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.  

Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb's all-time hits record on Sept. 11, 1985, with his 4,192nd hit. It was such a momentous occurrence in baseball (and Cincinnati) history that even the art world took notice. That year, knowing Rose would break Cobb's seemingly enduring record, the Cincinnati Art Museum commissioned Andy Warhol to create a portrait of Rose.  

News that a great artist has died always raises the stakes for me; the responsibility of creating moving art and important discussions surrounding it is more immense, because there is one less innovator sharing the weight. Thom Shaw — one of Cincinnati's best known and most admired contemporary artists — passed away on July 6, 2010, due to complications from diabetes.  

Cincinnati Art Museum's 'Walker Evans: Decade by Decade' opens with a rather bold statement that Evans is "probably the single greatest American photographer ever to have worked in the 20th century." An introduction like that certainly raises the stakes for an exhibition. I don't feel that, taken alone, the show proves he was the "single greatest" of the last century, but I also don't believe that's the show's objective.  

To see just how extensively appropriation is being used in contemporary art, it's useful to compare and contrast two traveling shows now in Cincinnati: Kara Walker's 'Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)' at the Cincinnati Art Museum and Shepard Fairey's 'Supply and Demand' at the Contemporary Arts Center. The term "appropriation" is used to describe new art that incorporates in some way a pre-existing work into its imagery.  

If I were to pick the three best contemporary sculptors working on public art today, they'd be Richard Serra, Mark di Suvero and Martin Puryear. Serra unashamedly trumpets the strength inherent in large steel pieces, but Puryear does something different and especially liberating. A current show of his prints at Cincinnati Art Museum, on display now through June 13, offers insight into his motivations and process.  

In the new Cincinnati Art Museum exhibit 'Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980,' a key point is that this work was tough stuff in its time. The art world couldn't understand why the new, upcoming photographers were eschewing artful black-and-white compositions and colorful nature landscapes to concentrate on banal, even grotesque shots of unglamorous everyday life.  

It's hard for our generation to imagine controversy over color photography. In a day and age when many art schools have shut down their darkrooms in favor of digital, color is taken for granted. The Cincinnati Art Museum's 'Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970–1980,' opening Friday, explores when several artists changed the face of art photography forever.  

Cincinnati Art Museum's Reel Art film series — movies with a strong connection to the visual arts — starts a new season Friday with 'Zabriskie Point.' It's a great lineup ... and I don't just say that because I'll be the guest speaker after that film's repeat screening Sunday.  

It's taken a couple unwanted delays for Cincinnati Art Museum to get 'Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry' open, but it's been worth the wait. The museum has done a wonderful job displaying it; Cynthia Amnéus, CAM's associate curator of costume and textiles, has really made it look sparkling.