Gallery exhibition to foster conversation about the people and enterprises driving food systems

Studio Kroner serves as more than a traditional art gallery. Beyond showing art, its mission also lies in fostering conversations among people to encourage community involvement. The upcoming pop-up exhibition, “The Warriors, Builders & Weavers of Cincinnati’s Foodshed” seems an ideal fit for Studio Kroner, founded in 2021 by Paul Kroner.

Although this multidisciplinary exhibition runs for only a single weekend (February 26–28), to call it multifaceted would be an understatement.

An ambitious book forms the foundation for the exhibition. Cincinnati Foodshed’s Art Atlas, a limited edition, 218-page, coffee table tome, presents a wealth of information through elaborate infographics, artwork, and illustrations from some of the area’s top visual design talent, academic and community researchers, and other creatives.

Conceived to involve more than only viewing artwork, the exhibition is intended to foster conversation and generate interest in our collective food systems and the people and enterprises driving them. 

“It really ties into my mission to use art as a way to have conversation about the world at large and topics that involve all sorts of different subject matters,” Kroner said of the graphic-design-driven exhibition. In addition to sustainability and environmental topics, these important subjects also encompass civic concerns, legal issues, science issues and more.

Through extensive research and collaborative efforts, the exhibition examines myriad facets of food and the Greater Cincinnati area’s unique geological, geographical, and cultural factors that led to its rise as an essential food hub, or foodshed, for the region, nation and beyond.

This ambitious book and related exhibition projects came from the fertile mind of R. Alan Wight, who holds a Ph.D. in Educational Studies. He wears many hats, including producer and curator of this book and exhibition. He is also an environmental sociologist and educator who, over time, became a de facto documenter or chronologist of the food movement in Cincinnati.

In addition, he’s been capturing and illustrating food stories of people and places, bringing them to life through what he calls “food mapping,” a basis for the book and exhibition.

When asked about the project’s origins, Wight named an unexpected source of inspiration: the city’s surveillance cameras.

“A friend of mine was mapping the surveillance cameras in downtown Cincinnati and that’s where I got the idea to map food sources. So, I started food mapping and producing artifacts and generating data and doing workshops,” Wight said. This was around 2011. It’s been a long and winding journey to bring this project to fruition. Another key source element: In 2018, Wight published a 70-page hyperlinked timeline of the food and farming history in our region going back to the late 1700s.

“We all know what’s better than words: pictures,” Wight said.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but I was weaving these strands that would eventually become this tapestry,” he said of those earlier projects.

How to bring this to life and generate interest and activism in the area’s food movement?

What this book and this exhibition aim to illustrate are the interwoven complexities of food and the systems and multifarious factors connected to it; both commercial and personal. It illuminates the Cincinnati area’s longstanding importance to local, regional, national, and world food systems and economy.

The Cincinnati Foodshed Art Atlas digs into the region’s food-related past, present and future. The Past section covers the area’s history with historical maps and botanical illustrations, archival photography and artwork. It also includes the histories of many longstanding, well-known Cincinnati-based companies, from Procter & Gamble and Castellini Company to Graeter’s, Kroger, Fleischmann’s Yeast and others.

The Present section covers topics including agriculture education, food mapping, food waste, and land use.

Wight remarks, “The Present is really where the local food movement part comes in, where you can then begin to share the stories of the organizations and the people; the farmers who are doing this work, who are trying to re-localize aspects of the food system, trying to change policy, trying to create businesses that address these things, or non-profits.” He gave the example of Last Mile Food Rescue, a non-profit organization that launched an app first deployed in Pittsburgh that’s now in use locally. The app helps connect “rescued” food resources, particularly perishable ones, to those in need.

Looking ahead as far as 2050, the imagined and imaginative Future section envisions individual potential pantries, planning, and other possibilities for new food systems.

More than 160 partners and collaborators participated in bringing the book to fruition; in addition to several sponsors, partner organizations include Green Umbrella, the Greater Cincinnati Regional Food Policy Council, Wave Pool, Cincinnati Museum Center and Findlay Market.

“I’d say it’s a hybrid,” Wight said of the exhibition. “It’s a celebration of the Atlas project.”

The exhibition will showcase selected works, focusing on original artwork seen in the Art Atlas tome as well as four newly created food maps for four Cincinnati neighborhoods: Clifton, Westwood, Spring Grove Village and College Hill.

“There were 30 to 40 original pieces of art that were created for the project and then photographed and brought in. So, the exhibit will really be showing the artists’ original work that’s been framed or preserved in some capacity.”

Wight collaborated with cartoonist Stephen Kroeger to produce five “facilitated collaborative storyboards” to be shown for the first time. Wight compared them to graphic novels or cartoons that convey the stories of five individuals’ food-related work.

Those five will also participate in Saturday’s panel discussion at the gallery facilitated by Wight and Kroeger.

Panelists include:

• Dominic Bly of the Garden of Joy Culinary Academy
• Peter Huttinger of the Turner Farm Community Gardens Program
• Barb Liphardt of Gorman Heritage Farm
• Amaha Sellassie of West Dayton Action Research
• Shannon Carr of Isaiah 55, Inc. and Garden of Eatin’

At the end of the day, we all need food to survive.

“It’s a celebration as much as a call to arms,” Wight said of the project.

What: “The Warriors, Builders & Weavers of Cincinnati’s Foodshed”

When: Feb. 26-28, 2026

Special events: Opening Reception, Fri., Feb. 27 from 4-9:00 p.m., Panel Discussion​, Sat., Feb. 28 from 3-5:00 p.m.

Where: Studio Kroner, 130 W. Court Street, Downtown Cincinnati

More details and regular gallery hours: https://www.studiokroner.com/event/cincinnati-foodshed