In case you missed this event or would like to see the presentations again, click below to watch the video recording.
Join us for the next installment in our story-sharing series, “Three Acts in Over-the-Rhine” on Wednesday, September 20th at 6:30pm at Memorial Hall (1225 Elm Street). Speakers Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller, Suzanne Fisher, and Thea Tjepkema will talk about their research on noteworthy artists and personal experience in contributing to public artworks. Leininger-Miller will share the work of regionally recognized Over-the-Rhine resident Leopold Fettweis (1848-1912) who produced monumental figurative sculpture, busts of Civil War military leaders, a treestone, and bas-reliefs in marble, limestone, granite, and bronze for Spring Grove Cemetery, Washington Park, Inwood Park, and the Germania building in Cincinnati. Tjepkema will discuss Benn Pittman’s life and his part in the carved wood panels that decorate the Cincinnati Music Hall organ. Fisher will share the history of mosaics featured in Imagination Alley and the collaboration between the Art Academy and Peaslee Neighborhood Center.
Doors open at 6:00 pm and the program begins at 6:30 pm. Tickets can be reserved on a “pay what you would like” donation basis at. We recommend $5-10 per person. A cash bar will be available throughout the event. This program can also be viewed live via facebook.com/OTRmuseum.
PROGRAM SPEAKERS
Dr. Theresa Leininger-Miller
Leininger-Miller is a professor of art history at the University of Cincinnati. Selected publications include her book, New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922-1934; chapters in The Routledge Companion to African American History; Women Artists of the Harlem Renaissance; Out of Context; and The Modern Woman Revisited; essays in Panorama 19th-Century Art Worldwide, and Source; and catalogue essays in Imprinted: Illustrating Race; Harlem Renaissance; Black Paris; and Picture Cincinnati in Song. She has curated eight exhibitions of illustrated sheet music. National awards include those from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, National Endowment for the Humanities; Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; Kress Foundation, Henry R. Luce Foundation; Smithsonian Institution; and Auburn University.
Leininger-Miller’s presentation will highlight a half-century of public sculpture created by artist Leopold Fettweis, a former 3 W. McMicken Avenue resident (future Over-the-Rhine Museum site). Regionally recognized, Leopold Fettweis (1848-1912) produced monumental figurative sculpture, busts of Civil War military leaders, a treestone, and bas-reliefs in marble, limestone, granite, and bronze for Spring Grove Cemetery, Washington Park, Inwood Park, and the Germania building in Cincinnati, 1862-1911. This richly illustrated presentation examines Fettweis’s allegorical, literary, and symbolic work in the contexts of his German heritage and artistic peers.
Suzanne Fisher
Suzanne Fisher is an urban-based visual artist and educator who works in a variety of media, including mosaics and mixed media paintings. Her public mosaic works include both community based projects and commissions. She received her BFA from Miami University and her MFA from the University of Cincinnati. As she has been interested in placing small cut or broken pieces of ceramic tile, china plates, fabric and other materials together to create something new since childhood, mosaics are a perfect medium for her.
Fisher will begin by briefly discussing the initial impetus for the establishment of a collaboration between the Art Academy and Peaslee Neighborhood Center to create community mosaic art in 2001. She will then talk about the inspiration for the creation of the mosaic park in the neglected alleyway bounded by two brick buildings up half a block from 13th and Vine in 2002, and about the community creation of the various elements that have been retained and renewed in the recent updates to the space a few years ago
Thea Tjepkema
Thea Tjepkema serves as a historic preservationist, historian, and archivist on the Friends of Music Hall and Cincinnati Preservation Association boards. She helps identify and lead restoration projects, manage archives, and create new talks and tours about Cincinnati Music Hall. Her research surrounding Music Hall history has been primarily focused on African Americans and women, revealing untold stories for articles, blogs, and presentations for the Friends of Music Hall, and Cincinnati Preservation Association. She has a B.F.A. in historic preservation from the Savannah College of Art and Design and M.A. in arts administration from The University of Akron.
Tjepkema will discuss Been Pitman’s art and spirituality. Pitman was a founder of the American school of wood art carving and originator of the first crematory west of the Alleghenies in Cincinnati, Pitman was a decorative artist, teacher, free thinker, Swedenborgian, Socialist, vegetarian, gardener, and advocate for feminine emancipation. Over 100 of his women students – at the School of Design – carved patterns of nature into cherry wood for the paneled screen decorating the Cincinnati Music Hall organ. Pitman nurtured artists and progressive thinkers in Cincinnati through lectures on John Ruskin’s philosophy to be “true to nature”, and the controversial concept of freeing the deceased physical remains from the confines of the casket. His ashes remain at the Hillside Chapel and Crematory Columbarium he helped establish in 1885.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Three Acts in Over-the-Rhine is an innovative lecture series designed to expose attendees to stories of the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Each event features three, fifteen-minute talks on stories of Over-the-Rhine. Presenters will answer questions together at the end about their talks.
The Over-the-Rhine Museum welcomes your support for these provocative stories. Donate online at www.otrmuseum.org/donate.