Columbus Museum of Art (revamped)

 The Columbus Museum of Art has finished its renovation of its original building and early 1970's addition. It is still the tiny art museum it was 35 years ago, but a new addition is set to break ground soon for a late 2012 opening. The site on E. Broad Street is hemmed in by a gothic church to its west and the Columbus College of Art and Design to its rear. Small for its size of city today.

 The central jewel of this renovation is Derby Court which has only one artwork that isn't part of the building's reliefs (the Chihuly above). But the museum has to raise millions of dollars and this court is perfect for your next social event.

 Like all art museums today, a modern skylight is essential.

 The old building itself is a work of art with many historic looking reliefs and accents.

 The hallways around the Derby Court have been brought back to their colorful splendor.

 The old entrance way is also empty, but the ceiling is amazing.

 The first level is void of offices and is now known as the Center for Creativity to bring a family friendly aspect to CMA. Above is the Wonder Room, one of several rooms to keep kids active. The auditorium and gift shops are still there and still small.

 Upstairs, the ten old building galleries house the permanent collection organized by themes rather than historical periods. Above you see the George Segal sculpture with the famous early 20th Century works behind. This makes loaning out works seamless since another piece from any period can be substituted.

 Each room is painted a different color. In all, this makes the Columbus Museum of Art a unique experience among art museums.

 The hallways are devoted to traditional sculpture. The 1970's addition continues to house the special exhibits, but with so much art stored away, CMA can bring their own art out for a special exhibition.

 Above is a Renoir. Unfortunately, I found the older paintings dingy and in need of cleaning. The colors are not as bright as they could be, but what would that cost? Is that something museums are willing to risk?

 Exciting for 2011 to have our art museum fully back and revamped. However, it is the same building I took classes in at CCAD. And they charge admission, unlike the bigger art museums in Ohio. Sunday is free, but then it becomes a kid's museum with little room to walk around. Hopefully the new addition will do the trick.

Beacon Hall (above) was where C.C.A.D. had most of its classes until the mid-1970's. Now it is the museum's offices and in the area of the new addition. If the art museum could just buy the church that sits next to it, it could expand into a large empty lot at Cleveland and Broad St. Much has been talked about moving the art museum, which has left it without the proper space for years. Because C.C.A.D. has expanded so much in recent years, keeping the two together makes a lot of sense. However, Columbus need more NON-contemporary art available to the public to prosper.

The NEW Old North Columbus

The arches are up and the street is now open north of campus on N. High Street. For some reason they want the Old North Columbus to start just north of OSU property and extending to Arcadia Ave. North Columbus was a town around Hudson and High Street before Ohio State was thought of.
The oldest building is this 200 year old log cabin on Norwich Ave. just east of High Street that was moved here from the Hudson and High St. area of North Columbus. The rest of the neighborhood is mostly houses and storefront buildings over 100 years old with some recent new ones. It is the bohemia neighborhood for campus being home to many musicians and artists plus some of the most adventuresome eating establishments around.

New Audubon Metro Park

NOT AUTOBAHN Park, AUDUBON!

The new Audubon Metro Park has opened just south of downtown between the river and German Village. Thanks to the generosity of Grange Insurance, whose headquarters are a few block away, the Whittier Peninsula is being transformed into a Metro Park connected to downtown by the bikepath and by car along E. Whittier Avenue just off of South High Street. (above freeway bridge runs above the park's bike path into downtown.)
This is a real wildlife park in the center of a city. The park land used to be known as the Whittier Peninsula. This was the land between the canal and the Scioto River that was given over to warehouses, a police impound lot, and wildlife for decades.
The Scioto River is very wide as it rounds the Metro Park and is a favorite of many birds from Cranes to Seagulls. A boat ramp is also part of the park.
Grange Insurance helped to fund a beautiful green building in the middle of the park, that is one of the few things in the park that is finished. The design is post-modern and provides a wide variety of surfaces and room experiences through-out.
The above art piece was once graffiti on the old Lazarus warehouse that once occupied part of the park. They don't know who the artist is. (Anybody know the artist?) Anyways, it now beautify the fireplace in the Audubon building.
Follow the old bike path into downtown and you end at the new Main Street bridge.
Along the way, you see many amazing views of downtown structures from a lesser known vantage point. Many fishermen ply the river from the park.
The above picture looks like Miami, but it is the new Miranova condo tower, the tallest residential building in Ohio, against its office building.
From the main Audubon building you can look out over a developing playground with its water tower and rock climbing arch. You can see views of the skyline and a duck and goose pond.
New look-out piers along the river trail look up the central building.
The building is worth exploring just for the many looks it has from side to side.
This room that sticks-out is designed to help with cooling and heating the building. The Audubon Metro Park has a long way to go until completion. Expect to visit every year.

