The ARTnews Culture (and Food) Lover’s Guide to Columbus

Museums

I went to the Wexner Center for the Arts every day I was in Columbus. On the campus of Ohio State, the Wexner is a diverse and international hub for the advancement of contemporary art across various disciplines. Each day there was something new for me: the three exhibitions full of newly commissioned work; the iconic site-specific installation by Maya Lin, Groundswell (1992–93).

The Wexner also has maybe the best on-campus bookstore around, complete with works of glass art made by students in connection with the recent exhibition by the artist and sculptor Sahar Khoury. And did you know that the Wexner is the sole art center in the nation offering continuous professional and financial backing to filmmakers through a Film/Video Studio Residency program? This place is the coolest. Bonus points for its having the most knowledgeable security guards I’ve ever encountered. In separate exhibitions, three of them offered up bits of information from the artist walk-throughs or from the installation process.

If you like Peanuts, Spider-Man, Dick Tracey, Beetle Bailey, Krazy Kat, and Rube Goldberg, you’ll love the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. Tucked inside an unassuming building at Ohio State, it holds the world’s largest collection of materials related to comics and cartoons, including more than 300,000 original works, notebooks, magazines, journals, 67,000 comic books, archival materials, and 2.5 million newspaper comic strip pages and clippings.

I was especially fond of the permanent collection at the Columbus Museum of Art and spent a lot of time with its early-20th-century American works, which included pieces by great artists from the city: Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, Elijah Pierce, and William Hawkins. One of my favorite spaces in the museum is the Wonder Room. This creatively designed area is aimed at nurturing imagination, experimentation, and storytelling in a family-friendly environment. Brimming with art, games, and participatory stations, it provides various ways to connect with the exhibited art.

Walk a block from the Columbus Museum of Art and you quickly see a sign that’s hard to miss: ART, spelled out in 100-foot bright red block letters. From the outside, you would have no idea that the Columbus College of Art & Design’s Canzani Center building opens up to a gorgeous 6,000-square-foot exhibition space, the Beeler Gallery. Through its exhibitions, commissions, residencies, workshops, lectures, and screenings, the Beeler reconsiders the role of a gallery within the framework of an art school.

Located within the Lazarus Building in downtown Columbus, the OSU Urban Art Space is a hidden gem. The former department store is one of those retro behemoths, occupying four city blocks. Tucked in among offices housing the Ohio Departments of Insurance and Medicaid is a long hallway that opens up to a beautiful exhibition space, one of those off-campus university spaces that both serve the city and augment the curriculum of the university’s art department. On a recent visit there was a stunning exhibition of works by Lucie Kamuswekera, an 80-year-old artist who embroiders burlap sacks with images of her native eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Artists’ homes

During this year’s annual Short North Tour of Homes & Gardens, about 900 people passed through Charles Wince’s wonderfully eclectic WinceWorld. When the artist purchased his Victorian clapboard house in 1988, he said it was in such shabby condition that there were no details to preserve, thus allowing his transformation of the home to be totally personal—and totally wild.

Wince is a brilliant artist who around every turn has filled the place with murals, mosaic tile floors, sculptures that double as furniture, making his home a veritable museum. Step into his bedroom to view his monumental masterpiece Mother Russia Meltdown (1994–), a painting 12 feet in length occupying an entire wall. If you take a moment to get your bearings, you’ll realize the characters creating chaos in the painting are ingeniously reflected in three dimensions all around you (including on the bed’s headboard, where a young girl’s ears are plugged with $50 and $100 bills and snakes slither from her hair, all bearing the face of Stalin). Then look down at the floor, which has what may be the most beautiful wood grain you’ve ever seen. When I asked about it, Wince told me it was entirely hand-painted.

Tours are by appointment only. To schedule one, contact the artist through Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/winceart/

Galleries

Every art scene needs a James McDevitt-Stredney. An advocate, a defender, a cheerleader for all things creative Columbus, McDevitt-Stredney graduated from the Columbus College of Art & Design and several years later opened No Place, his gallery since 2015. His program is a beautiful mix of artists from the Midwest and artists from other places—an excellent push and pull of bringing the art world to Columbus and bringing Columbus to the world.

