BMA Today - Winter/Spring 2025

W i nt e r/ Spring 2025

Issue #176

BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART CELEBRATES 110 YEARS Black Earth Rising opens May 18, 2025

BMA Today

Editors

JESSICA NOVAK AMANDA SPARROW

Design and Production

NICOLE MILLER

Image Services & Rights

ANA SALAS MEGHAN JONES

Images of BMA Staff

CHRISTOPHER MYERS

BMA Today Cover Alejandro Piñeiro Bello. Viajando En La Franja Del Iris. 2024. Private Collection. © Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, courtesy Pace Gallery and KDR. Photo courtesy Pace Gallery and KDR

Baltimore Museum of Art 10 Art Museum Drive Baltimore, MD 21218-3898

HOURS & ADMISSION Wednesday, Friday through Sunday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Thursday now open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

FY25 Board of Trustees

OFFICERS James D. Thornton, Chair Clair Zamoiski Segal, Immediate Past Chair Darius Graham, Vice Chair Elizabeth Hurwitz, Vice Chair Pamela Hoehn-Saric, Secretary Paul Oostburg Sanz, Treasurer Ellen Dame, Vice President Amy Gould, Vice President Pat Lasher, Vice President John Meyerhoff, Vice President Steven Pulimood, Vice President Katherine Schulze, Vice President David Wallace, Vice President EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE James D. Thornton, Chair Clair Zamoiski Segal, Immediate Past Chair Darius Graham, Vice Chair Elizabeth Hurwitz, Vice Chair Vacant, Secretary Paul Oostburg Sanz, Treasurer Ellen Dame, Vice President Amy Gould, Vice President Pat Lasher, Vice President John Meyerhoff, Vice President Steven Pulimood, Vice President Katherine Schulze, Vice President David Wallace, Vice President Virginia K. Adams Sam Callard Amy Elias Nancy Hackerman

*Mary Hyman passed away on September 23, 2024, after serving for 19 years on the Board of Trustees.

See page 12 for reflections on Mary’s extraordinary legacy.

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BMA Today

TRUSTEES Derrick Adams Virginia K. Adams Michael Brown Adam Burch Sharon Butler Sam Callard Beverly Bentley Carroll Ellen R. Dame Amy Elias Nupur Parekh Flynn Joanne Gold Amy Gould Darius Graham Kim Mumby Green Divesh Gupta Nancy Hackerman Elizabeth Hurwitz Sherrilyn Ifill Lori N. Johnson Patricia Lasher George McCulloch John Meyerhoff Sheela Murthy Antoinette Peele

George Petrocheilos Steven Pulimood Paul Oostburg Sanz Mark Saudek Katherine Schulze Clair Zamoiski Segal Lynn Selby Michael Sherman Stuart O. Simms Anne L. Stone James D. Thornton David W. Wallace John Waters HONORARY TRUSTEES Alexander C. Baer Rheda Becker Constance R. Caplan Kathryn (Lynn) Deering Janet E. Dunn Sandra Levi Gerstung Katherine M. Hardiman Margot W. M. Heller Louise P. Hoblitzell Freeman A. Hrabowski III Mary B. Hyman* Patricia H. Joseph Susan B. Katzenberg Jeanette Kimmel Frederick Singley Koontz Jeffrey A. Legum Amy Frenkil Meadows James S. Riepe Frederica K. Saxon Jean Silber Louis B. Thalheimer David Warnock Ellen W. P. Wasserman NATIONAL TRUSTEES Sylvia de Cuevas Monroe Denton Barbara Duthuit Phillips Hathaway Joseph Holtzman Edward S. Pantzer EX-OFFICIO TRUSTEES The Honorable Bob Cassilly The Honorable Edward Rothstein The Honorable John Olszewski The Honorable Steuart Pittman The Honorable Wes Moore The Honorable Bill Henry The Honorable Calvin Ball The Honorable Brandon M. Scott The Honorable Nick Mosby Dean Christopher Celenza, KSAS

Closed Mondays and Tuesdays, New Year’s Day, Juneteenth, July 4, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day. Free general admission—for everyone, every day!

There may be a charge for certain special exhibitions.

BMA Members receive unlimited free admission to ticketed exhibitions.

Ongoing support for free admission at the BMA has been provided through generous endowment gifts from the Cohen Family Fund for Free Admission, Lord Baltimore Capital Partners, LLC, Mary J. and James D. Miller, the James S. Riepe Family Foundation, and the DLA Piper Fund.

The BMA would like to thank the following donors for their combined generosity: City of Baltimore, Citizens of Baltimore County, and Howard County Government and Howard County Arts Council. Major support is also provided in part by the Maryland State Arts Council.

ACCESSIBILITY The Zamoiski East Entrance, the Museum, and the Sculpture Garden are wheelchair-accessible. A limited number of wheelchairs are available for use free of charge. Van-accessible parking spaces are available in the BMA East and West Lots.

Please check in at the Welcome Desk in the Lobby upon arrival.

TTY/HCO 1-800-735-2964 artbma.org Facebook.com/artbma Instagram.com/baltimoremuseumofart Twitter.com/artbma YouTube.com/artbma CONTACT US Membership: 443-573-1800 General Information: 443-573-1700 General operating support is provided in part by the City of Baltimore, Maryland State Arts Council, citizens of Baltimore County, and the Howard County Government and the Howard County Arts Council.

The Citizens of Baltimore County

BMA Today is published three times a year for Members of the Baltimore Museum of Art. © 2025 Baltimore Museum of Art

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Collection Highlight

Hale Woodruff.

Normandy Landscape.

1928. Baltimore Museum of Art, Edward Joseph Gallagher III Memorial Fund, BMA 2002.279.

Art © 2025 Estate of Hale Woodruff / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Normandy Landscape Hale Woodruff In Normandy Landscape, a painting acquired by the BMA in 2002, Hale Woodruff—an artist and teacher who greatly influenced many other Black artists and worked tirelessly to create opportunities for them to exhibit their work—carefully structured the composition by applying delicate pigments in thoughtfully delineated strokes.

