Exhibits
Cincinnati’s Foodshed: Art, Ecology, and Community
(case outside library entrance)
The DAAP Library is pleased to present a selection of works from Cincinnati’s Foodshed: AN ART ATLAS, a visually compelling publication by Professor Alan Wight that explores the region’s food systems across the past, present, and future. Featuring over 50 local artists, the collection brings together artistic storymaps, historical narratives, and community-driven research to highlight the people, innovations, and landscapes that shape Cincinnati’s foodshed.
Among the exhibited works is Ecogarden Plot Plan (2019) by Luke Ebner, a detailed mixed-media drawing documenting the Permaganic Ecogarden in Over-the-Rhine. Originally established in the 1980s by Impact Over-the-Rhine and later stewarded by Ebner and Angela Stanberry, the garden reflects the possibilities and challenges of urban agriculture. The work captures the site as both a living ecosystem and a cultural installation, emphasizing its role in community engagement and environmental education.
Also featured is The Magical Mayapples of Mt. Airy Forest (2022) by LD Nels, an oil painting that celebrates one of Cincinnati’s most expansive urban green spaces. Mt. Airy Forest, established in 1911 as an early urban reforestation effort, is home to a wide range of edible plant species, including the mayapple. Through vivid representation, the artwork pays homage to this unique fruit and the layered ecological history of the forest, connecting foraging practices with local environmental heritage. This exhibition highlights the intersection of art, ecology, and urban life, offering a lens through which to understand food systems as both cultural and spatial phenomena.
This exhibition was organized from materials collected by Dr. R. Alan Wight, with exhibition coordination and preparation by Sam Yeganeh, Ph.D. Candidate in Architecture.
Seat Studies
(circulation desk case)
The DAAP Library presents a selection of chair prototypes developed in INTD 3061: Furniture / Millwork, taught by Professor Hank Hildebrandt in the School of Architecture and Interior Design at the University of Cincinnati. This exhibition highlights student work produced through a process that bridges conceptual design, technical drawing, and material fabrication.
Grounded in the relationship between theory and practice, the project challenges students to translate initial sketches and research into fully realized three-dimensional prototypes. Through orthographic drawings, detailing, and scaled models, students investigate how ideas are communicated, constructed, and ultimately brought into physical form. The chair, as both an everyday object and a complex structural system, serves as a focused medium through which issues of ergonomics, materiality, and assembly are explored.
The work on display reflects an iterative design process in which drawing and making inform one another. Fabrication drawings function not only as representational tools but as instruments of instruction—enabling a fabricator to understand and construct the design. The resulting prototypes reveal the negotiation between intention and realization, where adjustments, refinements, and discoveries emerge through the act of making.
This exhibition foregrounds the chair as a micro-architecture: a site where body, structure, and material converge. It also emphasizes the importance of precision, communication, and craft in design education, preparing students to engage with more complex architectural systems and construction practices.
This exhibition was organized by Sam Yeganeh, Ph.D. Candidate in Architecture and Adjunct Professor at the University of Cincinnati and Miami University, featuring student work from INTD 3061: Furniture / Millwork, instructed by Professor Hank Hildebrandt.
The Wooden Dolls by Alexander Girard
(entryway cases)
The Wooden Dolls by Alexander Girard are a large family of wooden figures representing human and animal characters. Girard designed them in 1952 for his own use as decorative objects for his home.
Furniture Miniatures Collection
(freestanding cases on first floor of library)
For over two decades, the Vitra Design Museum has been making miniature replicas of milestones in furniture design from its collection. The Furniture Miniatures Collection encapsulates the entire history of industrial furniture design – moving from Historicism and Art Nouveau to the Bauhaus and New Objectivity, from Radical Design and Postmodernism all the way up to the present day.