Oh yes, the Audubon Society happens to be based in the Short North.

New Shots of Downtown

The new Main Street Bridge will soon frame the future default shot of the skyline.
The City Center Mall, when it is removed, will uncover one of the more dynamic skyline scenes.
Demolition of City Center should come just before the 20th anniversary of its opening.
The Main Street Bridge arch is one cool hunk of metal and cable.Oh no! The old LaVeque Tower just spilled a beer.
The new courthouse is under construction. Hope there is a clock tower.
From the new Audobon Metro Park a new stone arch of primitive shape provides a new future vantage point of the skyline.
The old downtown skyscrapers form a condensed block. The hotel tower on left may become the tallest LEEDS retrofit building in the country.
Cobblestones are returning to downtown. And you can drive on them. This is Town Street next to the old Lazarus Department Store (now a LEEDS "green building"). New condos and apartments are being built on these former parking lots to look like old buildings.

National Road doing the Art District Thing

Dissecting High Street with great force is the 180 year old National Road which enters eastern Columbus on Main Street, turns north on Drexel and proceeds out west on Broad Street. Today it crosses High Street with a wide swipe lined with skyscrapers and elegant mansions. Even the public buildings along East Broad Street are classical, inspiring buildings. The National Road reached Columbus about the same time as the canal and it didn't stretch too far west of Ohio before railroads started to be built.
Now the attention for new arts districts in Columbus is turning to the National Road route. Nowhere is this more needed than the Franklinton area west of downtown. Franklinton predates Columbus by a generation, but it is in the flood plain of the Scioto River and development has been modest over the years. A group of artists put on an arts event Saturday May 30, 2009 for a few hours around the famous Florentine Restaurant. A Franklinton neighborhood design office (Franklinton Development Association) is just across the street from here as well as Tommy's Diner, a favorite comfort food eatery. W. Broad Street and Martin Avenue.
Presented with the title "Go West", this 5 hour art event was done in three empty storefronts that had been made into galleries along with the design association offices. One was very clean and nice and a former check cashing place. Another was a modern storefront with its exposed ceiling painted black and the walls done for a gallery. But the most artsy gallery was in an old brick storefront and apartment building still early in its renovation (pix above and below). You walked into a dark, doorless opening into a large space with baloons, a large mural, and lit only by christmas lights. DJ style music pumped through a large stereo. Most of the art was upstairs in about three rooms that were finished enough to allow visitors. However, you had to walk up steep stairs with makeshift railing and saw nothing but unattached doors covering most of the rooms. One room was blacklighted with a collection of images. The most unique one was done by Dina Sherman of an outline of a dove done by ten foot strings (above) that crossed the room to a hat of some sort.
This gallery in a brick building undergoing renovation was a hotbed of mural painting outside (above). People didn't spend much time inside and mostly "hung-out" on the street almost as if they were being paid. Maybe people just loved standing by colorful murals. Most of the inside art was safe and not of high quality or interest. But some was obviously done by people with an art degree. Yet, there was wall and window space for much more work.
The bottom picture below was taken in front of the more modern storefront that had an empty
front parking lot where people could stand and enjoy the day. The restaurants had full parking lots, but onstreet parking was not a problem. Will events like this grow in Franklinton or is it an uphill struggle? We will see.