Stark willow trees in the foreground are set against an overcast sky, conveying the somber character of the northern French countryside.

The influence of such artists as

Paul Cézanne and Claude Monet is evident in this work, in which Woodruff played with the paint— creating texture using a palette knife and a brush and choosing to restrict his range of colors to subdued grays, blues, and greens.

Born in Cairo, Illinois, in 1900 and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Woodruff enjoyed a nearly six-decade career that embraced both figuration and abstraction. In 1926, he entered a painting in a show at the Harmon Foundation, an organization that presented achievement awards to

Black artists and mounted exhibitions of their art. His entry received a bronze medal and one hundred dollars in prize money. With these funds, along with other gifts raised by local supporters, he traveled to Paris to continue his art education.

There, in the City of Light, Woodruff experimented with a variety of modernist styles and paid a visit to Henry Ossawa Tanner, the celebrated African American artist, who encouraged him to continue his work.

Hale Woodruff would become one of the most influential figures

in American art history. He joined the faculty of Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University) and founded one of the first art schools in a southern Black university; to address the lack of exhibition opportunities for Black artists there, he established the Atlanta University Art Annuals. He taught at Talladega College, Alabama, before relocating to New York to teach art at New York University until his retirement. He died in 1980.

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Director’s Message

Caring for Our Community and Our Planet Ever since my early museum experiences as an undergraduate student at Johns Hopkins University, I have considered museums as places where I can challenge my mind and nourish my soul. It is now my absolute joy as a museum director to provide opportunities for visitors to have similar experiences, and I am thrilled to share with you the following new ways the BMA is growing to meet the needs of our audiences.

Last fall, we launched two programs that are beautiful examples of how museums can be a catalyst for lifelong learning and community building. Our extremely popular Baby Art Dates are multisensory tours that support language, physical, and emotional development for children ages two and under as well as provide social opportunities for children and their caregivers. Creative Connections offers adults with dementia and their care partners an opportunity to socialize while enjoying and making art. These programs draw on the increasing evidence in the field of neuroscience that making art enhances brain function by affecting brain wave patterns, emotions, and the nervous system—and observing art can stimulate the creation of new neural pathways and ways of thinking.1 Art benefits all ages, and these programs not only warm my heart but also make the case that the BMA’s mission is to serve you through the power of art.

In addition to caring for individuals, the BMA has launched its Turn Again to the Earth initiative to become better stewards of the environment. Be sure to see our new exhibitions and installations exploring the relationships between art and the environment across history and geography. We are also in the final stages of developing a sustainability plan for the Museum, which will support our goals to reduce the BMA’s overall energy consumption and transport-related emissions.

Lastly, I am thrilled to announce that more than 20 other cultural and civic organizations have joined us as part of the citywide eco-challenge, and they too are making progress toward their own sustainability goals.

What are your goals for 2025? I hope Turn Again to the Earth inspires you to consider ways you can also contribute to the protection of our environment and that you give yourself the gift of art as often as possible. I look forward to seeing you in the galleries. Don’t hesitate to say hello!

Asma Naeem Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director

1. American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine

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PHOTO BY ABIGAIL GRUSKIN

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By The Numbers

This past fall, the BMA embarked on an ambitious initiative, Turn Again to the Earth. Centered on the environment, the museum-wide undertaking encourages conversation and action around climate change and the role of the museum.

Turn Again to the Earth takes its name from the writing of environmental activist Rachel Carson:

“In these troubled times it is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.”

Turn Again to the Earth’s suite of exhibitions continues through January of 2026. A sustainability plan for the BMA’s continued path to environmentally friendly practices will be published this spring, and a citywide eco-challenge led by the Museum is ongoing.

Turn Again to the Earth is generously supported by the Cohen Opportunity Fund, the Eileen Harris Norton Foundation, Johns Hopkins University & Medicine, and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.

Right, above: Installation view of Justen Leroy: Lay Me Down in Praise exhibition at Art + Practice. September 17–January 21, 2023. Los Angeles, CA. Photo: Joshua White.

Courtesy of Art + Practice; Right, below: Claes Jansz Visscher. Rustic Buildings beside a River. (Detail). c. 1605-1615. Baltimore Museum of Art, Gift of Maria Lovell Eaton and Mrs. Charles R. Weld, BMA 1932.73.137.1

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channels make up the video Lay Me Down in Praise by Justen Leroy. This recent acquisition addresses Black environmentalism through sound and earth. Slow-moving footage of volcanic eruptions, glaciers melting, and turbulent seas meld with a transfixing soundtrack. Inspired by melisma—a vocal technique combining a single word with multiple notes—Leroy carefully wove together references to the Black music traditions of blues, R&B, gospel, and jazz.

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eco-friendly supply-chain practices are embraced by Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen: sourcing local ingredients for seasonal menu offerings; transforming invasive species into innovative dishes; cultivating produce and herbs onsite in Gertie’s Garden; purchasing ingredients from the 32nd Street Farmers’ Market; ordering restaurant supplies from Feeser’s of Hershey, Pennsylvania, a nearby family business; and buying sustainable paper products from H.C. Walterhoefer, a family business that has operated in Baltimore since the 1800s.

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works of art included in the exhibition Watershed: Transforming the Landscape in Early Modern Dutch Art explore the role of water and landscape in defining the early modern Dutch Republic from the perspective of the water’s edge. This imagery invites reflection on Baltimore, a port city.

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exhibitions and installations capture the relationships between art and the environment. Look for the Turn Again to the Earth icon (at left) on your next visit to find exhibitions, audio resources, touch samples, and more. civic and cultural organizations in the region have joined the citywide eco-challenge, led by the BMA, as of early January 2025. These partners are embracing environment-related conversations and sustainable plans.

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New Exhibitions

Air Quality: The Influence of Smog on European Modernism Through February 22, 2026 This focused exhibition explores the relationship between burning fossil fuels—namely, coal—and the emergence of European modernism. Drawing on research conducted by climate scientists and art historians, the exhibition presents a range of paintings and works on paper by Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, James McNeill Whistler, and others to explore the ways that their artistic practices and style emerged, in part, in response to widespread pollution in London and Paris.

