The Cincinnati Art Museum's 2009-2010 season will include several photography shows, all in 2010: Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980 (Feb. 13-May 9); local photographer Thomas Schiff's Las Vegas 360 (April 3-July 18): and Walker Evans: Decade by Decade (June 12-Sept. 5).

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It's official: the Contemporary Arts Center today announced that hot Shepard Fairey retrospective currently at Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art will be coming there for the 2009-10 season. Fairey, creator of the famous Obama posters, will also come when the show opens here to do public art and participate in CAC events.

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As the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) prepares for next Tuesday's announcement of its 2009-10 season, there is indication it will be bringing the big, nationally reviewed Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand show here from Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). The first museum retrospective for the popular and controversial street artist, Supply and Demand looks at his career up to his creation of the iconic Obama silk-screen posters, depicting the then-presidential candidate, head slightly and nobly uplifted, above the words "Progress" and "Hope."

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I went to high school in West Chester and, once I got a car, I discovered that I was a city mouse. I fell in love with Cincinnati around the time I fell in love with photography. Coming to Provident Camera was a pilgrimage for me. It was the first place I drove to in the city by myself, so it meant adulthood. It was a place filled with people (workers and customers alike) who had as much passion for photography as I did, so it meant I wasn't alone.

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The changes on the local visual art scene just keep coming. Hot on the heels of Scott Boberg leaving the CAC — as well as several staff cuts at the CAC and the Cincinnati Art Museum — the Taft Museum of Art announced today that its director, Eric M. Lee, will be “leaving his post in March 2009 to assume the directorship of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.”

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Stung by a drop in income from all sources — donations as well as sales — the Cincinnati Art Museum has laid off seven staff members, or about 4 percent of its staff. That will allow it to continue through the foreseeable future with its hours and exhibition schedule preserved, Director Aaron Betsky says. "People are thinking twice about spending money in all areas," he says. All departments are being affected, Betsky says, although no department curators have been laid off.

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Ever wonder what happened to Dennis Barrie, director of the Contemporary Arts Center when it showed Robert Mapplethorpe's The Perfect Moment in 1990, resulting in pornography charges that a Hamilton County jury rejected in a landmark local case?

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If you've been hearing rumors that Scott Boberg, the current Curator of Education at the Contemporary Arts Center, is leaving, then you've been hearing right.

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Today, the Enquirer posted a story about the Cincinnati Museum Center considering the addition of a 11,200-square-foot green roof system, which is an awesome prospect. The roof would be covered with plants, could last longer than a normal roof, and would better deal with storm run-off.  Not only that, but it would double the amount of green roof space in the city. 

But buried at the bottom of this article is mention of another part of the issue.  "The other components of the center's project - funded by a $2.4 million local tax levy, the city of Cincinnati, the state and a National Parks Service program called Save America's Treasures - include restoring long-unused dining rooms and exterior repairs," the article states.

It's the National Parks Service program that I think deserves a little more attention.  Frankly, it seems amazing, not only for what it has done for the country, but for what it has done for Cincinnati.

Save America's Treasures (SAT) was started in 1998 and has the directive of "protected America's threatened cultural treasures," like a governmental, art-saving Boondock Saint.  Actually a daughter organization of both the National Parks Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it has completed more than 850 projects since its creation with what seems like a focus on architecture.

In Cincinnati alone, the SAT in 2003 granted $199,000 in 2003 to the Majestic Theater, $250,000 to the Cincinnati Union Terminal, $150,000 to The Showboat Majestic.  And in 2005, they granted $135,250 to restore Joan Miro and Saul Steinberg Murals from Terrace Plaza Hotel and get them on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

This 11 x 75 ft mural by New Yorker artist Saul Steinberg is one of the only murals he made.

What other badass art has the SAT helped saved, you might ask. Well, how about the Palace Theatre in Columbus. Not a theater buff, what about the The New York Philharmonic Leonard Bernstein Collection. Still not impressed, what about the Moundville Archaeological Park in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Oh, you're more into recent history, they gave$295,586 to the USS Joseph P. Kennedy in Massachusetts. Maybe you just like to party, in 2006 Gadsby's Tavern in Alexandria, Virginia got about $50,000 . And my personal favorite, in 1999 they granted $331,000 to save the Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection in Ithaca, New York.

The collections of dances, photographs and other documents that have been touched by Saving America's Treasures is astounding, not to mention the dozen of courthouse they've helped to restore across the country.

Just check them out. Our government isn't complete screwed up all the time.