The charge to local arts leaders and CityBeat writers was simple yet also complex and difficult: What is the one thing you would change or add to the local arts scene to make it better? Well, maybe it wasn't worded quite so bluntly, but that was the point. There are plenty of exciting things happening locally in the arts; what should be next?  

Over the next few months area museums and galleries are presenting a variety of outside-the-box fare, including quilts, wedding dresses, motorcycles and even an installation made of trees. The Taft Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, Contemporary Art Museum, Country Club, Manifest Gallery, Carnegie Center, Weston Art Gallery, Carl Solway Gallery and Thunder-Sky Inc. are pulling out all the stops for patrons.  

Last year, the Taft Museum of Art embarked on a new series of exhibitions called Keystone Contemporary. The goal is that each exhibition would feature one local emerging artist who's been invited to respond (directly or abstractly) to the Taft's collection, the historical house, its interior décor or perhaps even other special exhibitions on view at the museum. Local artist Kristine Donnelly has installed the latest example.  

Photography is the artform that has most in common with comedian Rodney Dangerfield. Historically, it got no respect. Late-19th/early-20th-century Pictorialist photographers pushed the idea of photography-as-art, and the new Taft Museum exhibition plants their flag immediately with its title, 'Truth/Beauty,' echoing a phrase from poet John Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn.'  

Windmills, wooden clogs and tulip mania — that which we consider quintessentially Dutch might have a little something to do with American nostalgia. The Taft Museum of Art explores America's fascination with the Netherlands in 'Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914.'   

Expect a jam-packed fall season with a variety of colorful shows from the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Contemporary Arts Center, Taft Museum of Art, the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Gallery, Carl Solway Gallery, Country Club, Manifest Creative Research Gallery and the Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center.  

The exhibition currently on view at the Taft Museum of Art, 'The Chemistry of Color: The Sorgenti Collection of African American Art,' highlights The artists who are essential to any history of African-American art. But, more than that, they're essential to the study of American Art.  

Patrons of the Taft Museum of Art know it to be a rare kind of historical document: An earlier era's furniture, artwork and architecture summon an aura of rigid manors, ladies teas and regency gowns. It's not surprising then that the Taft would aim its curatorial eye on the traveling exhibition, 'Fashion in Film: Period Costumes for the Screen.'  

Ed and Nancy Rosenthal haven't technically opened their home to the public, but this exhibition at the Taft Museum of Art allows us a peek into their life just the same. The show documents an art collection that began in 1980 with a 3-foot-tall Chinese vase. From there, the Rosenthals ventured on a collecting odyssey as they traveled throughout China and New York and chose pieces that struck them. As such, their collection runs the gamut of media, size, form, era and technique.