Curated by Kevin Tervala, Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator.

This exhibition is part of the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative.

Watershed: Transforming the Landscape in Early Modern Dutch Art Through July 27, 2025 In the early modern Dutch Republic, the water’s edge was a site of rich and often fraught ideas, where environmental, economic, political, and social narratives came to the fore. The shoreline also served as a site of immense inspiration for Dutch artists such as Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Salomon van Ruysdael, among many others. Landscapes depicting harbors, trade, travel, and leisure abounded, as did the production of maps, still lifes, and portraits.

This exhibition features 42 paintings, prints, and drawings from the BMA’s collection, as well as rare books on loan from Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries. Together, these images offer insight into the identity of the young Dutch Republic and examine the concept of the water’s edge as a pivotal means for understanding the historic relationship between people, the environment, and climate change. Watershed seeks to provide insight into not only our 21st-century challenges but also how such historical perspectives can help inform our modern-day relationships to land and water, including our local environment in Baltimore, a city that is inextricably linked to the water.

Curated by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, Curator and Department Head of European Painting and Sculpture.

This exhibition is supported by Dutch Culture USA, part of the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Netherland-America Foundation.

This exhibition is part of the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative.

Above: Jan Josephsz van Goyen. View of Rhenen. (Detail).

1656. Baltimore Museum of Art, The Mary Frick Jacobs Collection, BMA 1938.209

Above: Norbert Goeneutte. View of St. Lazare Railway Station, Paris. (Detail). 1887. Baltimore Museum of Art, The George A. Lucas Collection, purchased with funds from the State of Maryland, Laurence and Stella Bendann Fund, and contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations throughout the Baltimore community, BMA 1996.45.118

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New Exhibitions

Earth as Medium: Extracting Art from Nature April 6–August 17, 2025 Above: Unidentified Pende Artist. Gitenga Mask. Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mid-20th century. Baltimore Museum of Art, Purchased as the gift of Amy Gould and Matthew Polk, Gibson Island, Maryland, BMA 2015.148

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BMA Today

Art is, at its core, grounded in the extraction of nature. Artworks are made of and made through the transformation of earth, air, light, animals, and plants. This focused exhibition foregrounds the natural materials used to make all artworks and tells a history of art making’s relationship to the earth— from historic sustainability to exploitative practice and sustainable futures.

Spanning the 14th through 21st centuries and representing cultures from around the world, this exhibition of

approximately 20 objects includes works produced through a communal relationship with nature. It also features artworks created by the extraction of materials for industry, leisure, and even explicit domination over nature.

Co-curated by Brittany Luberda, Anne Stone Associate Curator of Decorative Arts, and Kevin Tervala, Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Chief Curator.

This exhibition is part of the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative.

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Baker Artist Awards April 27–July 27, 2025 The 2025 Baker Artist Awards exhibition at the BMA showcases the work of five artists: 2019 winner Selin Balci, 2023 winners Oletha DeVane and Jordan Tierney, and 2024 winners Kelley Bell and Stephen Towns. These artists—who span generations and whose works embrace myriad media and styles—are grounded in histories and stories that relate to spirituality, place, and identity and are deeply connected to the Baltimore region, its ecology, and people. The themes and narratives presented in this group exhibition also resonate with the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative.

The Baker Artist Portfolios and associated awards were established by the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund and are a program of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.

Curated by Katie Cooke, Manager of Curatorial Affairs, and Antoinette Roberts, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art. This exhibition is generously funded by the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund.

Below: Installation view of the 2022 Baker Artist Awards.

Photo by Maximilian Franz

Crosscurrents: Works from the Contemporary Collection Opening February 26, 2025 In 2025, all Contemporary Wing galleries will be reinstalled according to themes that range from the environment and ecology to social protest, cohabitation, and migration. Artworks include a new commission by Abigail Lucien, collection cornerstones such as Robert Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic CII (1965) situated in dialogue with Nari Ward’s Peace Keeper (1995/2020), as well as recent acquisitions on view for the first time, such as Justen Leroy’s Lay Me Down in Praise (2022) and Shahzia Sikander’s Touchstone (2021). A newly commissioned work by Dala Nasser will debut later this year. Spanning mosaic, sound sculpture, everyday objects repurposed into installations, video, ceramics, painting, and furniture, the works on view invite close attention to the artist’s materials.

Co-curated by Jessica Bell Brown, former BMA Curator of Contemporary Art, Cecilia Wichmann, Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art, and Leila Grothe, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, with Antoinette Roberts, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, and Oscar Flores-Montero, Curatorial Assistant for Contemporary Art. This installation is made possible by the Suzanne F. Cohen Exhibition Fund.

Above: Shahzia Sikander. Touchstone. 2021. Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Fund established with exchange funds from Gifts of Dr. and Mrs. Edgar F. Berman, Equitable Bank, N.A., Geoffrey Gates, Sandra O. Moose, National Endowment for the Arts, Lawrence Rubin, Philip M. Stern, and Alan J. Zakon, BMA 2023.227. © Shahzia Sikander.

Photo courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles. Photo: Andrea Rossetti

Baltimore Heroes from BelairEdison and Johnston Square March 29–April 6, 2025 Organized by Maryland State Senator Cory McCray, this exhibition celebrates individuals who have selflessly served their communities of Belair-Edison and Johnston Square.

Portraits by artist Mary Jo Messenger shine a light on the unsung heroes of everyday life who quietly enrich both individual lives and the collective spirit of Baltimore.

Mary Jo Messenger. Regina Hammond.

2024. Courtesy of the artist

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New Exhibitions

Black Earth Rising May 18–September 21, 2025 The splendor of the natural world is explored by some of today’s most celebrated artists of color and Native identity in Black Earth Rising, the spring’s most anticipated exhibition.

Each of these monumental paintings, sculptures, and films demonstrates a form of resisting social and environmental injustices and reclaiming connections to the natural environment against the legacy of European settlement of the New World. Among the artists featured are Firelei Báez, Alejandro Piñero Bello, Teresita Fernández, Sky Hopinka, Tyler Mitchell, Wangechi Mutu, and Yinka Shonibare.