Skylab Gallery is the OG of the independently run art spaces in town. Since around 1999 it has played a vital role in the city’s cultural scene, sharing with the community as well as thriving from it. On top of the exhibitions Skylab organizes, the gallery has long played host to a number of experimental and noise-rock bands that otherwise would not have played Columbus.

Dream Clinic Project Space is a tiny exhibition venue tucked into a shared studio space and housed in a former car wash. Within its 7 x 13 feet, artists invite other artists to experiment, to transform the space in a way that would not be possible in a bigger gallery. It also has its ongoing Tiny Pedestal project, which takes advantage of an architectural anomaly in the industrial space.

Since 2018 the Maroon Arts Group (MAG) has operated the MPACC Box Park in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood. The grassroots organization, with a mission of providing a platform for community, art, and learning, constructed an outdoor venue built with repurposed shipping containers on what was once an abandoned lot. A trio of containers house a performance space with an open stage, an art gallery, and, for nourishment, Willowbeez SoulVeg, a family-owned vegan soul food spot. On a recent chilly morning I was looking at the various raised beds on the property when a woman passing through stopped to tell me that I just missed some yummy produce. To encourage daily encounters with art, the park is ringed with paintings by artists of all ages.

Public art

In the 1870s brothers Lewis, Ephraim, Allen, and Peter Sells became involved in the circus business. As their circus grew, they moved the business to a racially diverse, semirural community on the northwest periphery of Columbus that is now referred to as Victorian Village. On the side of the central staircase of the Columbus Metropolitan Library’s main library, the town unfolds like a memory map in Aminah Robinson’s mural Life in Sellsville 1871–1900 (1992) (above), which depicts students from the “Polkadot School” going by stagecoach to see a woman pirouetting atop a trotting horse.

Next to the library, the seven-acre Topiary Garden Park offers a unique re-creation of the scene immortalized in Georges Seurat’s painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The Columbus sculptor James T. Mason began creating a topiary sculpture for his backyard before the vision became grander and moved to the park, where workers initially had to shape artificial hills and excavate a pond to emulate the River Seine. Then Mason crafted the bronze frames for 54 human figures, eight boats, three dogs, a monkey, and a cat—all of them covered in greenery. It’s a quirky, fun site where a bronze plaque indicates the original viewpoint of the painting. Admire the work from there, then step into the Seurat and walk among the topiary picnickers and sunbathers.

It’s difficult to imagine a grander backdrop than Ohio Stadium. It’s difficult to imagine an athlete more deserving of a bronze sculpture honoring his achievements than Jesse Owens. Owens achieved GOAT status by winning four track-and-field gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, but even before that, in 1935, the “Buckeye Bullet” set three world records and tied another in less than an hour running for Ohio State. In 1984 the Atlanta-based artist Curtis Patterson unveiled Celebration for a Champion, which consists of triangle-shaped pieces creating a pyramidal form that represents Owens’s records. An abstract lattice signifies his journey toward triumph and the obstacles he encountered along the way.

People wearing lanyard IDs buzz everywhere at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. When conventioneers step out to the North Atrium to call the office, they are greeted by Matthew Mohr’s As We Are (2017). From the front we see a 14-foot, 3-D digital head, made with curved ribbons bearing 850,000 ultrabright LED screens. At the back, at the base of the neck, is a photo booth. Enter it, and 29 cameras will capture your image with simultaneous photographs that are subsequently stitched together using a technique known as photogrammetry. Within two minutes, your smiling face becomes the art itself. Between sitters, the sculpture transitions through portraits captured earlier, each one approximately 17 times human size.

If you look up “Brutalist architecture,” chances are you will find a photo of the Bricker Federal Building. Constructed from gray concrete, the commanding structure is characterized by its raw and unadorned aesthetic. And yet, on its fortress-like facade, I was delighted to see a bright Robert Mangold piece, Correlation: Two White Line Diagonals and Two Arcs with a Sixteen-Foot Radius (1977–1978), whose luminous orange and red somehow find harmony with the building.

