Exhibits
Cincinnati’s Foodshed: Art, Ecology, and Community
(case outside library entrance)
The DAAP Library is pleased to present a selection of works from Cincinnati’s Foodshed: AN ART ATLAS, a visually compelling publication by Professor Alan Wight that explores the region’s food systems across the past, present, and future. Featuring over 50 local artists, the collection brings together artistic storymaps, historical narratives, and community-driven research to highlight the people, innovations, and landscapes that shape Cincinnati’s foodshed.
Among the exhibited works is Ecogarden Plot Plan (2019) by Luke Ebner, a detailed mixed-media drawing documenting the Permaganic Ecogarden in Over-the-Rhine. Originally established in the 1980s by Impact Over-the-Rhine and later stewarded by Ebner and Angela Stanberry, the garden reflects the possibilities and challenges of urban agriculture. The work captures the site as both a living ecosystem and a cultural installation, emphasizing its role in community engagement and environmental education.
Also featured is The Magical Mayapples of Mt. Airy Forest (2022) by LD Nels, an oil painting that celebrates one of Cincinnati’s most expansive urban green spaces. Mt. Airy Forest, established in 1911 as an early urban reforestation effort, is home to a wide range of edible plant species, including the mayapple. Through vivid representation, the artwork pays homage to this unique fruit and the layered ecological history of the forest, connecting foraging practices with local environmental heritage. This exhibition highlights the intersection of art, ecology, and urban life, offering a lens through which to understand food systems as both cultural and spatial phenomena.
This exhibition was organized from materials collected by Dr. R. Alan Wight, with exhibition coordination and preparation by Sam Yeganeh, Ph.D. Candidate in Architecture.
Tauba Auerbach
(circulation desk case)
At 31, the American artist Tauba Auerbach has carved out an intriguing niche for herself in the art world, one that sits somewhere between the fields of science, craft, mathematics, and aesthetics. Curated by Sam Yeganeh, Ph.D. Candidate in Architecture and Adjunct Faculty at DAAP and Miami University, this exhibition brings together works that highlight Auerbach’s ingeniously analytical practice—marked by a manic precision that serves as a foil to the apparent languor of her visual language. She has rearranged the Bible into an alphabetical collection of letters, created striking three-dimensional paintings that ultimately reveal themselves as flat, and produced playful screen-static abstractions later used by Comme des Garçons in an advertising campaign.
Tauba grew up in San Francisco and now lives in New York, with a studio in Brooklyn and an apartment in Manhattan. But her optimism, she says, still functions on a sunny Californian level. Which is about right for someone who believes in a fourth dimension of color.
The Wooden Dolls by Alexander Girard
(entryway cases)
The Wooden Dolls by Alexander Girard are a large family of wooden figures representing human and animal characters. Girard designed them in 1952 for his own use as decorative objects for his home.
Furniture Miniatures Collection
(freestanding cases on first floor of library)
For over two decades, the Vitra Design Museum has been making miniature replicas of milestones in furniture design from its collection. The Furniture Miniatures Collection encapsulates the entire history of industrial furniture design – moving from Historicism and Art Nouveau to the Bauhaus and New Objectivity, from Radical Design and Postmodernism all the way up to the present day.