Out on the EAST side of the National Road is Bexley and Capitol University, one of three or four private colleges in metro Columbus that have developed an upscale for the campus area. Called Bexley Square, it is where the National Road turned north off of Main Street and many wealthy people built grand homes during most of the 20th century. There is only a small group of shops including a small strip mall, but three major art galleries have been able to find space near top restaurants. Bexley's Monk (below) is in the strip mall serving top drawer meals.


The Hammond Harkins Galleries (with red sculpture: above) is an old line Columbus gallery showing mature artists from the region. It is right on Main Street between the two more famous landmarks of Graeter's Soda Shop and the Drexel movie Theatre (below). The movie theatre and soda shop have been restored to detail. They let you know that architecture can create a positive emotion.
Just north of Main Street on Drexel Avenue are two more galleries as high of quality as Hammond Harkins. Both had openings on Friday evening May 29th. There is no "gallery hopping" here. People dedicate themselves for floor space at whichever gallery they got the invitation from. You get the sense that most visitors to the openings have spent thousands there.
The most interesting gallery is the newer Art Access Gallery which sells art not unfamiliar to the Short North. Curtis Goldstein had his large painterly canvases of scenes around Columbus (above, lower picture). He was joined by another painter of Columbus scenes and another who did the same with uptown New York. Maturity comes to mind when comparing the Bexley art scene verses art on High Street. Don't expect the art to be too daring.

Of course, the National Road is also where you find the Columbus Museum of Art and the Columbus College of Art and Design. This coming weekend will see the three day art festival around these institutions. The art museum is wrapping up their Egyptian art show just as the COSI Science Museum (also on the National Road, even Franklinton) is beginning a show on Egypt. Like its almost two centuries of history, the National Road goes in and out of favor from time to time. Originally it didn't switch over from Main Street to Broad Street until the center of downtown. East Main between downtown and Bexley is very run-down today with a few very old institutional buildings, but mostly boarded-up buildings. That section is not likely to be associated with art anytime soon.

Road Trip North

High Street is sometimes thought as a street that begins at the south pole and runs to the north pole. Well... almost. It depends on what route you think High Street follows out of the Columbus metro area. Going north out of the Short North the scenery changes dramatically.
The first stop is that area not claimed by the Short North (arches) or campus. It is anchored by a Kroger's supermarket which was once state of the art when it first opened in the 1980's. Today, plans are underway to update the Kroger's more fitting with the Short North. In the area are many storefronts that played an important role in the early gallery hops. Fat Lip Tattoo parlor is the newest offering in the space once occupied by Mothra's Wrapped In Black clothing store. Mothra's would have art and musical acts during gallery hop in the late 1980's. Fat Lip's owner is also featuring local art on the wall and a place to hang-out.

Just a little bit south of Fat Lip is Black Sheep Skateboard shop that used to be in the Short North at the Greystoen Apartments. They have now expanded into a full-blown shop in the former Mr. Brown's night club that fostered the punk/new-wave music scene in the late 70's and early 80's. More recently have been various hip fashion chains from other cities. Looks like a new building will be going in soon.

As you cross into the OSU campus section of High Street you reach the new mid-rise development called South Campus Gateway. It has a designed courtyard of bars like McFadden's which leads to the parking garage. It also has graffiti on (still) empty storefronts that seem to be officially sanctioned.
More and more of these up-scale campus storefronts are finding stores like Five Brother's hamburgers and Insta-Juice. It's the place for $5.00 sandwiches and smoothies of all varieties. We'll skip campus High Street for this trip as it needs many posts all to its own. Campus used to be the center of culture and what's new until the Short North arrived. We'll also skip the north campus and Old North Columbus area as the street is under such construction.
Just beyond the High Street Construction is Olentangy Village which has an old world look and dates back to the end of the street car era. Street cars would turn around here and an amusement park was built at Arcadia and High St. Much to our good luck today, the amusement park was changed into an apartment complex with quaint storefronts and colonial charm.
North of here is the long neighborhood of Clintonville which has many interesting shops. There is Lucky13 Hair Salon, various art and framing shops, and Pace High Carry-out which is famous for its wide selection of beers and wine. Also at Pace and High St. are two new shops like Whollycraft! that cateres to the young crafts makers in town. It is a good place to find artistmade stuffed animals. Red Rover consignment Shop reminds one of the early Short North that was full of such shops.
Moving further north past Beechwold with its new urban infill storefronts and Graceland Shopping Center that has been changed dramatically in recent years (a huge new exercise palace with postmodern design is going in at the extreme end of Graceland).

