Cincinnati, Ohio, is a picturesque city on the Ohio River with about 315,000 residents. Like most other towns of its size it has a major art museum: the Cincinnati Museum of Art, founded in 1881. Unlike many other places, however, it also has an absolute gem of a smaller museum, the Taft Museum of Art.
The story of the Taft Museum illustrates the special benefits of a small museum. It also shows how constructive the relationship can be between people who collect art and take its civic potential seriously, and the community in which they live.
The Taft Museum is named for Charles Phelps Taft (the older half-brother of president William Howard Taft) and his wife Annie Sinton Taft. Early on, the Taft’s were major supporters of the Cincinnati Museum of Art, as well as the city’s symphony and opera. They even established a public playground for children across the street from their house. Around 1900, they began collecting art.
Charles died in 1929 and Anna two years later, but shortly before Charles died, they decided to bequeath their entire art collection to the city of Cincinnati, along with their house which was to serve as the museum. We want “to devote our collection of pictures, porcelain, and other works of art to the people of Cincinnati,” they explained, “in such a manner that they may be readily available to all.” The Taft opened to the public in November of 1932.
It’s a great example of how smaller museums that grow from personal collections serve a distinct purpose. For starters, they reflect the tastes of idiosyncratic collectors, not trained curators, so they inevitably have some curious pieces in the collection, only because someone once felt strongly about them. It’s good to be reminded that not every single work that comes from the hand of an artist is of equal quality. And that not all artists are created equal. Seeing works that are “merely” good, one might say, makes the truly great ones easier to appreciate. A typical Rembrandt hanging next to a mediocre Frans Hals (a Dutch painter who was a contemporary of Rembrandt’s) allows you to appreciate the work of a true master even more. Even good painters—and Frans Hals was a very good painter—pale beside the greats.
Another usual benefit from a small museum is to hear an inspiring story similar to that of Charles and Anna Taft: a story of how people who care equally about art and about the civic life of their community use one of their interests to serve the other. The Taft Museum reminds those who love art that they automatically have a way to serve their community.
