Columbus Celebrates Diversity

With one year to go until the Columbus' Bicentennial, the Rhodes Tower exhibition organizers propose to spotlight Columbus' tremendous diversity, past and present, of people and place.

Thirty plus local artists interpret the many ways “Columbus Celebrates Diversity” in an exhibition to run during the month of October at the Rhodes State Office Tower. This is the third year of Columbus-themed exhibitions at the Rhodes, leading up the city's Bicentennial in 2012. Artworks will include painting (watercolor, acrylic, and oil); fiber, stone sculpture, pastel and pencil, photography, collage, and digital compositions

Diversity means different things to different people.

Just what it means to a group of local artists will be on display during the month of October at the Rhodes State Office Tower, 30 E. Broad St Columbus OH.

The show, “Columbus Celebrates Diversity,” continues concept co-curators Tom Baillieul and Jim Siemer began to develop back in 2009 to serve as a kind of build-up to next year’s bicentennial celebration for the city.

As it turned out, the Rhodes Tower was booked in October 2009, so that first Columbus-themed art exhibition, called “Crossroads of Ohio,” took place in September.

Last year’s show was entitled “Ohio’s Hometown.”

“Artists were asked to depict some aspect of Columbus’ tremendous diversity, past and present, of people and place,” the Clintonville resident wrote in announcing the show. “Columbus is an exciting place to live, diverse in its many neighborhoods: Clintonville, German Village, Italian Village, Victorian Village, Olde Town East, Franklinton, Linden, the University District. This diversity can be extended into the past with Fly Town where immigrants new to America settled and created a rich cultural stew of music, dress, language and beliefs – along with Mt Vernon Avenue and Poindexter Village, chronicled by Aminah Robinson. Columbus has a diversity of music, with a long and vibrant tradition of jazz, being a major stopover on the rail lines radiating from Chicago, St. Louis and New York. Equally venerable is Columbus’ association with brass bands and open-air band performances. And then of course, there is the symphony, the opera, Celtic pub bands, bluegrass, salsa, ska; you name it, it’s here.