7 Art Exhibits to See in Ohio This Summer

While summer is an opportune time to be outdoors, rainy days still come around and they offer the perfect chance to explore the arts in Ohio. This season there are plenty of highlight exhibitions to be found, whether you seek traditional paintings and sculptures or something more unique. From colorful op art on display at The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown to art inspired by the inner workings of the common computer, check out these seven exhibits currently showing or coming soon. 

Good Vibrations: The Prints of Victor Vasarely | Through July 20
The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown honors Victor Vasarely, a Hungarian-born printmaker who pioneered some of the first Op Art, (art that depicts optical illusions) through this special exhibit running through July 20. Vasarely worked as a graphic designer and artist in Paris, which is where he also staged his first solo art exhibition, and by the 1960s, his prints, which use simple geometry and flat colors to convey movement and three-dimensional form, were a hit in the United States.

Oliver Jeffers: 15 Years of Picturing Books | Through July 27
This exhibit from the Akron Art Museum highlights the career of Oliver Jeffers, a New York Times No. 1 bestselling author and illustrator, and takes visitors into the process of creating some of the first art and storytelling that a child encounters: the picture book. See original sketches, plans and other components of the creation process that resulted in Jeffers’ bestselling picture books, including favorites like “The Day the Crayons Quit,” “Stuck” and “Here We Are.”

The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick | Through Sept. 7
Known as a pioneer in the Studio Furniture Movement, Wharton Esherick is renowned for his wooden artworks, and visitors to the Taft Museum of Art (through Sept. 7) can explore works from furniture pieces to woodblock prints in a collection of rarely loaned out works from the Wharton Esherick Museum in Pennsylvania. Explore the evolution of Esherick’s work, while examining his connection to nature as well as the creativity that went into each of his pieces.  

Farm to Table: Food and Identity in the Age of Impressionism | Through Sept. 21
As political instability and starvation ravaged France in the late 1800s, artists turned to food as a subject to examine the nation’s identity. The fruits of this tumultuous period are on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum in this exhibition featuring 60 paintings and sculptures by artists like Claude Monet and Camille Pissaro that depict food in a rapidly modernizing France, as well as scenes of peasant labor and bustling marketplaces.

Curtis Barnes Sr., Dayton Icon | July 12-Sept. 14
This exhibition at the Dayton Art Institute coincides with the 90th anniversary of Curtis Barnes Sr.’s birth. Barnes was a Dayton-based artist and educator who co-founded the African American Visual Arts Guild in 1992. Works in the exhibit were contributed by Barnes’ family and feature a collection of paintings that show his ability to unite both abstract and naturalist styles with vibrant colors and dynamic shapes, including in self-portraits and portraits of people around him. 

Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms | July 12-Nov. 30
Trace the history of computer art back to the 1960s with this exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art. “Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithm” questions conventional understandings of art and creativity with a collection of multimedia artwork created by way of generative algorithms from 24 artists. From mathematical principles to automation to computer programming, explore the creative possibilities of a process that challenges the way we approach art.

Las Vegas Ikebana: Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi | July 19-Jan. 11
The Columbus Museum of Art at the Pizzuti presents a retrospective showcasing the decades-long collaboration between artists Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi, who were bonded by their shared interest in dance, bodily movement and experimentation. Hassinger and Nengudi maintained a 50-year relationship while living on opposite sides of the country, and now, exhibit visitors can discover never-before-seen and rarely seen memorabilia from those collaborations, such as videos, photos, collages and artists’ books ranging from the 1970s to today.

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