After relocating with his family to Cincinnati, Cameron Kitchin started work as Director of the
Cincinnati Art Museum on Oct. 1, 2014. He’d previously led the Brooks Museum in Memphis, Tenn. and the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia in Virginia Beach.
“Arriving at the Cincinnati Art Museum I was well aware of the wonderful collection, which is the largest in the state of Ohio as well as Indiana and Kentucky and known and studied around the world,” Kitchin says in assessing his first full year in Cincinnati. “I would just like to share a word of appreciation to the entire Cincinnati community for their support for the Art Museum. It has been absolutely everything we could have hoped for in a community.”
Kitchin spoke with Soapbox about his first year here and looks ahead to new exhibitions, new leadership and new technology making their marks at the Art Museum.
The upcoming holiday season will bring back two new traditions,
Tree of Life, which opens on Nov. 17, and the holiday market. Visitors can leave a wish for the new year or share a memory of the closing year on the tree, and in January the wishes are ceremonially brought together, burned and buried on the CAM grounds.
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Raphael's "Portrait of a Lady With a Unicorn"
“It’s a really wonderful and lovely statement and gesture in which everyone is invited to participate,” Kitchin says.
Visitors will also see two new exhibitions through the holidays:
High Style features 20th Century fashion from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection, and Raphael's
Portrait of a Lady With a Unicorn is on loan from the Galleria Borghese in Rome and on view for the first time in the United States.
How has your first year in Cincinnati and at the Art Museum gone?
It exceeded my expectations in every way. I knew the collection well and knew the reputation of the scholarship and exhibitions of CAM. What came as a wonderful surprise is the depth of the community support that I found, which has been second to none. In my career in museums I have never seen a deeper and more closely held value system in support of an art museum. I just feel really grateful for it.
One of the programs that really surprised me when I moved here was ArtsWave and the broad base of support they’re able to generate for the arts in the city. With CAM a key ArtsWave partner, have you experienced anything like that in other cities?
ArtsWave is emblematic of the incredible support I’ve found in Cincinnati. It’s the largest workplace giving campaign to the arts in the nation, and that speaks volumes about our community’s value system and the importance of education to Cincinnatians.
When we have Cincinnatians who are deducting small percentages of their own paychecks to give to our major arts organizations, it’s because they believe in the importance of the Symphony, the Opera, the Art Museum and our wonderful performing arts organizations. That’s unlike anywhere else I’ve been before. I have certainly enjoyed the support of community arts campaigns in each community where I have worked, but I think this is the strongest statement of support I have ever encountered.
The Cincinnati Art Museum has an encyclopedic collection, but it’s also well known for its collection of Cincinnati-based artists. How is the emphasis on Cincinnati art important to the larger story CAM tells?
The Cincinnati Art Museum was founded in the late 19th Century during the period in which the industrial arts in Cincinnati were beginning to thrive and grow, particularly in ceramics, art carving, silver making and other decorative arts. CAM has been, since day one, the institution of record for the amazing art that’s been produced over the last 135 years of Cincinnati history.
That collection has also provided a foundation for many art students in Cincinnati, from the Art Academy to DAAP and Xavier as well as our high schools and grade schools. The collection gives them the grounding to understand our community's history and its importance in the story of art. As result, it’s created a generation of responsive artists who now want to build on those traditions.
Today, people talk about a return to a
maker culture, craft industry, handwork and the importance of making things on your own. We’re now seeing a resurgence of the arts that launched this art museum. I think it’s wonderful to see that come around full circle so that we can now begin to think about what’s next.
Does the Art Museum work with contemporary artists?
The story of art is never ending, so today we communicate with artists who are in a dialogue with contemporary society and have a unique perspective. CAM also continues to explore and collaborate with our friends at the Contemporary Arts Center. They have been great partners with an incredible history of identifying the cutting edge of what is happening in contemporary art with a track record that’s second to none.
With such a wide range of collections at CAM, how does the exhibit schedule manage to represent so many different genres, periods and media?
That’s one of the greatest challenges and opportunities for an art museum as wide ranging as CAM. The entire story of art is included in our collection and in what we teach. Balance is the key.
If the art itself is compelling and excellent, the visitors will respond, so we begin there. We also look at subjects we haven't covered recently. The chance to tell the full story of art history takes constant attention and constant re-balancing, but in the end I feel very confident in the work that our curators do.
This is a little like picking a favorite child, but do you have a favorite exhibit in the new season?
