This fall, the Cincinnati Art Museum will spotlight local artist Terence Hammonds in an exhibition showcasing Black history and cultural imagination.
The exhibition, titled “Terence Hammonds: Soul is a Ham Hock in Your Cornflakes,” combines select objects from across the museum’s collection with a new body of Hammonds’ own work to illuminate the resilience of Cincinnati’s modern Black community.
Pairing museum objects with his printed ceramics, fabrics and wallpaper, Hammonds constructs inspired vignettes layered with visual and lived experiences that celebrate aspiration, community and acts of radical love. The exhibit gets its name from Funkadelic’s 1970 classic “What Is Soul?” and will feature over 50 of the artist’s works when it begins on Nov. 20 and runs until March 28, 2027.
“This exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum feels like a full-circle moment,” Hammonds said in a statement. “It gives me the opportunity to return to the place that first sparked my imagination and to engage directly with objects that have inspired me for so long. By selecting works from the collection and creating new pieces in response to them, I hope to both challenge and expand how these objects are seen, offering new ways of understanding and experiencing them.”
Born in 1976, Hammonds grew up in Cincinnati’s Over‑the‑Rhine neighborhood. He attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts before continuing his studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. From 2010–2018, he served as Director of Artist Outreach at Rookwood Pottery, a historic Cincinnati institution founded in the late 1880s.
Hammonds’ solo exhibitions span both international and regional venues, including The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China (2016), the IFÖ Center in Bromolla, Sweden (2019), the Taft Museum of Art (2023) and The Weston Art Gallery (2026). He also currently has works on display in the Cincinnati Art Museum right now.
The exhibition will be on view to the public for free beginning November 20 in the Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell Gallery and the Manuel and Rhoda Mayerson Gallery (G124 and G125) located across from the Terrace Café. For more information, visit the exhibition’s official webpage.