The show takes its title from terra preta, Portuguese for “black earth,” which refers to a type of fertile soil created by ancient Indigenous civilizations in the Amazon basin thousands of years ago. Recently rediscovered by scientists, it remains more fertile than ordinary land.

The exhibition is guest curated by Ekow Eshun, who has been at the heart of international creative culture for several decades, curating exhibitions, 10

BMA Today

authoring books, presenting documentaries, and chairing high-profile lectures. His work stretches the span of identity, style, masculinity, art, and culture.

Eshun rose to prominence as a trailblazer in British culture as the first Black editor of a major magazine in the U.K. (Arena in 1997) and continued to break ground as the first Black director of a major arts organization, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (2005–2010).

Eshun leads one of the world’s most famous public art projects as Chairman of the group that commissions works for the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square. In July 2022, Eshun curated In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery. The landmark exhibition of visionary Black artists explored myth, science fiction, and Afrofuturism. His recent exhibition, The Time Is Always Now, is a study of the Black figure and its representation in contemporary art that opened at the National Portrait Gallery in London and is traveling to multiple venues in the U.S.

Eshun’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, Esquire, and Wired.

For Black Earth Rising, the curator and author has produced a compelling and thought-provoking exhibition catalog (Thames & Hudson, 2025), featuring works by more than 150 contemporary artists. Read an excerpt from the book’s poignant introduction on page 18.

Members, reserve your free tickets starting Earth Day, April 22, at artbma.org/blackearth.

Guest curated by writer and curator Ekow Eshun with support from Katie Cooke, Manager of Curatorial Affairs.

This exhibition is part of the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative.

Above: Wangechi Mutu. My Cave Call (still). 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery

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Upcoming

Deconstructing Nature: Environmental Transformation in the Lucas Collection August 27, 2025–January 4, 2026 More than 50 works on paper investigate how European and American artists both documented and contributed to the transformation of the environment into an industrial resource to be hoarded or shared. Drawn from the BMA’s George A. Lucas Collection, this exhibition of 19th-century art foregrounds the ecological issues at stake in these works and opens up new ways of understanding extractive relationships among people, including imperialism and capitalism. Deconstructing Nature is organized thematically,

focusing on five specific environments and the ways artists explored them in their work: The Desert, The Forest, The Field, The City, and The Studio.

Born and raised in Baltimore, George A. Lucas (1824–1909) spent most of his adult life immersed in the Parisian art world and amassed a personal collection of nearly 20,000 works of art. In 1996, the BMA, with funds from the State of Maryland and the generosity of numerous individuals in the community, purchased the George A. Lucas Collection, which had been on extended

loan to the Museum for more than 60 years.

Exhibition co-curator Joanna Karlgaard, BMA Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, notes, “The George A. Lucas Collection is a treasure trove of 19th-century European and American art. We’re thrilled to be thinking about works from this important collection in a new way—one that centers on conceptions of nature and ecological issues. And visitors will be able to see many works that have never before been on view at the BMA.”

Co-curated by Joanna Karlgaard, Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and Robin Owen Joyce, Assistant Curator of Academic Engagement.

This exhibition is supported by the Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff Fund of the Baltimore Community Foundation.

This exhibition is part of the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative.

Above: Eugène-Stanislas-Alexandre Bléry.

The Large Trunk of a Beech Tree. (Detail). 1862.

Baltimore Museum of Art, The George A. Lucas Collection, purchased with funds from the State of Maryland, Laurence and Stella Bendann Fund, and contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations throughout the Baltimore community, BMA 1996.48.227

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Featured

Remembering Mary Hyman Honorary Trustee and a member of countless BMA committees, Mary Bloom Hyman passed away on September 23, 2024, at the age of 97.

Mary’s immeasurable contributions to the Museum ensure that her legacy will have a resounding effect for generations.

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BMA Today

A truly engaged philanthropist, Mary gave her time, energy, and support in numerous ways to those causes most dear to her heart, such as the BMA, where she served on its Board of Trustees from 2005 to 2012 and became an Honorary Trustee in 2012.

During that time, she was a member of many committees, including the Executive Committee, Finance Committee, and Learning and Engagement Advisory Committee. She also served on the Painting, Sculpture, and Graphic Arts Accessions Committee, where she truly embraced the Museum’s commitment to expanding the canon of art history.

Mary and her husband Sig were passionate champions of American art, and she gave generously from their outstanding collection. In 2009, 2023, and 2024, she made an indelible impact on the Museum with her gifts totaling 106 exceptional artworks. Within this remarkable group were significant examples of sculpture, painting, works on paper, textiles, and photography. These gifts greatly enhanced the diversity of the BMA’s holdings of American art and transformed the BMA’s collection of American modernism from the first half of the 20th century.

“The gifts from Mary’s thoughtful and charming collection include dynamic scenes of urban life by artists such as John Sloan, Everett Shinn, Martha Ryther, and Jerome Myers as well as lyrical abstractions by Marguerite Zorach, Stuart Davis, and Dorothy Dehner, among others,” said Virginia Anderson, Senior Curator of American Art “These works, which are so full of color and life and action, reflect Sig and Mary’s civic and cultural commitment to art and education.”

Since 2008, the Sigmund M. and Mary B. Hyman Fund has supported countless acquisitions and exhibitions of American art, including By Their Creative Force: American Women Modernists (2019–2020), Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA (2022–2023), and most recently, Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum.

A lifelong learner, Mary majored in sociology and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Goucher College in 1971 and earned a master’s degree in adult education from Johns Hopkins University in 1977. She then went to work for the Maryland Science Center (MSC) for two decades, eventually becoming its director of education. It was through this role that she also became involved with the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth

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(CTY), designing the first science curriculum for its summer programs. Later, Mary accepted a position at Loyola College, where she coordinated science education programs at its Institute for Childcare Education until her retirement in 2016.

