Get The Full Canvas At Artful Adventure

A Zaha Hadid landmark, a clay ghost in every hand

On Saturday, June 13, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Contemporary Arts Center hands its galleries over to the people who usually get the most cautious welcome in a contemporary art museum. Kids, toddlers, grandparents, and the parents wrangling all three will fill the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art at 44 E. Sixth St. with clay, screen-printing ink, blue painter's tape, music, and the happy roar of hundreds of local families making things side by side. The event is called Artful Adventure, a Fundraising Playdate, and it has quietly become one of the most joyful days on Cincinnati's cultural calendar.

The premise is simple and a little radical. Take a building designed by Zaha Hadid, fill it with challenging contemporary art, and then invite a three-year-old to run through it with a freshly painted face and a clay ghost in hand. Every dollar raised goes back into the exhibitions and education programs that keep the museum open and curious. Families get a full day of play, and the institution gets the fuel it needs to keep doing the work.

Michael Stillion's poppies and Gee Horton's prophetic dreams

Artful Adventure lands during one of the strongest stretches of the CAC's 2025 to 2026 season, with two solo shows by artists deeply connected to the region.

The first is Michael Stillion: And then it was flowers. Stillion holds an MFA from Indiana University and a BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design, and he teaches studio art at Miami University. His paintings, works on paper, ceramic sculptures, and animation depict vessels with human-like features, built up through illusionistic trompe-l'oeil technique that makes painted surfaces look carved and breathing. He pairs these forms with oversized poppies and realistic flies, and the result reads as a meditation on fragility, impermanence, transition, and pollination. The recurring poppy carries weight beyond its beauty, standing in as a reference to the opioid epidemic that has reshaped so many rural American communities. Families can shape their own creations in the Clay Ghost Making station with Stillion, then carry that same curiosity about form and figure into a gallery ghost hunt through his work.

The second is Gee Horton: Chapter 4, In Another Lifetime, which unfolds across two galleries. Horton was born in Louisville and is based in Cincinnati, and he is celebrated for photorealist graphite and charcoal drawing alongside mixed-media work that digs into identity, memory, Black masculinity, and childhood. Chapter 4 follows the loosely autobiographical story of Freeman Little, a 37-year-old Black man living with a rare hereditary sleep disorder that delivers vivid, prophetic dreams. Across large-scale drawing, photography, collage, video, and immersive installation, Horton studies generational memory and the space between safety and vulnerability. His résumé reads like a victory lap, including an Emmy Award for his portrait of abolitionist Peter H. Clark and work featured in HBO's "Insecure" and Amazon Prime's "Harlem." At the Post-It Poetry station, kids and adults write short verses in response to the show and add them to a growing collaborative wall, which means a five-year-old's haiku ends up in conversation with one of the most acclaimed artists working in the city today.

The Cincinnati makers turning visitors into collaborators

Artful Adventure leans hard on Cincinnati's own creative bench. The collaborative printing station comes from Take a Moment Studios, the partnership of Jon Flannery and Joe Walsh. Flannery founded the Northside design and print studio Cryptogram and is widely regarded as a printmaker's printmaker, the person other designers turn to when they want something done right. Walsh layers drawing in paint pens and markers on top of Flannery's hand-cut screen prints, and in a single session the two can produce dozens of one-of-a-kind posters that respond to the room around them. The pair previously held a four-month residency at the CAC, making work in real time based on conversations with visitors, so this is a homecoming as much as an activity.

CAC Artist-in-Residence Micah Mickles will be working in the Creativity Center Studio, part of a program that invites contemporary artists to pursue their own practice while creating alongside the public. Guests can watch the process up close and make art together, a reminder that the gallery is a laboratory and visitors are part of the experiment.

A dance party, a growing tape mural, and face paint everywhere

The day is engineered for momentum. Longtime Cincinnati radio personality and DJ Nat Jones runs a family dance party that gives the youngest guests permission to move. A wall-sized Blue Tape Mural grows one strip at a time as every family adds to the design, and the Artful City installations let kids help build a shared model of their city and imagine their place inside it. There is Storytime with Zaza Scents for the quietest moments, Little Fox face painting for the boldest, and sensory-friendly playscape areas for the toddlers who need a soft place to land. Cincinnati's fan-favorite mascots roam the building for high-fives and photos.

Hunger gets handled too. Light brunch bites come from Magnificent Morsels, Munch! Midnight + Brunch, and others, with beverages from Rhinegeist, while Urbana Café stays open all day for coffee and treats.

your ticket keeps alive at an 87-year-old museum

The CAC has earned the right to throw a party like this. Founded in 1939 as the Modern Art Society by three Cincinnati women, Betty Pollak Rauh, Peggy Frank Crawford, and Rita Rentschler Cushman, it took its current name in 1954 and grew into one of the first contemporary art institutions in the United States. It is a non-collecting museum devoted to the art of the present moment, and it showed artists like Andy Warhol early in their careers. In 2018, the Sotheby's Prize recognized its curatorial daring. Its home, opened in 2003, was Zaha Hadid's first completed building in the United States and is widely recognized as the first American art museum designed by a woman.

The numbers behind the mission give the playdate its purpose. In fiscal year 2025, the CAC welcomed roughly 45,000 visitors and reached more than 14,000 individuals through education programs, including nearly 5,000 underserved Cincinnati teens who count on the museum as a safe, creative third space outside of school and home. The Creativity Center and the Sara M. & Patricia A. Vance Education Center, The UnMuseum, give visitors of all ages a place to explore contemporary art through hands-on play. Every ticket sold on June 13 helps keep those doors open.

Carolyn Hefner, the CAC's Chief of External Affairs, framed it plainly. "Artful Adventure reflects everything CAC strives to be, welcoming, creative, multigenerational, and deeply connected to our community," she said. "This event creates meaningful opportunities for families to experience contemporary art together while directly supporting the exhibitions and educational programs that make CAC such an important civic and cultural resource."

Dates, prices, and how to get in the door

Child tickets for ages 3 to 18 are $15, adult tickets are $30, and CAC members receive a $10 discount. Children 2 and under are free. A $40 VIP ticket adds an open bar with brunch-themed cocktails, and a $250 Host package includes two VIP tickets plus recognition on the CAC's website and social channels. The day is sponsored by Corrie Loeffler and Adam Turer, Carolyn and Cody Hefner, and Shannon and John Morris.

Tickets and details are available at cincycac.org/artful. Bring the kids, wear something you can get paint on, and plan to stay a while. The art will meet you halfway.