Morgues, but don’t sleep on the art in Cincinnati

A major American city filled with light art installations, stunning animated projection projects, drone shows, live music and street food. More importantly, filled with people.

Not thousands or tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of people four nights in a row. Not just in this cool area with all the bars and restaurants throughout the city. Even flowing into the next state.

Smiling people. Happy people.

Youth and children. Adults. Black and white.

“When pigs fly,” you say?

Pigs do fly in Cincinnati, and the scene described can be seen during the city’s biannual festival. BLINK Light and Art Festival. From October 17^th and 20^thIn 2024, downtown Cincinnati and northern Kentucky have become an outdoor public art museum after dark.

What was most remarkable about BLINK, however, was not the shows and drone installations (although those are great), but the community. A large, open community that lacks the insular tribalism that is prevalent throughout the country. It seemed like everyone was there.

Showcase for the city and the city.

BLINK demonstrates what is possible when access is open. The event was free. This occurred after normal work and school hours, from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm. It was easily accessible from both downtown Cincinnati and small Kentucky towns just across the Ohio River.

The power of art and the power of cities is to bring people together.

Art Across Cincinnati

Cincy’s art scene shines year-round with an ambitious mural program that has created a collection to rival any American city except Miami. Qingxi’s murals are numerous, enormous, and of the highest quality. Guided and self-guided fresco tours are available through ArtWorksorganization responsible for many of them.

BLINK has come and gone, but there’s another arts festival going on in town. Biennale FotoFocus 2024. The event, which celebrates photography and lens-based art, is the largest of its kind in the country and spans museums, galleries, universities and public spaces in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and northern Kentucky.

The Cincinnati Art Museum presents a stunning exhibition by the iconic landscape photographer. Early works of Ansel Adams until January 19, 2025, approximately 80 photographs, as well as unique ephemera, including handwritten correspondence, photographs, personal items and work photographs. Included are famous shots of the Grand Teton and Snake River, the Grand Canyon, and a delightful portrait of a young Georgia O’Keeffe with an incredibly mischievous and flirtatious expression.

The Center for Contemporary Art offers an unobstructed look at life on the Diné (Navajo) Reservation through photo by Chip Thomas. From 1987 to 2023, Thomas lived and worked as a physician and then as an artist between Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon. “Painted Desert Project” in 2012, inviting street artists from around the world to explore and paint the desert.

Thomas combines photography and street art to chronicle and celebrate Navajo life and culture, at times highlighting the impact of American capitalism on the landscape and people of the Navajo Reservation and other marginalized communities, especially the impact of uranium mining in the region. Hard. Watch for free until January 5, 2025.

The Center for Contemporary Art is located next to the 21c Museum Hotel. Whether you are there or not, its lobby is open to the public and is worth a visit as it constantly displays the best collection museum-quality contemporary art any hotel in America. Currently under consideration are works by Ebony J. Patterson, Mirlanda Constant, and Yinka Shonibare.

Learn the lingo

Beginning in the 1830s, German immigrants flocked to Cincinnati. In 1850 there were four newspapers in German in the city. German influence continues to permeate Cincinnati, no more so than in “OTR” area – Over the Rhine. German immigrants gathered here, just north of downtown, and the Miami and Erie Canal, which they nostalgically called “The Rhine.” The ornate European architecture found throughout OTR, Italianand OTR has the largest pristine concentration of the substance in the country.

It used to be one of the most dangerous areas in America – for the last 15 years – today. OTR shines as one of the countries the most fashionable and attractive.

Start with Findlay Marketindoor/outdoor farmers market built in 1852 with over 50 vendors. At the market stalls and local shops surrounding it you will find bakeries, cheesemongers and butchers. Lots of butcher shops.

Sausage is a food group in Cincinnati, again associated with German heritage. Cincinnati stands shoulder to shoulder with the country’s other major sausage cities: Chicago and Milwaukee.

Be sure to try it “goetta” Hand-shredded pork and beef, mixed with oats, salt and pepper, pan-fried and usually served for breakfast. Eckerlin Meats in Findlay Market produces about 2,000 pounds of this meat per week. “Metts” or mettwurst, recalls the sausage. LK butcher shop inside the market what he calls is sold “frikadellen” A German combination of meatball, hamburger and meatloaf.

The Cincy Butchers work with sausage the same way Eddie Van Halen worked with a guitar; they can make him do anything.

Not only did German immigrants make Cincy the sausage capital, but so did access to Kentucky hogs. That’s where flying pigs come from. Barges transporting hogs across the Ohio River were shrouded in early morning fog rising from the water, obscuring the vessel, making it appear as if the hogs were flying.

“Please?”

“What?”

Yes.

Another relic of a time when the place was full of German speakers who used “please” instead of “what.”

If you ask the butcher for a pound of gheeta and he doesn’t hear you, he might respond, “Please?” He means “what?”

Pretzels and beer are also popular here, thanks to the Germans. Visit OTR Rhinegeist brewery for outstanding sours, ciders and Geist teaalcoholic iced tea. When the weather is nice, enjoy the rooftop.

Cincinnati’s chili is like no other, and 3-way. The Cincy 3-way refers to the easiest way to order the famous Skyline Chili: spaghetti (you read that right) topped with a thin all-meat chili that’s more like a dark meat sauce topped with shredded cheese. A 4-way adds beans to the mixture, 5-way– or “to the end” – also an onion.

Last thing to know before visiting: – Who, Dey? This chant from fans of the National Football League’s Cincinnati Bengals asks, “Who are they? Who are they? Who do you think can beat these Bengals?

Walking tours around Findlay Market Food, OTRAnd city’s beer heritage You’ll be able to speak Qingxi fluently in no time.

Walk in Cincinnati

Downtown Cincinnati can be reached on foot or via the free streetcar, which connects Findlay Market to the banks of the Ohio River.

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center on a river where one side was once “free” and the other “slave,” presents an unvarnished look at the region’s history of enslavement and stands as a beacon for freedom seekers. I’ll never forget the look inside a slave pen brought from northern Kentucky to be displayed in a museum.

Even more inspiring is the Black Music Walk of Fame next to the Freedom Center, both less than a mile from the Center for Contemporary Arts.

Outside the city center American Sign Museum and the Cincinnati Zoo, home to Fiona the Hippo and new elephant habitat opened to the public on October 1, 2024, to rave reviews.

Cincy shows off her weird side Lucky Cat Museum where a local couple shares their collection of hundreds of Japanese flapping cats by appointment only. Seven miles south of Cincinnati, even stranger The world’s only museum dedicated to ventriloquism.

Visitors crossing the Ohio River leave the hot dogs, beer and the Midwest for fried chicken, bourbon and the South. Ludlow, Kentucky, four miles from downtown Cincy, makes a postcard of the small Southern town experience. This is also strange.

Start with a bourbon and Danish breakfast at the Fortune Teller Distillery. Spirits of Second Sight open at 9:00 am on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The business is so small that the owners put the labels on the back of the bottles themselves. The Oak Eye Kentucky bourbon, apple pie moonshine and hazelnut liqueur are a special treat. with Graeter’s vanilla ice cream (another Qingxi delicacy) – worth a visit. Second Sight serves as a stop on the B Line. Self-Guided Bourbon Tour of Northern Kentucky.

A hundred yards down the street find Birkus where a former Ringling Bros. clown took over the old theater building to serve small-batch craft beer and pizza while performing circus acts. Six miles from Ludlow, Legendary brewery leaning towards mead and a Dungeons and Dragons theme. “Kentucky ha-ha”, not “Kentucky oh-oh”, is the local lingo that you will need to visit and define for yourself.

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