Kennedy Heights Art Center presents Rooms of Grief, an exhibition that invites artists to explore the spaces we inhabit when loss rearranges our world. Each “room” becomes a metaphor, where silence, memory, and renewal coexist. This exhibition seeks work that interprets grief not only as sorrow, but as transformation, revealing the textures, colors, and shapes of what remains and what begins again.

Co-curated by Ena Nearon, Ten Talents Network and Mallory Feltz (KHAC).

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 17 from 6-8pm. Join us for an evening of art, conversation, and community as we open this contemplative and deeply human exhibition. Light refreshments will be provided and live harp music by Lin Grieser. This event is free and open to the public.

59 Exhibiting Artists:
Patricia Acker, Ebony Alli, Lisa Andrews, Cora Arney-Georgilis, Lauri Ann Aultman, Brooke Cahill, Nina Caporale, Susan Carlson, Ben Casuto, Samuel Casuto, Robert Coates, Heather Conley, Isabella Crowe, Billie Cunningham, June Pfaff Daley, Leslie Lehr Daly, Dan Dickerscheid, Deborah Dixon, Mary Anne Donovan, Judith Effa Ford, Melvin Grier, Nikita Gross, Zephyr Grove, Ell Halim, Kendall Hall, Donna Hardy, Robin Hartmann, Art Hasinski, Jessica Grady Heard, April Huerta, Lindsey Hurst, Ruth Jose, Michael Kearns, River Kirby, Deborah Kovacs-Sturdevant, Cynthia Kukla, Robyn Lince, Lindsay McCarty, Micah Mickles, Carol Mohamed, Amy Mueller, Mia Natas, Zoë Peterson, Kat Rakel-Ferguson, Su Ready, Fatemeh Rezaei, Janet Rocklin, August Roth, Anastasia Schneider, Gerrie Schon, Jamie Schorsch, Zachary Severt, Charlemae Sexton, Kimberly Wilfong Sigman, Emily Sites, Matt Steffen, Shawn P. Sweeney, Megan Taylor, Brianna Wallace

Additional programming includes a Panel Discussion on navigating grief on Saturday, February 7, 2026 from 1 – 3pm at the Kennedy Heights Arts Center Lindner Annex, 6620 Montgomery Road, Cincinnati, OH 45213, which is free and open to the public.

A facilitated Art Therapy workshop (free, but registration required as space is limited) is being planned as well, and more information will be on KHAC’s website soon.

Listen to the WGUC Cincinnati Spotlight radio segment about the exhibition!

Image: Uncertain Times, Art Hasinski, Digital Print, 2024

We are excite to present Sculptural Storylines: Work by Jan & Mark Wiesner. This exhibition will be on display in the Kennedy Gallery from March 20 to May 16, 2026.

Jan & Mark Wiesner are two sculptors and a married couple who work in very different mediums, united by a shared artistic response shaped through mutual cross-pollination and exploration. Each tells a distinctly different version of the same story through their own form.

Jan Wiesner finds inspiration from overheard phrases and fleeting remarks, treating them as seeds for sculptural storytelling. As an “author in clay,” she gathers and mines these words for emotion, linking works into a series infused with humor and insight. Through this process, hidden thoughts and actions are revealed, and the power lies in the telling of the story.

Mark Wiesner reflects on mortality and works with cardboard, a universal material that has shaped their life since childhood, building imaginative worlds and storing the remnants of daily existence. Rooted in honesty to reclaimed, discarded materials, he applies meticulous technical rigor to transform the mundane into something magical and harmonious. Through assemblage and appropriation, he resurrects forgotten objects, giving them renewed meaning, rhythm, and beauty within new contexts.

Opening Reception: Friday, March 20, 2026 from 6 – 8 pm, and it will include free light refreshments

Artist Talk: Saturday, April 18 starting at 1pm with free light refreshments.

All events are Free and Open to the Public.

Images: Jan Wiesner, They Danced With Such Joy That All of Nature Joined In, ceramic, acrylic paint, 18” H x 14” W x 3” D | Mark Wiesner, Liminal Spaces, corrugated cardboard, wood base, acrylic paint, 18” H x 62” W x 7” D

Each year, Kennedy Heights Arts Center celebrates our talented students with an exhibition featuring original artwork in all media created by the youth and adults enrolled in KHAC classes. This show presents a wide range of works in mosaics, painting, collage, ceramics, and more. It is sure to inspire artists of all ages!

