“At the Top in Cincinnati: National Leadership in Sustainability,” an illustrated public program at the Mercantile Library at 6 p.m. Thursday, showcases three of Cincinnati's greenest new projects. The program focuses on Fernald Nature Preserve, Cincinnati Public Schools' AMIS campus and the new Red Cross Building.  

David Harrington, founder and leader of the world-famous -- and world-traveled -- Kronos Quartet, finds it hard to believe the group hasn’t played Cincinnati since 1987. Kronos will be the headliner for both nights of the MusicNOW festival, occurring next week (March 11 and 12) at Memorial Hall in Over-the-Rhine. The non-profit festival, the brainchild of Cincinnati native and classically-trained guitarist Bryce Dessner -- now a member of the popular Brooklyn-based Indie band The National and Chamber group The Clogs -- is in its fourth year.  

This is a time when, because of digitalization and computer graphics, we're not always sure what constitutes a photographic print anymore. The old-fashioned notion that it is something shot with film and painstakingly developed in a darkroom from a negative is, well, old-fashioned. With that in mind, BASE Co-op Gallery honors that notion and tries to find some contemporary relevance in it in We Still Use Film. The show is on view Friday-Sunday through March 22.  

For those interested in seeing and hearing what 1950s/early 1960s-era African-American Jazz musicians and black vocal stylists were like in their day, Cincinnati World Cinema is offering an illuminating program, screening 'That Old Black Magic' Feb. 22 and 24-25 at The Redmoor in Mount Lookout Square.  

Donald Sultan is considered a painter’s painter. Inspired by minimalism but still attracted to the narrative possibilities of figuration, Sultan developed a style that accommodated and carried forward both. He used then-unusual building and industrial materials — Linoleum, Masonite hardboard, tar, Spackle and plaster — instead of depending on oil paint and canvas. He then manipulated the surfaces — like woodcuts — to conjure ghostly images of urban Americana. Monday and Wednesday-Sunday through May 17 at the CAC.  

Isn’t It Great To Be An Artist? Insider/Outsider Art From the Robert A. Lewis Collection, features the outsider — also known as self-taught or visionary — folk artists like the Rev. Howard Finster (whose work has graced album covers by R.E.M. and Talking Heads), Mose Tolliver and Minnie Evans, who drew dream-like visions based on imagined communications with God. This represents a new area of collecting for Cincinnati. There will also be work by more “traditional” contemporary artists like Roy De Forest and Roger Brown. Tuesday-Sunday through April 26.  

The Contemporary Arts Center's two eagerly awaited new shows open Friday with a free 8-11 p.m. celebration, and they should attract regional and even national attention during their stay. Donald Sultan: The First Decade spotlights the early linoleum paintings. At the same time, Tara Donovan offers a survey of the "site-responsive" sculpture of a vibrantly inventive artist who uses such everyday items as plastic cups, toothpicks and buttons to build strikingly unusual installations.  

Steve Lopez kicks off the On the Same Page community-wide reading program with his book 'The Soloist,' based on his relationship with a musically gifted homeless man that will soon be a movie starring Jamie Foxx. Lopez discusses his book Sunday at the Main Library downtown and at Joseph-Beth and Monday at UC's Great Hall at the Tangeman Center.  

One reason it's become so hard for new musicians to make an impact is because so many old ones — including deceased ones — are still being discovered (or rediscovered), thanks to the proselytizing efforts of those who somehow got turned on to their obscure work the first time around.  

Manifest Creative Research Gallery kicks off its 2009 exhibition year with two single-artist shows, David Dotson's The BorgDot Works and Tama Hochbaum’s Looking Through the Glass. The first, in the main gallery, features a series of cyborg-like sculptural works — bio-mechanical “creatures,” almost microscopic in size, according to the gallery's description — presented in lighted tubular cases. The Oxford, Ohio-based Dotson has said the work functions as a subtle jab at corporate manipulation of the natural order. Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Hochbaum will display composite digital prints similar to those of hers included in Manifest's Trick of the Light show. The shows continue Tuesday-Saturday through Feb. 20.