Melvin Edwards’s Out of the Struggles of the Past to a Brilliant Future (1982) is a large abstract metal structure arranged in an arch formation out of flat metal pieces and oversize stylized chain links. A reflection on the history of racial violence and civil rights struggles, it nevertheless exudes a sense of optimism, symbolizing hope for a brighter future. The title appears to resonate with the sentiments expressed in the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often referred to as the Black National Anthem. This is a special stop, as it marks Edwards’s first major public art commission.

As a teenager, Elijah Pierce traveled the country by hopping freight trains. He eventually settled in Columbus, where he opened a barber shop. In the late 1920s he carved a small elephant as a gift for his wife and was soon overtaken by the practice. Pierce became a prolific self-taught woodcarver renowned for his masterful depictions of biblical scenes as well as figures from popular culture and sports. The city has bestowed many honors on his legacy; a 10-foot-tall statue of him stands just a few blocks from Elijah Pierce Avenue.

Honorable mention: Janet Echelman’s sculpture Current (2023), made up of 78 miles of twine that has been tied into half a million knots, floats high above a downtown intersection (at Gay and High Streets) that I found to be mostly empty at night, allowing you to walk along underneath it. The work is illuminated at night, highlighting its red, blue, pink, and purple strands that mimic the gentle undulations of a jellyfish in motion.

Finally, if you have some extra time, head northwest 20 minutes to Dublin, Ohio, where you can view Todd Slaughter’s Watch House and Circle Mound (1999) and Jeppe Hein’s Modified Social Benches (2008).

Food and drink

Columbus is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States, and residents are incredibly fond of the food scene. You have options, such as visiting Bethel Road, a rural, two-lane strip in northwest Columbus with outstanding restaurants owned by immigrants offering Chinese, Korean, Mexican, and Pakistani cuisine. There are the fine dining establishments in German Village or the trendy spots in Short North (and increasingly downtown). And if none of that suits you, if everything else is closed, there is always a chocolate longjohn at Buckeye Donuts. Here, a few individual highlights:

Lots of deep green plants and intimate low candlelight greet you at commune, where everything about my dinner was perfect. The chef brings together locally sourced ingredients, simple yet creative plant-centric preparations, and a funky, funky wine list. The charred savoy cabbage (with gigante beans, sun-dried tomato ’nduja, ceci crisps, and thyme) is all I ever wanted on a plate.

Momo Ghar is a family-owned Himalayan restaurant with a fairly simple menu: steamed Kathmandu Valley–style dumplings with chicken, Tibetan dumplings stuffed with ground pork and cabbage, or veggie dumplings with seasoned potatoes. Add in flat bread and alu dum, a Nepali-style potato salad, and those are your options. Slather the juicy dumplings in the spicy signature sauce and enjoy, just like Guy Fieri once did.

It was a chilly night outside when I rolled up to the bar at Chapman’s Eat Market for dinner. Instantly things warmed up. The restaurant combines a comforting Midwestern feel with an inspired menu drawn from around the world. Get yourself an order of General Tso’s cauliflower and a Oaxacan Old Fashioned.

In the morning it’s Parable Café, a beautiful coffee shop with heaps of houseplants and tons of light from the sizable windows, even on a gloomy day. Grab a sesame miso caramel latte or a ceremonial matcha and pair it with a “wham bam thank you yam,” a bruléed marshmallow and candied yam sauce. The shop has long worked to pay a livable wage to its employees and to offer coffee or food to those without means. Come back when the sun goes down for Parable After Dark Cocktail Bar. I’m especially fond of what happens when concepts crossover, such as in the Tropic Thunder, which blends rishi matcha, pineapple rum, key lime, and coconut milk.

Any place with Swick Wines on the menu is a place for me. I went to the Bottle Shop for a glass of wine but came back later in the night for the classic cocktail menu. A cold Toronto was basically an old fashioned with some bittersweet fernet. This place also serves a mean Port Flip, a mixture of cognac, tawny port, and a whole egg. With a proper shake, the ingredients emulsify, turning frothy like a boozy milkshake. It’s a perfect, festive way to finish the night, or in this case, my trip to Columbus.