Can You Imagine?
With the new Creativity Center, the Contemporary Arts Center has transformed its sixth floor into a dynamic intergenerational learning space centered around creativity and exploration.
The Center, an environmentally conscious hub for creative learning, will amplify the CAC’s commitment to fostering innovation and curiosity in audiences of all ages
Creativity Center Grand Opening
Saturday, Oct. 29
11 a.m. – 2 p.m.
FREE. Registration recommended.
Alongside interactive artwork found in the UnMuseum™, the Creativity Center offers a community gallery, sustainability-focused Art Lab, an innovation studio, and so much more.
Visitors of all ages are invited to explore, play, and create! Activities and entertainment will be plentiful. Guests will be able to meet the architects and artists who made the 6th floor an exciting space filled with wonder, interactive art, and opportunities for inventive making.
With 10,000 square feet of flexible space, the new Creativity Center will provide a vibrant spatial canvas for visitors to engage with art, connect with others, and use creative experimentation as a means to explore the increasingly complex issues of humanity, including environmental sustainability, global awareness, identity, health and wellbeing, and innovation. The Center will allow the CAC to further extend its mission of encouraging artists and visitors alike to tap into the boundless possibilities of their own creativity, placing an even greater emphasis on the creative process as a critical tool for learning, skill development, problem solving, and fostering empathy and understanding for all ages.
“As a non-collecting institution, the core of our work at the CAC revolves around the creative process of artists, performers, and makers around the globe and local artists from our region,” said Marcus Margerum, the CAC’s Interim Alice & Harris Weston Director. “The Creativity Center not only gives us more room to expand the work we’re currently doing with visual and performing arts programming, artist residencies, learning and community-based initiatives, and hands-on intergenerational engagement, but also to reinvent the notion of the contemporary arts institution as a robust resource for creativity.”
The CAC partnered with Chicago-based architecture firm Mir Collective to realize this bold new paradigm for learning within the museum space, which will merge interactive galleries, ample making spaces, and community-centric gathering and gallery areas—with a focus on environmental sustainability.
“We are excited to be partnering with Mir Collective on this groundbreaking project, as their creative approach to community engagement, sustainability, and inclusivity aligns closely with our own mission and values as an institution,” says Margerum.
Centering Cincinnati’s own creative communities, the inaugural exhibition in the revitalized UnMuseum® will feature new interactive installations by local artists Batres Gilvin (Karla Batres and Bradly Gilvin), Michelle D’Cruz and Christopher Glenn, Garrett Goben, Terence Hammonds, Pam Kravetz, Anissa Lewis, Abby Peitsmeyer, and Karen Saunders. Installations in the UnMuseum® will rotate every one to three years to showcase a new slate of work designed to inspire, educate, and engage visitors of all ages.
“Even throughout the pandemic-induced challenges of the past two years, the CAC has remained committed to championing creativity in our communities, offering virtual programs, distributing art-making kits for at-home use, and supporting local artists through grants and residencies,” said Gale Beckett, president of the CAC’s Board of Trustees. “Through the Creativity Center, the CAC hopes to instill in future generations the capacity to be hyper-creative and hyper-entrepreneurial, empathetic and curious, while remaining environmentally conscious.”
Since its opening, the sixth floor of the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art has housed the Sara M. and Patricia A. Vance UnMuseum® and provided space for children, family programs, and tours. The redesigned sixth floor will continue to host the UnMuseum® and will also expand to incorporate a large studio and a network of pavilions for exploration and gathering. Mir Collective’s design opens up the floor to Hadid’s “urban carpet,” creating a brighter, more inviting space that is integrated physically and programmatically with the city and its communities.
New in the Creativity Center
A sustainable art lab where recycling, upcycling, and other forms of zero-waste and net-positive waste systems will be explored
A large studio hosting intergenerational creative programs that deploy a full suite of analog and digital tools for making and creative experimentation
The updated UnMuseum® interactive gallery, with projects by local and national artists that engage visitors in a hands-on exploration of the complexities of our world
An archipelago of pod-like pavilions, offering a series of work niches for welcoming creative exploration opportunities and small gathering or comfortable observation of the studio activities
An experimental “town square”-type space for art-inspired discourse with city skyline views through CAC- and community-curated programming
An ever-changing community gallery with increased visual connection to the urban carpet and galleries below, dedicated to celebrating the creativity of CAC visitors of all ages by inviting them to display their own work
The Creativity Center also makes possible new initiatives like a sensory-friendly program, a recurring open mic night, therapeutic workshops for artists and creatives, and the expansion of current initiatives, such as the CAC’s Co-LAB program, which supports selected local artists with financial, marketing, and mentoring support. The Co-LAB program was initially launched by the CAC in 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, to create opportunities for local artists and organizations to work with the CAC to realize community-oriented projects. The Creativity Center will offer space to these artists to develop new projects and share their work with the community through programming and events. The CAC also expects to leverage the Creativity Center to extend the impact of other ongoing efforts to encourage creativity, learning, and engagement within the broader community, even beyond the CAC’s walls.