On Friday, March 13, 2026, the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas (MoCA-Americas), in collaboration with the Pendleton Art Center and The Annex Gallery—both rooted in Cincinnati—will mark International Women’s Day with a solo presentation by the acclaimed artist Kay Hurley, installed in the museum’s main gallery. In the Aldo Menéndez Room (Mezzanine), works by a select group of Pendleton Art Center artists—invited by Hurley for this occasion—will be presented in dialogue with the exhibition.

Further notes on Hurley’s poetics, as well as on the invited artists, will be published shortly. For now, we begin with her immediate local context.

Today, the Pendleton Art Center (PAC) stands among Cincinnati’s most visible creative hubs, housed in an eight-story industrial building completed in 1909. According to the institution, the structure originated as a warehouse connected to shoe manufacturing, and throughout the twentieth century it passed through successive hands and uses as the city’s urban economy shifted.

In the 1950s, the building was acquired by The John Shillito Company and operated as its main warehouse; after that industrial chapter waned and closed, the property remained vacant for years. A decisive turn came when it was purchased by The Verdin Company and reimagined as a site for studios and cultural life: the PAC opened in 1991 and steadily expanded as an ecosystem of working artists’ studios, reaching a scale that made it a local touchstone.

Over time, the Pendleton Art Center has consolidated into a “vertical city” of artistic production—an exceptional concentration of active studios, regular public open-house events, and direct circulation between artists and community. In its current materials, the PAC describes itself as home to the “world’s largest collection of artists under one roof,” and locates its headquarters at 1310 Pendleton Street, emphasizing both public access and the experience of moving floor by floor through fully functioning studios.