Robert O’Neal: Open to All

April 28-September 24, 2023
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati

As a life-long resident of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, Robert O’Neal (b. 1940, Covington, KY; d. 2018, Cincinnati, OH) used his work to document the people he came across throughout his life, representing the joys, struggles, and rich histories that pervade Black culture. Many of his works commemorate local activists alongside notable figures like Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, bridging a gap between the past and the present, the national and the local, to build connections across vast times and spaces. As the first major survey on the artist, Robert O’Neal: Open to All features paintings, drawings, and photographs that he produced between the 1960s-2010s, along with a collection of archival materials.

O’Neal also focused on community practice throughout his lifetime, making him a fixture of the region’s local arts community. Merging art with activism, his socially-engaged practice and grassroots organizing worked to support Black artists, fight for disability rights, and advocate for the unhoused. In 1968—a pivotal time in the fight for civil rights and racial justice—he founded the New American Art Gallery, one of the first creative spaces on Main Street, and United Self-Expression, a local artist collective that made significant contributions to the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. He also established the Arts Consortium, a community center that provided accessible arts education and programming to the West End neighborhood for more than thirty years. His lifelong dedication to the city of Cincinnati earned him the honorary title of “The Over-the-Rhine Mayor.” This long overdue retrospective highlights O’Neal’s critical contributions to the city of Cincinnati and the larger art world.