North of Graceland you come to Worthington, a city founded in 1803. It was designed to look like a New England town. This style has continued over the decades but some buildings downtown are actually from the early 1800's. The Worthington Inn (above right) continues in business as a great restaurant like its stage couch days.
Downtown Worthington is a group of colorful shops of wide variety from art to flowers to ice cream to even practical things like banks and hardware.
The center of town is a square made into parkland that is used for a great art festival and concerts in the summer. Christmas lighting is also a great tradition in Worthington. Above right is the historic Masonic Lodge that was built in 1820 as home to the fourth New England Lodge in the country.


North of Worhtington is the fastest growing section of Ohio known as Southern Delaware County. It is a huge area in constant construction. A new Kroger's Marketplace is joining other hyper marketplaces along High Street. Franklin University has a branch in a new office building. There seems to be a branch of the Delaware County Bank every mile. Columbus State has a huge new campus being constructed that seemed to include a huge solarized building (above two pictures).


Further north you bypass Delaware and Marion that have interesting downtowns. There is also Delaware State Park with its long reservoir. Following Route 23 near Upper Sandusky is the new route 30 freeway that flows onto Rte 23 for a while. A three level bridge was built that seems unnecessary (above picture). Route 30 will soon be four lanes clean across Ohio, bringing some Turnpike traffic south to hungry towns.
Route 23 actually turns off of the freeway (which joins I-75 to go to Toledo and Detroit). The two lane route 23 is near some interesting features, though. Above is one of two trash hills viewable from route 23. They are mostly East Coast construction trash that has been shipped here by train and made into 100 foot high landfills. This one is just south of Fostoria. Future ski areas?
Ohio is an energy state. Above you can see evidence of this with a wind generator (above left) at a marina dealership, an ethonal plant (center), and an old oil well in a field. Findlay was once a center of the oil and gas industry. One can continue onto Toledo with its art museum and new high-level bridge. It is one of the centers of the solar energy industry.
But where does High Street really go when it goes north. The original road was the Columbus to Sandusky Pike that left Route 23 at Waldo and made a bee-line to Sandusky. So, let's check-out the Lake Erie islands near Sandusky. The North Shore.
Catawba Island is the official name for the penninsula that sticks out around Sandusky Bay. It is a colorful tourist place with some rock cliffs (above right). The main thing here are second homes in the form of trailors, cottages, and condos. One wonders why Catawba Island wasn't made into a major city like San Francisco or Tampa.
But the Lake and boating culture pulls you in on the Erie Shore. There are ferries to the various islands, including Put n Bay on middle bass island.
The main feature of Put n Bay is the Perry's Monument (that is now closed for renovations). It commemorates Commodore Perry's victory of the British during the War of 1812, but it also functions as a great tourist observation tower.
If you stay on dry land there is also the very old Marblehead Lighthouse (below) at the eastern extreme of Catawba island. Most of this eastern part is a quarry but there is also Johnson Island that had a civil war prison camp and still has a Confederate Cemetery. Johnson Island is reachable by car across a half mile causeway.
Of course, the main attraction around Sandusky Bay is Cedar Point (above) the rollercoaster capital of the world. Cedar Point is the second oldest American amusement park still running. It was almost torn-down in the early 1950's until Disneyland inspired the owners. The location is a long penninsula sticking out into Sandusky Bay with water on all sides.