When Sarah Vanderlip — winner of Cincinnati Art Museum’s first Marjorie Schiele Prize — arrives here for the Sept. 29 opening of her show, it will be an Ohio homecoming, a full circle of sorts, for the California artist.
  

I first met Matthew Shelton in the bottom of a swimming pool. It was a program in which musicians performed on the floor of the empty Ziegler Pool in Over-the-Rhine. Shelton, with his deep resonant voice and wry, smart songs, made an immediate impression playing guitar in the pool’s deep end. He towered above — or, rather, below — his surroundings.  

The most profound and beautiful art installation of recent years in Cincinnati — an inspiration for what public art here can be — was Shinji Turner-Yamamoto’s 2010 “Hanging Garden.” It continues to have an afterlife.  

An interesting battle about the future of contemporary art — and what should be shown in museums devoted to it — is occurring in Los Angeles right now, where the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art is accused of leaning too heavily on pop culture/celebrity trendiness for his shows.
  

If you want to learn about one of the biggest and most unusual public-art projects ever proposed for Cincinnati, see the display related to “The Soap at Baton Rouge” at Carl Solway Gallery’s current Thanks: 50th Anniversary Celebration.  

When FotoFocus — the new citywide celebration of photography and lens-based art — occurs in October, there will be so many artists and venues involved it will be hard to choose which to see and when. While I am looking forward to all of it, one photographer I am particularly eager to see isn’t that famous, but has certainly made an impact. Nancy Rexroth, who will be presenting new work from her landmark Iowa project, is sharing with Judi Parks and Jane Alden Stevens a show called Landscapes of the Mind: Metaphor, Archetype and Symbol 1971-2012 at YWCA Women’s Gallery. It opens Oct. 5.  

Cincinnati’s King Records has an important enough history to merit a museum, especially since the original building is still standing at 1540 Brewster Ave. in Evanston. While it would take a lot of work to restore that site, it’s essential to save it. The most active supporters of a King Museum want a location in Evanston’s business district as an economic development tool.   

Word has started to get out that Contemporary Arts Center’s 2012-2013 season will feature a major show by Patti Smith. But it hasn’t yet been made clear — because the show isn’t scheduled until next May — that this is meant to be far more than just a local stop on a national museum tour.
  

Ohio is a pretty nice place, sure, but could it have been the Garden of Eden? Not a metaphoric Garden of Eden, mind you, but the real, true thing? The notion would seem to strike many people as absurd, not the least reason being that it’s a stretch to believe the Bible’s take on Creation is the literal truth.    

A new exhibit at Hebrew Union College’s Skirball Museum uses photographs, documents and other objects to solemnly, reverently revisit a once-vibrant Polish Jewish community almost completely wiped out by the invading Nazi Germans.   

One of the most acclaimed photography shows to open last year was The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League 1936-1951 at New York’s Jewish Museum. Billed as the first major Photo League retrospective in 30 years, and accompanied by a catalogue, it prompted keen, renewed interest in the subject.   

The opening reception of a most unusual exhibit for a major arts institution will take place 5-7 p.m. Thursday evening. It’s FAUX REAL: A Forger’s Story, at the gallery of University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning.    

Artists have to come from somewhere, I suppose. Still, it’s remarkable how many of the giants of Pop Art came from and/or matriculated in our stretch of the Midwest — Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Robert Indiana in the Hoosier state, Roy Lichtenstein studied at Ohio State and Jim Dine and Tom Wesselmann both were born in Cincinnati.
  

Sometimes you have to leave Ohio — and Cincinnati — to discover how many interesting and unusual connections there are between the Buckeye State and the larger world of modern/contemporary arts and design.   

Columbus’ Wexner Center for the Arts makes a bold statement in its current retrospective of David Smith’s work: He’s the greatest American sculptor of the 20th century. If Smith, who died in an auto accident in 1965 at age 59, is ahead of Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi or Richard Serra, I’m not sure the general public knows it.