She enjoyed an active retirement, serving not only in various capacities at the BMA but also on the boards of Goucher College, the Maryland Association of Science Teachers, CTY, the Scientific Council of the Maryland Academy of Sciences, the Maryland School-Age Child Care Alliance, and Franklin & Marshall College.

“Mary’s dedication to the BMA was wholehearted, as she fully believed in making museums sites of joy, laughter, and learning.”

Everyone who had the pleasure of knowing Mary can attest to her steadfast philanthropy—and to her irrepressible sense of humor. Her loss will be felt in many ways: from her perfect delivery of one-liners to her unwavering advocacy for education. As Asma Naeem, Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director of the BMA, put it, “Mary’s dedication to the BMA was wholehearted, as she fully believed in making museums sites of joy, laughter, and learning. She genuinely cared about the impact she could make as a Trustee and will long be remembered for her enthusiasm for American art, her generosity of spirit, and especially her dedication to education. I will miss her dearly as one of my most favorite supporters and friends.”

Left page: Courtesy of Loyola University Maryland/Nick Alexopulos, ‘03, MBA ‘16; Left, top: Photo by Maximilian Franz; Left, center: Photo

by Virginia Anderson; Left, bottom: Esphyr Slobodkina. Elements of Music. c. 1950. Baltimore Museum of Art, The Sigmund M. and Mary B. Hyman Fund for American Art, BMA 2022.132. © Courtesy of the Slobodkina Foundation

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Featured

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THE SPECTACULAR EVENING HONORED BMA TRUSTEE SHERRILYN IFILL AND ARTISTS SIR JOHN AKOMFRAH AND LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER

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To the ear- and eye-catching rhythm and swagger of the Baltimore Twilighters Marching Band, BMA Ball guests ascended the steps of the Merrick Historic Entrance for a special night honoring acclaimed artists Sir John Akomfrah and LaToya Ruby Frazier and renowned civil rights lawyer and BMA Trustee Sherrilyn Ifill. R&B GRAMMY® winner John Legend congratulated Ifill via video and sang “Happy Birthday” to the BMA to mark 110 years since its founding.

In inspiring remarks, Governor Wes Moore recounted some of the Museum’s significant milestones and spoke to how Maryland and Baltimore thrive when the arts community does.

Following a seated dinner in the BMA’s celebrated collection galleries, guests took to the dance floor, where the After Party was in full swing with beats by DJ Tanz and step shows by the Lethal Ladies and Morganettes.

The BMA Ball and After Party raised a record-setting $1 million.

The evening’s remarkable fundraising milestone was made possible through the generous support of donors and sponsors at all levels. Their contributions will help the Museum to continue its outstanding artistic and educational programs—such as the Turn Again to the Earth environmental initiative—and expand upon its mission of fostering artistic excellence and social equity for the benefit of communities throughout Baltimore and beyond.

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PHOTOS BY MAXIMILIAN FRANZ UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

BOTTOM LEFT: PHOTO BY E. BRADY ROBINSON, BALTIMORE MAGAZINE; TOP RIGHT: PERMISSION FROM THE BALTIMORE SUN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Featured

HONORARY CO-CHAIRS GOVERNOR WES MOORE AND FIRST LADY DAWN MOORE MAYOR KURT SCHMOKE AND PATRICIA L. SCHMOKE, MD R&B GRAMMY® WINNER JOHN LEGEND

BMA BALL CO-CHAIRS

BMA BALL COMMITTEE

AMY ELIAS

ALEXANDER BAER

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DIAMANTIS XYLAS

JAMES D. THORNTON

MICHAEL SHERMAN

KWAME WEBB

BMA BALL 2024 SPONSORS AND DONORS DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN GEORGE PETROCHEILOS AND DIAMANTIS XYLAS PATRICIA AND MARK JOSEPH, THE SHELTER FOUNDATION SHERMAN FAMILY FOUNDATION TONI AND DWIGHT BUSH, JANICE AND RICHARD ROBERTS, AND ANN DIBBLE JORDAN

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Featured

Joshua Johnson Council Celebrates 40 Years One of the nation’s oldest museum groups devoted to African American and Black Diaspora art supports artists, programs, and acquisitions.

Above: 2024 Joshua Johnson Council artist in residence, Ainsley Burrows. Photo by Mitro Hood; Right top: Photo by unidentified photographer; Right, bottom left: Photo by Maximilian Franz; Right, bottom right; Photo by unidentified photographer

Baltimore artist Ainsley Burrows found a welcoming art family through the Summer Artist-in-Residence program of the Joshua Johnson Council (JJC).

“The program gave me more than just a place to create—it gave me community, intellectual growth, and a deeper connection to my art,” Burrows said recently while reflecting on the council and its impact.

In 2022, the JJC—one of the nation’s oldest museum groups devoted to African American and Black diaspora art—launched the residency program jointly with the BMA and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). It is designed to support and elevate a rtists of African descent by offering them the opportunity to develop new work, engage with the community, and participate in public programming.

Over the course of eight weeks in June and July, selected artists work in MICA’s Fred Lazarus IV Studio Center Studio; there, these creators can expand their work and its scale and deepen connections to the college community.

The council recently marked its 40th anniversary, galvanized by the success of its lively suite of programs, including JJC Talks, a conversation

series with area artists. JJC members— artists, administrators, museum professionals, collectors, and others— regularly gather online and in person for tours, talks, studio visits, panel discussions, and other events.

Founded in 1984, the JJC seeks to forge meaningful connections between the BMA and Baltimore’s African American communities by promoting and highlighting the achievements of African American artists. The council is named after Joshua Johnson, an 18th-century African American painter who lived and worked in Maryland and was the earliest documented professional African American painter.

Reflecting on the past and future of the council, Rose A. McNeill, JJC Chair, remarked: “The Joshua Johnson Council has been a beacon of African American culture and community at the BMA for an incredible 40 years.

May our legacy continue to inspire, educate, an enrich the lives of all who come to experience the power of art and history.”

Membership dues support and further the JJC’s mission of service.

To join the council or donate to support its vital work, visit artbma.org/jjc.

