CINCINNATI— The Harold C. Schott Foundation will donate $100,000 each year from 2016 to 2020— totaling $500,000— to strengthen the Cincinnati Art Museum’s special exhibitions and connected programming. This investment will help the Art Museum partner with colleagues worldwide to bring exhibitions to Cincinnati and to share art and learning opportunities with the community.

Special exhibitions provide a rare combination of exceptional art, compelling themes, and fresh scholarly insight. Developing special exhibitions, either large in scale or featuring well-known artists, presents challenges in logistics and expense which require years of advanced planning. The Harold C. Schott Foundation funds will play a critical role in showcasing these special exhibitions at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

“A multi-year commitment at this level, for this purpose, is truly empowering for the Cincinnati Art Museum,” says Cameron Kitchin, the Louis and Louise Dieterle Nippert Director. “Knowing we have a partner like the Harold C. Schott Foundation and its funding commitment allows us to pursue premier special exhibitions and bring the best of the world to Cincinnati. This gift will surely make a significant difference for both our museum and our city.”

According to L. Thomas Hiltz, chairman of the Harold C. Schott Foundation and a former Art Museum trustee, “The foundation was presented an opportunity to really make a difference for the museum and everyone who visits it. We hope that as many people as possible will enjoy these enhanced offerings over the next five years.”

Art Museum visitors will begin to benefit from this generous grant in the fall of 2016 with the opening of a special exhibition, Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth, October 15, 2016–January 8, 2017. It will feature Van Gogh artworks from museums around the world, including the Art Museum’s own Undergrowth with Two Figures. This exhibition traces the evolution of the artist’s style an interest in the sous-bois, or the forest undergrowth, through this rare group of landscape paintings. It will also include related influential art works, including major works by Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin. The museum will publish an original exhibition catalog to delve further into this new area of Van Gogh scholarship.

About the Harold C. Schott Foundation

The Harold C. Schott Foundation is a charitable organization established in 1959 in Cleveland, Ohio. It supports health organizations, cultural institutions, education and services for the handicapped throughout the United States as well as internationally, but emphasizes gifts made in Ohio.

About the Cincinnati Art Museum
The Cincinnati Art Museum is supported by the generosity of individuals and businesses that give annually to ArtsWave. The Ohio Arts Council helps fund the Cincinnati Art Museum with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. The Cincinnati Art Museum gratefully acknowledges operating support from the City of Cincinnati, as well as our members. For more information, visit cincinnatiartmuseum.org.

General admission to the Cincinnati Art Museum is always free. The museum is open Tuesday – Sunday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. cincinnatiartmuseum.org