry, darkroom manipulation, and printing techniques can also play a role in the appearance of a photographic image.

African Modernism in America highlights the women who explored modernism in Africa and shaped its narratives. Learn more about women artists featured in the exhibition, and the legacy they left behind. 

If you’ve seen screen adaptations of Austen’s novels, you can probably picture the quintessential Regency-era gown—white, high-waisted, and flowy—that her heroines frequently wear on film. Learn more about the fashion and art of the time!

The Bicentennial Infrastructure Project at the Taft Museum of Art is taking special steps to protect the Robert S. Duncanson murals from damage.

In preparation for the Taft Museum of Art's Bicentennial Infrastructure Project, Taft staff moved nearly 500 artworks, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and decorative arts objects, out of the permanent collection galleries in the historic house. Learn more about the process!

At the turn of the 20th century, few art collectors in Cincinnati shared the passion and determination of Charles Phelps Taft and Anna Sinton Taft.

As it turns out, Cincinnati was one of the largest manufacturers of boots and shoes in the United States for much of the early 1900s. Factories in Boston, Lynn, and Haverhill, Massachusetts were the main centers of production, but they could not compete with Cincinnati.

In 2014, the Taft Museum of Art accepted a  remarkable gift of 89 pieces of Chinese painted  enamel copperware. The late Reverend Compton  Allyn left these rare treasures to the Museum in his  will. Made by painting colorful diluted glass paste  onto copper forms, the enamels in Reverend Allyn’s collection illuminate a story of cultural exchange between East and West.

The special exhibition A Splendid Century: Cincinnati Art 1820–1920 highlights the impact made on art in the city by the former residents of the Taft Museum of Art’s historic house. Charles and Anna Taft were the last of these residents. In 1900, after Anna inherited her father David Sinton’s $20 million estate (over $500 million today), the Tafts became philanthropists and art collectors who made a lasting mark on visual art in the Queen City.

By the 1840s, artists had begun coming to Cincinnati from the surrounding region to learn more about art, as well as to exhibit and to sell their work, and many born in the city enjoyed success. In 1840, a writer for the New York Star asked, “Cincinnati! What is there in the atmosphere of Cincinnati, that has so thoroughly awakened the arts of sculpture and painting?