There are so many, but I’m really and truly excited about our
Conservation on View: Zaragoza’s Retablo of St. Peter, which opens on Jan. 26. Every once in a while we have the opportunity to ask our conservation department to offer a public viewing of the conservation of a work of art. We find that the public is eternally fascinated, as am I, by the conservation process and what it takes to bring a work of art into a state that it will remain with us for perpetuity. Our world-class conservation department will invite visitors to see their work in action on Zaragoza’s
Retablo between Jan. 26 and April 24, and I’m truly excited to see the response.
Museums typically plan exhibitions several years in advance, so how do you, as the new director, shape the exhibits that have been in the works for some time?
I’ve been fortunate that CAM not only has a vital and dynamic exhibition calendar, but we have also been completing a capital renovation and improvement campaign to the museum, meaning that we have had a chance to open new galleries. Our new antiquities gallery of Egyptian, Greek and Roman art just opened in October, which was an exciting partnership with the UC Classics and Anthropology departments. Earlier this year we opened the Rosenthal Education Center, offering a free hands-on art space that connects to the collection and special exhibits.
In addition, we’ve had a chance to adjust, adapt and augment several exhibits. For example, on March 19, 2016 we’ll open
30 Americans to showcase the incredible contemporary art coming out of the African American community. The exhibition explores the work of the most important African American artists of the last 30 years and is responsive to contemporary society. I feel that the timing is exactly right for it to be on view here and that it will provide an opportunity for important discourse and dialogue.
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Cameron Kitchin speaks at Silverton Paideia Academy
Since your arrival, you have frequently commented on the importance of collaboration and outreach to the CAM. Are there organizations you would like to work with but haven't had the chance to yet?
CAM has numerous productive partnerships with arts organizations in Cincinnati that we would love to continue and expand. We work closely with the Taft Museum of Art, Contemporary Arts Center, ArtWorks and Cincinnati Museum Center. At the same time, we’re looking to expand our partnerships with social service agencies and other organizations in Cincinnati that are looking to make a difference and advance the agenda of our city.
There is incredible community-building work being done by so many people in so many neighborhoods across the city. We’re very interested in playing a role in including the importance of art and design in those discussions.
Can you talk about some of the new ways the CAM is encouraging visitors to explore the museum?
Our new Baby Tours have gone beautifully. They offer a chance for caregivers — mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles — to introduce their youngest ones to visual imagery and see how they respond to it. Just as importantly, it’s an opportunity for those caregivers to socialize with each other and create community through art at the Art Museum.
CAM also started iPad tours this year. Technology has a growing role in piercing the veil between public collections and collections that are off view or in study areas of the Museum. In addition, this technology can help connect the context of the period when works of art were made to today and to issues in contemporary society.
One good example is in the new antiquities galleries, where we installed two state-of-the-art touch tables that were programmed and designed by
Paperplane Creative, a Cincinnati firm. The tables connect the objects from ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt to activities that would seem familiar today such as sports, funerary practices and eating and drinking. Technology has a way of linking the past to the present like no other tool.
Many museums are starting to feature objects from the collection online. Is CAM considering providing digital access to its collection?
We’re well underway with efforts in this direction. Through a grant from the
Institute of Museum and Library Sciences we have begun digitizing our collection of works on paper. This is a multi-year process for us to create not only digital images of 65,000-plus objects but also to digitize the reams and reams of records that surround each of these objects.
The idea of giving the public access to that information is a primary goal. We’ll be launching a new website toward the end of this year with a more robust search function for the collection. I believe when someone has access to see the digital image of an object, it only increases their interest in seeing the actual object — nothing replaces seeing the incredible work created directly by an artist’s hand.
In September, CAM announced a new board president and new trustees. What will you and the board be working on as the Museum looks toward the future?
The arrival of new leadership to the museum has coincided perfectly with the strategic planning cycle for CAM. While we have an active strategic plan that’s currently reaching completion, we have spent the last six months developing a new long-range strategic plan for the museum with staff, board and community input. We’re about halfway through that process. We look forward to CAM really embracing its historical role as public servant and as an agency for education in Cincinnati.
How are you settling in to Cincinnati? Have you picked a team to support in the crosstown rivalry? A favorite Cincinnati chili?
My family loves every corner of Cincinnati. We spend a lot of time in communities throughout the city and have made wonderful friends from all parts of the city. We feel very fortunate to be able to make a difference in our city.
My children, now growing up in Cincinnati, have found that Cincinnati chili is their favorite post-basketball or after-football activity, although I can’t pick a favorite. But the Graeter’s black raspberry chip ice cream, now that is amazing! And we’re eagerly waiting for our second year of the seasonal peppermint.