At Manifest Creative Research Gallery, ideas for exhibitions are almost an intellectual art form on their own. The little “neighborhood gallery for the world” in East Walnut Hills has a history of dreaming up surprising themes.  

Pompeii is the disaster-grabber of all time. How old were you when that terrible story first drew you in? I was 8, I think, and Pompeii still grips my imagination. For all of us who can’t shake this fascination, A Day in Pompeii, now at Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, is a must.  

Two hundred years ago the New Madrid earthquakes shook up our part of the world and still hold our interest. Research scientist Susan Hough, whose books make science accessible to us all, will spea  

 The biggest little show in town is at the Art Academy right now, the 25th Annual Minumental Exhibition, with no work measuring more than two inches in any dimension. Prices are equally small; yo  

When photographer McCrystle Wood looks at a plant she sees a person, in a metaphorical way, and with a digital platform 3D modeling computer program she produces the striking photographs now on vie  

Printmaker Jim Williams sets himself strict limitations of size and color range but proceeds to produce a diverse, intellectually stimulating group of mono-prints for his current Clay Street Pre  

Printmaker Jim Williams sets himself strict limitations of size and color range but proceeds to produce a diverse, intellectually stimulating group of mono-prints for his current Clay Street Press exhibition. His artist’s statement describes the new work in Hybrid Structures as his “search for a visual equivalent to the daily dynamic interplay that occurs between the man-made and the natural environment.”  

The Museum Center's almost-secret gallery (the Ruthven gallery, in the basement, near the Children's Museum) breaks out with interesting exhibitions pretty regularly. Next up: Findlay Market – H  

Good news from City Hall? Yes, actually. City Council has voted to re-instate and improve a long-established program providing grants to individual artists, which was cut for budgetary reasons in 2009.   

What happens when a serious musician gives serious attention to making paintings? The exhibition Contrasts now at Malton Gallery shows the results of clarinetist Dick Waller's picking up a paint