The Cincinnati Art Museum is having a few friends over for a visit. Friends with names such as Rockwell. O'Keeffe. Homer. Wyeth.

When "Strokes of Genius: Masterworks from the New Britain Museum of American Art" opens on April 10, Cincinnati - and the state - will be treated to more than a hundred works by the nation's masters, including Norman Rockwell, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andrew Wyeth, Frederic Church, Gilbert Stuart, John Singleton Copley, Childe Hassam, Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Frederick Frieseke, George Bellows, Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden and Maxfield Parrish.

"Travelers will be rewarded by a stop in Cincinnati to see so many of their favorite American artists under one roof," says Julie Aronson, curator of American painting and sculpture at the museum. "We are tremendously fortunate to be able to present a collection of such outstanding quality and breadth, and one so rarely seen outside New England."

Cincinnati is the only Midwest stop on this tour of the finest works from the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, Connecticut. The collection of American paintings rarely travels, but is touring this year as the institution renovates and expands its space.

Connecticut's loss is Ohio's gain. The chronological exhibit covers 250 years of portraits, landscapes, still lifes and Impressionist paintings. The show also represents a homecoming for paintings by two Cincinnati artists, Elizabeth Nourse and John Henry Twachtman.

Notes Aronson: "The exhibition is full of surprises, like an unusual cityscape by Georgia O'Keeffe - it expands your idea of painters you think you know, and introduces unfamiliar yet marvelous work."

Cincinnati Art Museum, 953 Eden Park Dr., Cincinnati, 513/721-5204, www.cincinnatiARTmuseum.org, "Strokes of Genius" on exhibit April 10-June 19. Tues.-Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Wed. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Admission $8, seniors and college students $6, children under 18 $