First Solo Museum Exhibition of Cincinnati Modernist Edie McKee Harper Opening at Taft Museum of Art

Landmark show includes more than 100 artworks and new scholarship showcasing long overlooked woman artist

The Taft Museum of Art, in partnership with the Charley and Edie Harper Art Studio, presents Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play, on view October 17, 2026, through January 24, 2027. This landmark exhibition marks the first solo museum presentation devoted to the work of Edie McKee Harper (1922–2010), a Cincinnati-based artist whose prolific career spanned more than six decades and a remarkable range of media. Accompanied by a comprehensive catalog and new scholarly research, the exhibition brings together more than 100 works offering a long-overdue exploration of the breadth and depth of Harper’s distinctive artistic vision and her lasting contributions to mid-20th century American art and design.

Modernist at Play traces Harper’s creative journey through themes she returned to throughout her career: the American landscape, abstraction, storytelling, and the animal world—especially domestic cats. Resisting easy categorization, her work reflects a sustained artistic inquiry across paintings, photographs, prints, enamels, weavings, and illustrations. While her husband and lifelong creative partner, the artist and illustrator Charley Harper, has long been celebrated, Edie Harper’s work has remained underexamined. This exhibition seeks to correct that imbalance, highlighting the playful yet sophisticated imagery that defined her practice and establishing her rightful place within the canon of American modernism.

Given the limited scholarship previously published on Harper’s oeuvre, the accompanying catalog represents a significant contribution to the field. It includes three new essays by the exhibition’s co-curators examining aspects of her work never before studied in depth: Taft curator Tamera Lenz Muente explores Harper’s photography and its influence on her approach to abstraction; associate curator Ann Glasscock focuses on Harper’s enamels and weavings, highlighting her modernist, multidisciplinary practice; and assistant curator Angela Fuller examines the role of narrative in Harper’s paintings and illustrations. The catalog also features an essay by the artist’s son, Brett Harper, and a detailed chronology authored by research fellow Tegan Recker.

“Because of the multimedia nature of Edie Harper’s career, the Taft assembled a team of three curators to delve deeply into her work,” says Muente. “What an honor it was to have access to the Charley and Edie Harper Papers to understand the development of her art, especially the opportunity to examine her own personal journals. We spent more than two years working with Brett Harper and his team to study Edie Harper’s work, interviewing people who knew her personally and professionally, and diving into local archives. We are thrilled to share what we’ve learned about this adventurous, curious, and brilliant artist who deserves wider acclaim.”  

“I want people to know that Edie was a master of multiple art media,” says Brett Harper. “A rare achievement, but she pulled it off with consummate skill but also with endearing playfulness.” Harper continues, “As Edie’s son, I feel an obligation to her to show the world that she was a brilliant artist. To raise me and maintain the Harper household, she sacrificed a significant amount of art that she might have produced. It remains my conviction that she stood toe-to-toe with Charley as an essential artist.”

More About the Exhibition

Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play traces Harper’s entire career, beginning with a selection of early works that show the influences of modern art, including Cubism and Surrealism, which was being exhibited in Cincinnati regularly during the 1940s while she was studying at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. After her marriage to Charley Harper in 1947, the couple embarked on a honeymoon that sparked Edie Harper’s ongoing interest in the American landscape, represented in the exhibition by photographs, paintings, and cut-paper collage works.  

The exhibition explores Harper’s approaches to abstraction through multiple media, including photographs, paintings, enamels, and fiber art. Harper used her camera to gather inspiration and to create evocative compositions from the world around her, once stating, “I have come to regard photography as an art form equal in importance and satisfaction to painting.” In 1960, Harper joined the Weavers Guild of Greater Cincinnati and began exploring fiber art, creating tapestries that reveal her interest in color harmonies, strong lines, and open shapes. The following year, the Contemporary Arts Center featured her abstract photographs in a solo show.

Storytelling was equally important to Harper. The exhibition features narrative works based on biblical stories, each with a playful twist, as well as paintings influenced by Harper’s own childhood and her experiences raising her son. Often accompanied by pun-filled texts written by Harper, her expressive portrayals of the animal world—especially her beloved cats—reveal her astute observations of feline behavior, filled with the sense of play that marks Harper’s own brand of modernist style.  

For more information, visit taftmuseum.org

Image shown: Edie McKee Harper (American, 1922–2010), Crazy Cat on Crazy Quilt (Patches),
about 1990, acrylic on canvas, 11 1/8 x 17 3/4 in. Collection of Brett Harper, © Edie Harper