Immersing Ourselves in Art & Architecture in Cincinnati

The Cincinnati Museum Center was of interest to us more for the building than for the museums located within it. But since it was free with our museum membership, we still took a quick spin through.

The building is the Cincinnati Union Terminal, which was built in 1927. It is a truly beautiful Art Deco building inside and out, considered to be one of the finest examples of railway architecture in the United States. Back when train travel was a way of life, six railroads terminated at the station, which included numerous buildings and utility structures including a power plant and water treatment facility! It had the capacity to service 216 trains per day.

As train traffic decreased thanks the to the Great Depression and then the rise of the automobile, less and less of the space was utilized.

Eventually train service ceased altogether in 1972, with various attempts to revitalize the space over the years. It sat dormant from 1972-1980, then a shopping mall gave it a go until 1985.

Finally, it opened in 1990 as the Museum Center after a massive transformation that cost $33 million, and Amtrak even returned in 1991.

The complex includes five organizations: Cincinnati History Museum; Museum of Natural History & Science; Robert D. Lindner Family Omnimax Theater; Cincinnati History Library and Archives; and Duke Energy Children’s Museum.

Repurposing the terminal to house these organizations is a really creative and interesting use of space. We particularly liked the juxtaposition of dinosaur skeletons under the immense terminal ceiling.

I have been looking forward to the “Monet: The Immersive Experience” for a long time.

After all, Monet is my favorite artist, and we’d really enjoyed the van Gogh immersive experience we’d seen back when we lived in Connecticut in one of those houses that wasn’t on wheels.

Well, I was disappointed, and I don’t think it’s because I’d built up too much in my mind. There was really just one room of “immersive” experience. Leading up to that was a room with panels about his life, and a room inspired his studio space in Giverny with lots of paintings (which was admittedly kinda cool).

One entire room was devoted to a couple of bridges that had been over-decorated with supplies from Michael’s. I think these were meant to be representative of the bridges on Monet’s grounds in Giverny, where he painted his famous lily ponds.

The thing of it is, the actual bridges at Giverny don’t have canopies, and they aren’t covered with climbing flowers. What was the point of this room? It felt like just a little bit of effort could have had a better effect.

How much did I pay for this experience, again? Best not to think about it.

I was not impressed with the “immersive” videos. When we had seen the van Gogh exhibit, they broke the paintings down and built them back up – it felt like you got an idea of how they were constructed. I was really almost depending on seeing that same effect here in the Monet Experience, but they didn’t do it at all.

The van Gogh immersive also brought the paintings to life by having the water shimmer in the moonlight and the wheat in the field blow in the wind. There was very little of that here.

The videos felt like they were done by interns. It was mostly just “special effects” (and I said that loosely) morphing from one painting scene to another.

See the accompanying video to see what I mean. This is as exciting as it gets. Honestly, I feel like this is what I would have come up with if asked to do it, and I’m an accountant for crying out loud.