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Featured

Black Earth Rising Finding healing and liberation in our joyful and profound connections to nature Part of the Turn Again to the Earth initiative, Black Earth Rising explores the splendor of nature through paintings, sculptures, films, and works on paper by some of today’s most celebrated artists of color and Native identity, such as Frank Bowling, Sky Hopinka, and Wangechi Mutu. Even as they grapple with the impact of cultural displacement and the legacies of slavery, many of the featured artists find healing, liberation, and transcendence in nature.

Organized by guest curator and 18

BMA Today

renowned author Ekow Eshun, Black Earth Rising both sheds light on the historical trajectory of today’s climate crisis and celebrates the beauty of the natural world and our ties to it.

Black Earth Rising takes its title from terra preta, Portuguese for “black earth,” which refers to a type of very fertile soil found in the Amazon Basin. Terra preta was created through a process of intentional soil management by ancient Indigenous civilizations many thousands of years ago and was characterized by its dark

color, high fertility, and ability to retain nutrients. In the colonial period, European powers exploited it for agricultural production and economic gain, contributing to deforestation, soil degradation, and the suppression and erasure of Indigenous knowledge systems— including those related to the soil management of terra preta.

The exhibition’s themes have a particular resonance for North America, where conservationist policies and discussions about climate change have largely

remained silent on how settler tactics of forced Indigenous dispersion and the occupation of Native lands have shaped today’s environment. In urban areas, Black and Brown communities typically have been confined to underfunded inner-city zones blighted by poor air and water quality and lack of access to green space.

Works in Black Earth Rising make a connection between the economic, environmental, and social inequalities that undergird the climate crisis.

Issue #176

The exhibited artworks shift the direction of environmental discourse—by both reflecting on the persistent ramifications of colonialism and celebrating the power of nature to offer extraordinary beauty, joy, and respite. The works in Black Earth Rising are as vividly colored, dynamic, and ecstatic as they are thoughtful and moving; they inspire optimism, even as they confront the history—and future—of climate change.

A companion volume, published by Thames & Hudson, will be available in the BMA Shop in May. In the following excerpt, Eshun explains the impetus for this groundbreaking show and catalog: “Forced to endure the cruelties of slavery, many Black and Indigenous people in the Americas looked to the land as a source of resistance and refuge.

During the 17th century, for example, more than 20,000 enslaved Africans and Native peoples escaped Portuguese rule to gather in the fugitive haven of Palmares, in northeastern Brazil.

In Jamaica, communities of

maroons (runaway slaves and their descendants) controlled their own strongholds in the island’s mountainous interior.

And in the American South, many thousands fled slavery between 1700 and 1860 to live in tracts of uncultivated land in the Great Dismal Swamp which ran through Virginia and North Carolina.

For the many that could not escape, the natural world still offered the possibility of renewal.

At nights or on Sundays, in their scant free time away from the plantation, enslaved people in the Caribbean were allowed, or often required, to grow their own food. They did so on garden plots close to their quarters, or on so-called provision grounds— areas of poor-quality mountainous or stony land located at the periphery of an estate.

For enslavers, the creation of provision grounds meant a cheap way to feed a labour force.

For the enslaved, the grounds offered a rare chance of autonomy.

In addition to producing food for themselves, they were able to raise livestock, and to grow wild plants to cure ailments.

Sometimes they could raise

enough crops to sell the surplus for profit at the Sunday markets where the enslaved gathered in large numbers.

Through such labour, Afro-Caribbeans were able to take ‘control of a large part of their lives.’1 By the late 18th century, for instance, the Sunday market in Kingston, Jamaica, drew over 10,000 participants.

Trade was so vigorous, plantation owners complained that up to half of the island’s currency was in the hands of the enslaved.

And the provision grounds themselves could sometimes be sites of extraordinary abundance.

The range of foods grown in Jamaica ‘astonished all who saw it….’2 Tending crops on the provision grounds was also an opportunity for Caribbeans to gather in kinship, to eat and rest, to speak in the banned languages and practise the forbidden religious beliefs of their African homelands. The walk from the estate to the provision grounds represented a powerfully symbolic transition. ‘It was a journey back to the (African) origins … a powerful counternarrative to the oppressive and racist ideology of the dominant plantation system. The provision grounds, thus, were a material and spiritual space of freedom.’3 To look back today at the plantation and the provision ground is to be conscious of the complex histories of subjection and resistance bound up in the relationship between people of colour and the natural world.

Writing of the Caribbean, the Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant said that the Black relationship to land was characterized by the ‘ruptures … and explosive forces’ of slavery.

It was the role of the writer or the artist to ‘dig deep’ into the soil and create a ‘language of landscape’ that re-established the link between displaced people and nature.4 What might it look like, this language of landscape? Not just

in the Caribbean, but also more widely, across the Black Atlantic…, within which slavery, colonialism and the plantation continue to leave their mark.

This is the subject matter of Black Earth Rising.”

Black Earth Rising opens May 18.

Members: Reserve your free tickets starting Tuesday, April 22, at artbma.org/blackearth.

Exhibition Catalog Available at the BMA Shop Members: $54 Non-Members: $60

Guest curated by writer and curator Ekow Eshun with support from Katie Cooke, Manager of Curatorial Affairs.

Turn Again to the Earth is generously supported by the Cohen Opportunity Fund, Eileen Harris Norton Foundation, Johns Hopkins University & Medicine, and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.

1. I ra Berlin and Philip D. Morgan (eds.), The Slaves’ Economy: Independent Production by Slaves in the Americas (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 1.

2. Ibid., 9.

3. H olger Henke, “Mapping the ‘Inner Plantation’: A Cultural Exploration of the Origins of Caribbean Local Discourse,” Social and Economic Studies 45, no. 4 (1996): 51–75.

4. Q uoted in Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey, Allegories of the Anthropocene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), 40.

Far Left: Todd Gray. Present History (1619). 2019.

Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London. Photography: Phoebe d’Heurle. © Todd Gray. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London; Left: Yinka Shonibare. Earth Kid (Girl) II. 2022. The artist and James Cohan, New York. Photographer: Stephen White & Co. © Yinka Shonibare CBE. All Rights Reserved, DACS / Artimage

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Programs & Events

Creative Connections at the BMA First Wednesday of every month, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.

