Contemporary Arts Center

The Contemporary Arts Center was founded as the Modern Art Society in 1939 by Betty Pollak Rauh, Peggy Frank Crawford and Rita Rentschler Cushman. These three women were able to raise enough money through donations to display modern art at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Early advice and encouragement was offered by both Edward M.M. Warburg, a friend of the Pollak family, as well as Alfred H. Barr. The society's very first exhibit, Modern Painting from Cincinnati Collections, opened in December of the same year. In 1954 the Modern Art Society adopted its current name, the Contemporary Arts Center. The name change coincided with the creation of two permanent galleries that were remodeled from part of the museum's lower level. These two spaces, designed by Carl Strauss and Ray Roush, consisted of about 900 square feet (84 m2) each and featured movable wooden wall covers. Many local Cincinnati collections were shown in this space, including works now kept at the Cincinnati Art Museum from the Mary E. Johnston collection.

Construction on the Emery Wing at the Cincinnati Art Museum replaced the original space of the CAC. As a result of the museum’s need to expand, the center moved out in 1962 and temporarily inhabited various locations at the Taft Museum of Art, space at 608 Main Street, and the Carew Tower. In 1964 the center occupied the fourth floor of the Women’s Exchange building at 113 West Fourth street where it remained for six years. After two years on Fourth street the center announced that it had plans to move to the Mercantile Center on Fifth street, which opened in 1970. The new building cost $400,000 and was designed by Harry Weese. The CAC’s space covered about 12,000 square feet (1,100 m2) and overlooked the new bus terminal in downtown Cincinnati. Despite early financial troubles in 1971, the CAC was able to put on over 400 exhibitions during its 30-year stay on Government Square. A permanent lease for the location was acquired in 1982 through a city bond.

Early proposals for a home began at the end of the 1960s and included possible locations at the Civic Masonic Memorial Building in downtown Cincinnati. Later, as the idea of constructing an entirely new building became possible, the CAC focused on the site at Sixth and Walnut. By 1997 the center’s Architectural Selection Committee was publicly seeking architects to design the CAC's first-free standing building. The search narrowed 97 statements of qualification to twelve semi finalists: Coop Himmelblau, Diller & Scofidio, Herzog & de Meuron, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, Eric Owen Moss, Jean Nouvel, Toyo Ito, Antoine Predock, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Liebeskind and Bernard Tschumi. One year later the board granted the commission to Zaha Hadid. Construction began in 2001 and the new building opened on May 31, 2003.

44 East 6th Street (Corner of 6th & Walnut), Cincinnati, OH 45202

Across Walnut Street from the Aronoff Center for the Arts in downtown Cincinnati's cultural and entertainment area known as the Backstage District.

Controversies

In 1990, a Cincinnati jury acquitted the Contemporary Arts Center and its director, Dennis Barrie, of obscenity charges stemming from an exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. In the first criminal trial of an art museum over the contents of an exhibition, the case centered on seven out of 175 photographs in an exhibition (The Perfect Moment) that traveled from Berkeley to Boston; five of the seven photographs depicted men in sadomasochistic poses and were the basis of charges that the museum and its director had pandered obscenity. Much of the dispute over the Mapplethorpe photographs centered on whether federal money should be used to finance them, through the National Endowment for the Arts. If convicted, the center would have faced fines of up to $10,000; Barrie could have faced a year in jail and fines up to $2,000. The trial was chronicled in the 2000 television movie Dirty Pictures.