Ann Hamilton's current exhibition at Carl Solway Gallery, titled 'reading,' uses prints, sculptural objects and video to represent reading as a creative rather than a passive act. This exhibition is not one of the multimedia installations for which Hamilton is internationally famous but nonetheless features some of the artist's recurring themes.  

The charge to local arts leaders and CityBeat writers was simple yet also complex and difficult: What is the one thing you would change or add to the local arts scene to make it better? Well, maybe it wasn't worded quite so bluntly, but that was the point. There are plenty of exciting things happening locally in the arts; what should be next?  

Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb's all-time hits record on Sept. 11, 1985, with his 4,192nd hit. It was such a momentous occurrence in baseball (and Cincinnati) history that even the art world took notice. That year, knowing Rose would break Cobb's seemingly enduring record, the Cincinnati Art Museum commissioned Andy Warhol to create a portrait of Rose.  

In her new installation-sized project done especially for the Contemporary Arts Center, artist Pat Steir attempts to unify her splashy, drippy vocabulary of painting techniques with the cool, detached personality of Zaha Hadid's architecture. Steir manages to expand the basic language of the building, but one doesn't feel directed through the entire experience. I watched a number of viewers make it only halfway down the space before stopping, as if unmoored and lost at sea.