J. Miles Wolf brings his considerable talents to Jewish Cincinnati, which from the early 19th-century has been an important center of American Jewish life. Like Cincinnati’s general community, the Jewish community’s synagogues, cemeteries, and other institutions expanded and dispersed from downtown during the mid to late 19th-century to North Avondale by the early 20th-century, to Amberley Village and Roselawn by the second half of the 20th-century, and up the I-71 corridor to the suburbs and beyond in the early 21st-century. This exhibition seeks to provide a comprehensive photographic documentation of Jewish institutions in the Greater Cincinnati area, including current facilities and former places of worship and communal gathering that are still extant but are either unoccupied or repurposed. Concurrently, the project calls for a gathering of historic photographs from local archives and collections that depict events and ceremonies within these venues. Jewish Cincinnati offers new and inventive ways of looking at and thinking about both new photography and historical images: How might they be merged? What features of historical photographs of people and places might be incorporated into or superimposed over new photography? How can these processes be jumping-off points for conversations about repurposing buildings, respect for architectural integrity, and historic preservation?
Visitors will come away from this exhibition with a greater sense of the rich history of the Cincinnati Jewish community and the important role it has played and continues to play in the life of the Queen City.
Mayerson Hall
3101 Clifton Ave
Cincinnati, OH 45220
(513) 487-3098
Hours: Tue & Thurs 11am––4pm, Sun 1–5pm, and by appointment
Free to the Public