Join us in celebrating everyone’s creativity at the opening reception on Friday, May 22 from 6-8pm. Free, open to the public, light refreshments served.

Exhibiting artists are youth, teen, and adult students who have taken classes here at Kennedy Heights Arts Center.

Image: Untitled, Michaela Cochran, Colored pencil, Class: Drawing with Color, Instructor: Paul Loehle. (Image from 2025 Student Art Show)

Curated by Saad Ghosn of SOS ART, Printed Voices from Kenya: Social and Cultural Reflections features 154 prints of various printmaking techniques by 42 established Kenyan artists, young and old. These artists use artwork as their voice and communication tool to reflect on the cultural and social issues they face.

Started in 2018, this is the fifth “Printed Voices from …: Social and Cultural Reflections” biennial exhibit and cultural event that SOS (Save Our Souls) ART (sosartcincinnati.com) is organizing and curating in partnership with KHAC. After Oaxaca/Mexico, Lebanon, Czechia, and India, the featured country this time is Kenya with its rich tradition and heritage in printmaking.

The exhibit will be accompanied by a mini Kenyan cultural festival on the grounds of KHAC, including dance, music, singing, poetry, art, food, etc. all based on the country’s culture; also by a mini Kenyan movie festival. It is hoped that sharing the Kenyan artists’ voice with the Cincinnati community will contribute to cultural exchange and enrichment, and to illustrating the power of art as a contributor to a universal better world.

The purpose of these “Voices from…” exhibits and events is to share with the Cincinnati public, art from a different country where artists use their artwork as their voice to reflect on their life, their culture, the problems they face as a society, and thus express themselves, their views and their beliefs; also to expose the Cincinnati public, through mini cultural and movie festivals, to various aspects of the culture of that country. This is very much in line with the mission of SOS ART, a nonprofit organization Saad Ghosn founded 24 years ago, whose goal is to promote the arts as vehicles for peace and justice, and for a better world.

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 27 from 6-8 pm. Light refreshments and music.

Kenyan Cultural Festival: Saturday, July 11 from 12-5 pm. Experience Kenyan culture through music, dance, food, poetry, and art! Curator Saad Ghosn will also be giving guided tours of the exhibition.

Image: BODA BODA II, John Silver Kimani, reduction woodcut; 12.5×11.75”

Cultural Ties is an interdisciplinary exhibition that explores and celebrates Latin American culture while confronting stereotypes. It interweaves the photography of Tina Gutierrez and Andrea Sabugo with mixed media works by Ximena Flores and Rebecca Nava Soto, alongside a selection of short films curated by Mary Leonard, offering a multi-sensory exploration of place, history, and identity. Cultural Ties is part of the 2026 FotoFocus Biennial: The Long View.

Tina Gutierrez’s América series presents large-scale portraits celebrating the diversity and strength of Hispanic women, collaborating with her subjects to reclaim narratives and challenge stereotypes. Similarly, Andrea Sabugo’s paired images draw on editorial fashion photography and traditional dress, hair, and cultural objects to present authentic representations of Mexican and Chicano/a heritage, inviting viewers to reconsider assumptions.

Mixed media works by Nava Soto and Flores add tactile and symbolic dimensions. Nava Soto, inspired by Mesoamerican materials and writing systems, explores contemporary issues through a Xicanx lens, reflecting on her Midwest immigrant upbringing. Flores’s wall boxes, filled with natural materials, evoke life cycles, migration, and enduring ties to homeland, celebrating resilience and cultural continuity.

Mary Leonard’s video series, Sin Vergüenza, features Cuban and Puerto Rican performers, unapologetically confident and often breaking gender norms, blending the political and the sensual.

Together, these works explore identity, heritage, and representation across photography, sculpture, installation, and video. By honoring ancestry, ritual, and lived experience, the exhibition affirms dignity, resilience, and pride, preserving Latin American cultural knowledge and narratives for future generations.

Support for this 2026 FotoFocus Biennial exhibition was provided in part by FotoFocus.

Image: Olivia, Tina Gutierrez, 2023. Digital photograph on metal, 24″w x 30″h.

Kennedy Collective members are proud to present their annual show for 2026, exhibiting new and previously unseen works in all media by local artists – including painting, collage, sculpture, ceramics, photography, fiber art, and more! Many of the works are available for sale.

The exhibition also features Off the Wall: a collection of smaller works for $50 each with half the proceeds going to support Kennedy Heights Arts Center.

