Highlights: Decorative Arts & Design Collection

The Cincinnati Art Museum’s decorative arts and design collection includes almost 7,000 works of art. It contains furniture, glass, ceramics, metalwork, and architectural design from North America, the UK, and Europe, made between the seventeenth century and today.

Decorative arts and design objects were among the first artworks acquired by the museum when it was founded in 1881. Initially, this collection focused on objects that museum founders felt would most inspire local makers and manufacturers, such as copies of European masterworks in metal by Elkington & Co. and exemplary British ceramics produced by Royal Worcester. Soon, the collection grew to include ceramics by the Cincinnati Pottery Club and The Rookwood Pottery and glass by Louis Comfort Tiffany, among other things. Throughout the museum’s first one hundred years, important collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English silver; nineteenth-century English and European ceramics; eighteenth-century French furnishings; Cincinnati furniture and metalwork; folk art; and modern and contemporary design were added. Today, we continue to build on and out from these strengths to further diversify the artists and geographical regions represented and the stories that our collection can tell.

The decorative arts and design department uses the museum’s collection to generate new scholarship presented through exhibitions, publications, and digital projects.