The latest exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum is a full-scale retrospective on the career of Charley Harper, one of the Queen City’s most famous artists.
Julie Aronson, the museum’s curator of American paintings, sculpture and drawing, said the exhibition was a long time coming.
“This is a very exciting exhibition, as it pulls together a lot of original artwork by Charlie Harper, who everybody sort of knows around town for the murals and coffee mugs,” she said. “But the opportunity to see how he developed his designs and to see a lot of his original paintings, watercolors, drawings is a very exciting opportunity.”
“The Art of Charley Harper: Creatures Wild and Tame” will feature approximately 150 works by the beloved mid-century modern artist, designer, illustrator and nature advocate. Throughout his career, he created dozens of now-iconic posters for the National Park Service and nature organizations across the globe in his famous “minimal realism” style.
While the museum has previously showcased Harper’s work — in “Minimal Realism: Charley and Edie Harper, 1940-1960,” Aug. 18–Oct. 21, 2007, and “Big Country: Charley Harper Draws America,” June 12–Sept. 5, 2010 — these shows only covered Harper made prior to 1960, and were small exhibits. “The Art of Charley Harper: Creatures Wild and Tame,” however, covers his entire career, and is the first full-scale, scholarly exhibition on his works — which Aronson was “a little surprising and overdue.”
“It was a very challenging show to put together because there was so much incredible artwork that it was difficult to decide what was going to be in and what out. But we looked at the entire range of his career… such as his work for Ford Times Magazine, which was a popular magazine published by the motor company to encourage tourism by car,” she said. “It was for that magazine that he made his first images of birds, for which he became very famous … and his commissions for the National Park Service, which are some of the most beautiful paintings that he did, which came later in his career.”
The exhibition features a variety of Harper’s works, including the original paintings of his iconic National Park Service posters that are returning to Cincinnati for the first time since their original completion.
In addition, three paintings are on loan from the Everglades National Park’s collection featuring diverse flora and fauna from the complex Florida ecosystem. Several of the works on display have not been seen in public for over 30 years. There are also plenty of maquettes and drawings offering behind-the-scenes looks at Harper’s working processes, as well as screen prints, acrylic paintings, watercolors and more on view.
In addition, the nearby Taft Museum of Art will present the first solo museum exhibition devoted to Edie McKee Harper, Charley Harper’s wife and lifelong creative partner. “Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play” will be on view Oct. 17, 2026, through Jan. 24, 2027.
Most Cincinnatians know of Harper’s work thanks to his various murals across the city, or for all the merchandise bearing one of his famous bird designs. But Aronson hopes audiences come away with a deeper appreciation of his process and his work in general.
“There are places where you can trace his development of an idea through multiple pieces until he comes at the final work of art… (We’re) thinking about how we can tell people about how he made his work, which I think is fascinating,” she said. “I think because we have him on murals and all kinds of things that you can buy in a gift shop, we come to take him a little bit for granted. But I think, through this show, we can really see what a great artist he was.”
For more information on “The Art of Charley Harper: Creatures Wild and Tame,” visit the Cincinnati Art Museum, visit the website.
