Cincinnati Art Museum - Curatorial Project

Truth & Inspiration Art Exhibition, An ArtsWave Showcase

July 15–August 14, 2022

Cincinnati Art Museum. Schiff Gallery (Gallery 234)

If you look closely at the work in the exhibition, you’ll see that there is pain and heartache. Skepticism. Futility. But also Hope. Imagination. Commitment. These are emotional drivers we can all connect to. If we care about a future where we value all people and all contributions, it starts right here.

Funding and curation for this exhibition comes through ArtsWave’s Black and Brown Artist Program. ArtsWave, the region’s engine for the arts, offers competitive grants and technical assistance to artists of color in the Cincinnati region through this annual program, thanks to generous sponsors and donors to the ArtsWave Community Campaign.

These projects, along with others displayed locally over the last few months, explore not only the African American experience but also attempt to reconcile through art, issues related to the Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Palestinian and Indigenous American experience. Artists collaborated with community members and other partners in their projects, so that the larger public is participating in reconciling the moment and imagining a more just and equitable future for the Cincinnati region through the arts. 

As you encounter each piece in the exhibition, we invite you to place yourself in the narrative. Inside each piece is a fellow human’s experience. Someone’s “truth.” How is your experience like theirs? How is it different? How does it inspire you to think or act in a new way? It’s in that intentional reflection and action that we find empathy and begin to bridge what may divide us.