Galleries celebrate lithography's birthday

Loads and loads of lithographs are filling galleries throughout the region as the city prepares to host the Mid-America Print Council Conference next month.

There are at least a dozen exhibitions for the council to see, at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Taft Museum, Contemporary Arts Center, Miami University Art Museum and at many galleries, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the invention of the lithographic printing method.

f you're passionate about lithography you'll get your fill. If you don't care about printing technology, relax and enjoy the art, old to new and conservative to imaginative.

The Cincinnati Art Museum is preparing for its big show of the season, British Elegance: Decorative Arts from Burghley House, opening Nov. 22 with all sorts of fanfare.

Who can say what the exhibitions at Contemporary Arts Center will look like? No advance descriptions can prepare us. With names such as Innuendo Non Troppo, (Gregory Barsamian, artist), Theater of Excess (installation by David Mach) and buzzingreynold's dreamland (sound sculpture by Henry Gwiazda,) who can predict?

We'll miss the challenging exhibitions in the Machine Shop Gallery. The Emery Center is being renovated for commercial purposes, and the gallery in the center is no more. The University of Cincinnati is searching for another place, but for now, a lot of exciting new art will go unseen.

The Weston Gallery features a well-deserved retrospective for Loveland artist and designer William Schickel, starting next Friday.

For those who like art of the good old cowboy-and-Indian days, there's the third annual edition of the Great American Artists Exhibition and Sale, the Cincinnati Museum Center's annual fund-raiser. Opening with a Nov. 14 gala, the show features the hot and high-priced artists of the new West.