Cincinnati’s post-war recovery depended in large measure upon the OMI, and the OMI’s national stature rested upon its community ties. From 1870 to 1888, the OMI’s fourteen Grand Expositions of Manufactures, Products, and Arts were sponsored in partnership with the city’s Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade. These spectacular events celebrated art and industry side by side with unprecedented success. Half a million people attended the third exposition in 1872; they viewed entries submitted from thirty states and brought $100,000 into the city.

The success of the Grand Expositions eventually led to the creation of Music Hall, which was built to house the May Festival Chorus in its central auditorium and the expositions in its North and South Halls—art and industry on either side. President Rutherford B. Hayes opened the 1879 Exposition at the new Music Hall. For the last of the Grand Expositions, the Centennial Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Central States, trellises of outdoor electric lights arched over the Canal (now Central Parkway), as commissioners of the Exposition arrived by gondola.

The end of the nineteenth century introduced electric lights into OMI classrooms and Electrical Studies to the Institute’s Artistic, Mechanical and Architectural departments. In 1899, the Board of Directors rededicated itself to using “modern popular” methods of instruction to strengthen the academic programs and their ties to regional industry.

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