Next year at this time, if I lived within 600 miles of Fountain Square, all I'd want for Christmas would be a trip to Cincinnati.

In December 2003, I would happily spend a weekend here on museum overload. Lured by St. Peter and the Vatican at Cincinnati Museum Center, I'd check out Cincinnati Art Museum's new wing, the Taft Museum of Art renovation and Zaha Hadid's eye-catching Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art.

St. Peter and the Vatican makes one of its four U.S. stops in Cincinnati (opening in December 2003) because Cincinnati Museum Center president and CEO Douglass McDonald did what a smart exec does.

He started a relationship with the show's producer (Clear Channel Exhibitions) during Titanic in 2000-01. He asked, "What's the next Big Deal?"

He stayed on it and started conversations with city and county officials, potential sponsors, the convention and visitors bureau.

What's going to be a good thing for the Museum Center is going to be a great thing for Cincinnati.

Mr. McDonald is cautiously estimating 250,000 visitors over four months for St. Peter and the Vatican.

But look no further than Memphis for the potential of the cultural event business. That city's Wonders international cultural series has scored epic numbers.

Memphis' blockbuster ways started in 1987 when 675,000 people viewed Ramses the Great.

"We don't have the realization in our community what exhibits like these can mean to a community," says Mr. McDonald.

What St. Peter and the Vatican will mean here is a minimum of $18 million in economic impact. With an expansion for the exhibit hall included in plans, the Museum Center is positioned to host more Big Deal events.

"This will put heads in beds," says Mr. McDonald. Lots of them. Because it's the only Midwest stop for St. Peter and the Vatican, Mr. McDonald expects visitors from as far away as Chicago and St. Louis.

The city puts its support behind attracting conventions, he notes. (Most of which do not translate to $18 million in economic impact.) It still doesn't understand what an investment in culture can mean.

"We need both," he's quick to say. But culture, he adds emphatically, "can be every bit as good" as a convention

Mr. McDonald is backed up by a Cincinnati Business Committee-financed study benchmarking Cincinnati's investment in the arts against nine other cities.

The report hasn't been released (it's expected by the end of the year), but one of the findings is that Cincinnati doesn't leverage its arts and culture.

Let's make working on that problem a resolution for 2003.

Farewell events: After years performing for Showboat Majestic, Children's Theatre, Northern Kentucky University Dinner Theatre, IF Theatre Collective, Footlighters and more, Isaac Turner is counting down to his departure date in May from Cincinnati and setting about doing some things he's always meant to do.

One of them is My Life Upon the Wicked Stage: A Musical Cabaret. Mr. Turner and friends will perform numbers from some of his favorites, including Meet Me in St. Louis, Pippin and Show Boat at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Monmouth Theatre (639 Monmouth St., Newport). NKU musical director Jamey Strawn will accompany.

"It's a celebration of 27 years on stage," says Mr. Turner, who first upstaged his cast mates as a 5-year-old recruited to sing "Jesus Loves Me" for a Taft High School production of The Amen Corner.

Wicked Stage tickets are $10 in advance, (859) 655-9140 and $12 at the door.

Coming up in winter, 2003 will be another Turner-Strawn collaboration, Perfect Romance.

"I started this six years ago and I want to get it done," says Mr. Turner. The revue threads show tunes and pop songs into a story line "about how there is no such thing (as a perfect romance)."

In May, Mr. Turner returns to Alaska for a summer theater season in Denali, comes home to pack his bags and will be trying his luck in New York "by October."

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com