Creative Connections at the BMA is a free, monthly program for adults with dementia and their care partners. The program includes an educator-led gallery tour of a diverse selection of artworks, followed by a guided art-making workshop.

Tours can accommodate a limited number of participants, and registration is required.

Please register online at artbma.org/events or email Suzy Wolffe at swolffe@artbma.org to reserve your space.

Baby Art Date Baby Art Date is a tour specifically designed for children ages 2 and under and their caregivers. This multisensory experience supports children’s language, physical, and emotional development and provides social opportunities for participants. Explore a new theme each month!

Free Family Sundays

BMA Lexington Market

Every Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

Thursday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.

Learn to think like an artist! Explore exhibitions and works from the collection through hands-on art-making workshops each and every Sunday in the Ellis A. Gimbel Children’s Studio of the Joseph Education Center. Designed for children and families, Free Family Sundays feature artist-led making sessions focused on different themes and in a variety of media.

Join us at the BMA’s branch location inside America’s oldest market and enjoy free art experiences. Connecting Baltimore’s creative community with Lexington Market’s patrons, this space invites visitors to make art, participate in public programming, read from our noncirculating library, or simply just be. Twice monthly, every second and fourth Saturday, we offer workshops, artist talks, screenings, and performances with Baltimore-based creatives.

Stay tuned to artbma.org and sign up for the BMA Families email list for upcoming program information.

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BMA Today

Stay updated on upcoming programming by visiting artbma.org/bmalexingtonmarket.

For more information, visit artbma.org/event/baby-art-date/.

Adult Tours Interactive tours highlight artworks across the Museum. Choose from topics including the renowned Cone Collection, Contemporary Artists, BMA Collection Highlights, and Black Artists. All tours include art from around the world made by historically underrepresented groups.

To provide the best experience, we limit tour size to no more than 60 participants. For information on pricing and how to register, please visit artbma.org/learn/adult-tours/.

Issue #176

Baltimore City Public Schools Student Exhibition On view Wednesday, March 12, through Sunday, March 16 The BMA is proud to once again host fyi ... For Your Inspiration, an exhibition of artwork by students in pre-K through grade 12 from Baltimore City public schools. Now in its 18th year, this standout display allows visitors to experience the creativity and imagination of Baltimore youth through a range of artworks that employ both traditional and surprising materials and techniques.

Teacher Night Thursday, March 27, 4:30–7 p.m.

Educators are invited to learn about the major BMA initiative Turn Again to the Earth. Themes running through the exhibitions make the artworks perfect for use by science, social studies, art, and grade-level teachers.

BMA educators will be on hand to brainstorm how you can connect these works to your classroom curriculum.

Learn about educational resources that the Museum has to offer educators and students, including free guided and self-guided tours, virtual learning experiences, resources on artworks in our collection, teacher workshops, and more.

The program is free. Registration is required.

Please register online at artbma.org/events.

Teacher Workshop Saturday, April 26, 9 a.m.–1 p.m. $30 Members | $35 Non-Members Join educators from across the state for a hands-on workshop exploring the BMA’s Turn Again to the Earth initiative. Designed exclusively for teachers, this workshop begins with a light breakfast and includes a private curatorial tour of Earth as Medium: Extracting Art from Nature; an art-making session led by a teaching artist; and a discussion connecting works on display to the classroom curriculum. Participants will also receive 10% off any purchases made at the BMA Shop.

Registration is required.

Please register online at artbma.org/events.

Community Day Sunday, May 18, 12–4 p.m.

Bring friends and family to celebrate Turn Again to the Earth, including the exhibition Black Earth Rising, which showcases monumental artworks inspired by the relationship between art and the environment across time and geography.

Baltimore County Public Schools Student Exhibition On view Wednesday, March 19, through Sunday, March 23 The Museum is thrilled to host—for the 37th time—this annual countywide student exhibition. Art Is for Everyone presents the artwork of Baltimore County public school students from pre-K through grade 12. A variety of two- and three-dimensional artworks, including sculpture, photography, drawing, painting, and digital art, shows the breadth of the county’s art program.

5th Annual Donald V. Bentley Memorial Lecture and Reception A Deep House of Soulful Vision: The Paintings of Terry Thompson, with Special Guest Franklin Sirmans Thursday, April 10, 6:30–9 p.m.

This ebullient evening of contemporary African American art and house music is presented by the Johns Hopkins University’s Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts. Enjoy a lecture by Franklin Sirmans, Director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, a conversation with Baltimore art fixture Leslie King Hammond and abstractionist painter Terry Thompson, and a reception. Each year, the center invites distinguished intellectuals and arts practitioners to address topical, historical, or philosophical issues connecting the work of the arts to the renewal and revitalization of civic life.

The Donald V. Bentley Annual Memorial Lecture, honors one of Baltimore’s promising young leaders, who lost his life to violence.

Baker Artist Awards Saturday, April 26, 6–10 p.m.

Join us for a celebration of the arts and Baltimore at the opening preview of the Baker Artist Awards exhibition. Enjoy late-night access to the galleries, free hors d’oeuvres, and a cash bar. This event is hosted in partnership with the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance (GBCA).

All programs and events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.

Left, top: Photo by Maximilian Franz; Left, bottom: Photo by Chloë Williams

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For Members

Members Shopping Evening Thursday, May 1, 5–7 p.m.

Open to Members at all levels. Enjoy evening access to all exhibitions, 20% off at the BMA Shop, and light refreshments in the Clair Zamoiski Segal and Thomas H. Segal East Lobby.

Reservations required; invitations will be emailed.

Members Spring Shopping Days Friday, May 2–Sunday, May 4

Chair’s Council Dinner: Crosscurrents: Works from the Contemporary Collection

Double your Members discount at the BMA Shop to save up to 20%!

No RSVP required.

Members Preview Breakfast: Black Earth Rising

Saturday, March 1, 6–8:30 p.m.

