The Power of Her: A Conversation with ArtsWave’s Alecia Kintner
Cincinnati is a city alive with art, music, and theatre. Art is the heartbeat of our culture. It is present in every corner of the city, and it didn’t happen by accident. ArtsWave (formerly the Fine Arts Fund) focuses on funding the future of the arts and bringing it into the community. Alecia Kintner, president and CEO of ArtsWave, strives to keep the organization’s focus on what Cincinnati needs from the arts. That focus also helps ArtsWave make its funding decisions. We sat down with Alecia to discuss the upcoming POWER OF HER project and what that looks like for the community.
Interview by Abbey Bruce. Photography by Chelsie Walter.
Can you tell us about ArtsWave?
In 1927, Anna Sinton Taft and her husband, Charles Phelps Taft, had the desire to create an endowment of the arts for the future. This endowment was for the benefit of things yet to be imagined in the arts. They challenged Cincinnati residents pledging that they would donate $1 million if the residents raised $2.5 million. That goal was met quickly, and the effort became one of the first arts endowments in the United States, sourced from donations by private citizens. In 1949, the business community decided to follow the successful fundraising model of United Way to create a combined annual campaign for the arts. We are the largest community arts campaign in the United States as well as the first. Ten years ago, the organization rebranded, and changed its mission and process for allocating and investing in the arts.
What is the POWER OF HER project?
There are about 15 arts organizations that come together to discuss opportunities, to build trust, and to talk about things that are complicated and challenging. Patty Beggs, Harry Fath general director and CEO of the Cincinnati Opera, brought up that 2020 is not only the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, but also marks milestone anniversaries for many of our arts organizations. The Cincinnati Opera is turning 100, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is turning 125.
POWER OF HER is an 18-month collaboration with programming and umbrella marketing provided by ArtsWave that encompasses art tied to women’s voices: female artists, choreographers, musicians, visual artists, leadership, characters in plays and books, and more. We also address historical women issues such as not having the right to vote in 1920, and contemporary women’s issues like women’s rights in the 21st century.
POWER OF HER kicks off in February. It is being chaired by Jill McGruder from Western & Southern Financial Group. Throughout the campaign, we will be spotlighting different activities and events, including performances by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, theatre productions by Know Theatre of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, and art exhibits at the Taft Museum of Art.
We also have a book coming out this June called “Imagineers, Impresarios, Inventors: Cincinnati’s Arts and the POWER OF HER.” It will be published by Orange Frazer Press which is a woman-owned publishing company located in Wilmington, Ohio.
One of our incredible community women, Kathy Merchant, who was the former president and CEO of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation and one of the founding members of ArtsWave Women’s Leadership Roundtable came to me with the idea. She wanted to do a book, and I said, “Let’s do the book and tie it to women.”
We planned on writing about 100 women who shaped Cincinnati’s art legacy. We crowdsourced names, and when we looked at the incredible number of submissions and who the people were, we ended up doing profiles on 200 women. The book consists of 122 different essays, with 34 writers involved.
How can readers find POWER OF HER events and learn more about ArtsWave?
You can check out our event calendar; visit our website; or follow us on Twitter or Instagram. If you are interested in getting insider information, you can become a member for $75, which includes benefits like discounted tickets, “buy one, get one” deals, and exclusive deals around Cincinnati.