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 7 from 6-8pm. Free, open to the public, light refreshments.

Join us for an exciting Artist Talk with exhibiting Collective members on Saturday, Dec. 12 from 1-3pm. Free, open to the public, light refreshments.

Exhibiting Artists: TBD

Do your holiday shopping at our Art Shop & Holiday Art Market, with handmade goods by over 60 local artists.

Image: Pineapple, Jereena Ameen, Quilt/Textile Art. (Image from 2025 Collective Exhibition)

In a world that often demands our resilience before our rest, We’re All Healing invites vulnerability as an act of resistance. Where there is transparency, there is healing; where there is healing, we can continue to blossom.

This exhibition is an authentic conversation through visual storytelling, examining the harmful ideologies surrounding mental health in Black and marginalized communities. It holds space for what is often considered taboo, softened, hidden, or dismissed. We recognize that within our communities, the language for pain has not always been taught, yet the expectation to pack it away persists as our collection of unspoken pain continues to grow.

We’re All Healing is not simply about what hurts — it is about what happens after the silence breaks. The journey is not meant to be linear, but it must begin. Allow this to be a place that reminds us it’s okay to feel, to name, and to start again.

Exhibiting artists: Jamaal Durr, Tobi Ewing, Trudy Gaba, Erin Smith Glenn, Ciara LeRoy, Gift Mayambi, Romain Mayambi, James Pate, Dave Scott, Kimberly Wilfong Sigman.

Join us for the Opening Reception on Saturday, January 31st from 6:00 to 8:00 pm in our Lindner Annex Gallery, 6620 Montgomery Road.

We’re All Healing is part of the 6th Annual Voices of Freedom co-presented by Juneteenth Cincinnati. It features ten commissioned works by diverse regional artists. Curated by Zuri Ali.

Image: Curator Zuri Ali

*OPENS on Saturday, April 25 from 6-8pm*

Since her graduate school experience at the University of Cincinnati D.A.A.P. (Design, Architecture, Art & Planning) program in 2008, Erin Smith Glenn has been constantly examining, understanding, and developing what HAIRitage means to her, and how she can use it as a means to serve her community. From two-dimensional works to installations and interactive works, engaging the senses through this ongoing series addresses Black hair culture in a way that demands its attention; begs to justify the discriminations against it; commands the viewer; and ultimately upholds the values of her ancestors. 

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 25 from 6-8pm

Artist Talk: TBD (will be announced soon!)

Image: Divine Beauty Endurance through Creativity, Erin Smith Glenn, Chalk pastel on toned paper, 2025, 11″ x 17″. 

Works by Batres Gilvin reflect a meditation on in-between states, where memory, identity, and the body shift between presence and absence.

Batres Gilvin, an artist collaborative in Greater Cincinnati, is comprised of Karla Batres and Bradly Gilvin, life partners who met in 2011 while studying at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. In a multiethnic partnership that joins the personal with the professional, Batres’ Mexican American heritage and Gilvin’s Southern American roots are a catalyst for complicated conversations about difference, otherness, and identity. In their Morning View, Kentucky studio located on the property of the Gilvin family farm and homestead, Batres Gilvin explores the local and global implications of immigration. Their artistic work is informed as much by larger political conversations as it is by life on the farm and daily interactions with Bradly and Karla’s immediate and extended family.

In Batres Gilvin’s artistic work art becomes life and vice versa. As a multiethnic collaborative, Batres Gilvin is a study in contradictions. Playful irreverence exists alongside unflinching solemnity. An unsparing commentary on the inequities of US immigration policy is wrapped in sparkly, kitschy imagery, providing a sugar-coated dose of truth serum, Mexican American style. In Batres Gilvin’s world, contradiction is both material and tool; it is also a reminder of the complexity of humans and the necessity of holding space for difficult conversations.

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 25 from 6-8pm

Artist Talk: (TBD) 

Image: What if He Doesn’t Like Beans?, styrofoam, ribbon, aerosol paint, glitter glue, artificial flowers, 2020, 3’x 4’

Talented artists are all around us! View a variety of diverse artworks created by residents of Kennedy Heights, Pleasant Ridge, Silverton, and Amberley Village in Local Talent 2025. Celebrate the immense creativity that we have right here in our neighborhoods – our local talent!

Exhibiting artists: TBD

Image: Kennedy Heights resident Jay Wilford standing with his painting “Cloud Burst” in Local Talent 2025. Photo by Will Jones Photography.