So much culture, so little time!

As the Director of the Warren County Historical Society it's my job to run the business side of the operations, provide leadership for the staff, be the public face of the the Historical Society and keep in touch with other cultural organizations in the area.

With all that in mind, I spent Wednesday and Thursday of this week visiting other cultural sites in the area and having  a wonderful time in the process.

I spent the better part of Wednesday at the Cincinnati Art Museum. www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org
just touring the collections. If you want to educate yourself about art, you can find all that you need at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Some of the best paintings anywhere are in this collection.  I visited primarily to see the Cincinnati Gallery, but couldn't pass up the special exhibit on Picasso, and naturally, I couldn't leave without visiting the American collection.

Underground Railroad by Webber, Cincinnati Art Museum

It was while I was dreamily drifting through the American collection enthralled with the wonderful Copley portraits and Moran landscapes and of course the famous "Underground Railroad" by Webber, that I spied a still life of yellow pears. It was a small canvas, about 15 inches by 10 inches,  and it was just pears, but something about it beckoned me. I went closer to investigate and read the sign. "Attributed to Rhoda Steddom".  That name leaped out at me. Rhoda Steddom was Marcus Mote's wife, and Marcus Mote is a major painter in our museum's collection!

I had no idea that his wife painted!  I read the notes displayed next to the painting and found out that the Steddom family had sent their five children to the Turtlecreek Subscription School where a young Marcus Mote was a teacher. The pears were thought to be painted by Rhoda Steddom at that school about two years before she married Marcus at age 16.  I couldn't wait to get back to the Warren County History Center and pick the curator's brains.  A Marcus Mote painting had just turned up on the Antiques Roadshow two weekends ago and we'd had several calls and emails about Mote since that show aired.  Stop by the Warren County History Center to learn more about Marcus Mote and view a large collection of his paintings.