Join us for an exclusive dinner in honor of the Contemporary Wing reinstallation, Crosscurrents: Works from the Contemporary Collection. Enjoy a curator-led tour of the exhibition followed by a three-course seated dinner in Antioch Court.

Sunday, May 18, 9–11 a.m.

Members at all levels are invited for early access to the exhibition and a light breakfast in Gertrude’s. To update your email on file, please contact membership@artbma.org or call 443-573-1800.

Reservations required; invitations will be emailed.

Reservations required; invitations will be emailed.

Sponsored by PNC Private Bank®

Contributors Brunch: Watershed: Transforming the Landscape in Early Modern Dutch Art Saturday, March 8, 8:30–10:30 a.m.

Lara Yeager-Crasselt, Curator and Department Head of European Painting and Sculpture, will explore the role of water and landscape in defining the Dutch Republic in the 17th century. In paintings, prints, and drawings, Dutch artists found great inspiration along the water’s edge, reflecting broader changes taking place at home and abroad. Guests may enjoy a buffet brunch before or after the talk.

This event is open to Contributor Members and above. To upgrade to the Contributor level, call 443-573-1800. Reservations required; invitations will be emailed.

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BMA Today

Council Tour: Turn Again to the Earth

Council Talk and Reception: Black Earth Rising Sunday, May 18, 6–8 p.m.

Wednesday, March 12, 4–5 p.m.

Join curators Kevin Tervala and Lara Yeager-Crasselt for tours of Air Quality and Watershed. Air Quality explores how burning fossil fuels, particularly coal, influenced European modernism, and Watershed focuses on the water’s edge in the early modern Dutch landscape and how it reflected 17th-century environmental, economic, and social changes.

Both exhibitions, drawn from the BMA’s collection, offer a unique lens on art’s response to industrial and societal shifts.

Reservations required; invitations will be emailed.

Sponsored by PNC Private Bank®

Council Members are invited to an exhibition talk in the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Auditorium with guest curator Ekow Eshun.

After the lecture, guests will have late-night access to the extraordinary exhibition and enjoy a reception in Antioch Court.

Reservations required; invitations will be mailed.

Above, top: Lillian Hoover. Untitled (Fort National). 2019. Baltimore Museum of Art, Frederick R. Weisman Contemporary Art Acquisitions Endowment, BMA 2021.8. © Lillian Hoover; Above, bottom: Henri Matisse.

The Dam at Pont Neuf. (Detail). 1896. Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland, BMA 1950.223; Right: Photo by Erika Nizborski; Right: Photo by Maximilian Franz

Issue #176

Members and Corporate Council Ice Cream Social Sunday, June 1, 1–4 p.m.

Members at all levels and all Corporate Council Members are invited with their families and friends to spend an afternoon in the Sculpture Gardens. Enjoy music, all-ages crafts, and, of course, ice cream by local favorite, Taharka Brothers!

Reservations required; invitations will be emailed.

The John Russell Pope Society Planned Giving at the BMA Ensure your passion for art lives on by including the Museum in your estate plans.

Your generosity will fund educational programs and exhibitions that inspire creativity and encourage critical thinking.

Member Benefits Are you taking advantage of all your BMA Member benefits?

All Members Receive Invitations to exclusive Member events 10% discount at the BMA Shop Twice-yearly shopping days with 20% discount!

10% discount at Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen

Ways to Give Support the future of art—while potentially providing tax benefits for you and your heirs.

• Include the BMA in your will or trust • Name the BMA as a beneficiary of your retirement plan or life insurance policy • Establish a charitable gift annuity

Join Our Legacy Society By notifying us of your planned gift, you’ll become a member of our John Russell Pope Legacy, named for the distinguished 20th-century American architect who designed the magnificent 1929 building at the heart of the BMA.

Contact Us To learn more about creating your legacy or to notify us of your planned gift, please contact Anna Lincoln Whitehurst at alwhitehurst@artbma.org. All inquiries are confidential and without obligation.

Special offers at area restaurants and cafes Discounted parking during Museum hours at the BMA East and West lots Opportunity to travel with the BMA on Travel Program day trips Members pricing for innovative BMA programs and performances Access to digital programming Subscription to the Members’ magazine, BMA Today, and a monthly newsletter delivered to your inbox

For more information about the benefits offered at higher levels of Membership, visit artbma.org/join, call 443–573–1800, or email membership@artbma.org.

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Event Photos

Preoccupied Community Day September 22, 2024 Visitors of all ages celebrated Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum and took part in a slate of afternoon festivities that included performances by Uhwachi-Reh Dance Troupe, a Baltimore-based Native American dance company; a special tour of the exhibition Dana Claxton: Spark, led by the artist; a talk by Mark Tayac, Chief of the Piscataway Indian Nation, about his work Traditional Beaver Pouch Bag (2024); and Native American jewelry making with guest artist Nina Gover Brooks.

Photos by Maximilian Franz

Preoccupied Council Celebration and Member Tea September 28 and 29, 2024 Members enjoyed early-morning access to Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum and a charming tea at Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen, offering a unique opportunity to engage with the exhibition. Council Members were treated to special late-night access to the collections, followed by a reception in Fox Court with a powerful performance blending music and storytelling by Ralph, Dennis, and Kaydee Zotigh.

Photos by Erika Nizborski

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BMA Today

Issue #176

Art After Hours: Preoccupied November 1, 2024 This special evening celebrated the perspectives and histories of Native artists. Preoccupied exhibiting artist, composer, and musician Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) treated guests to a live, amplified violin performance, and DJ Justice The Light Skinned Luke Cage (Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina) spun a soulful mix of classics and contemporary sounds.

Guests also explored Wampum, a historical practice of shaping shells, during a hands-on demonstration led by artist Zach Cole (Nause Waiwash band of Indians) and enjoyed a pop-up, in-gallery flute performance by sixth-generation flute player Patrick Brooks (Tuscarora Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy in upstate New York).

Art After Hours fan favorite H3irloom Food Group served specialty cocktails and delicious hors d’oeuvres.

Photos by Maximilian Franz

BMA Council The BMA Council provides opportunities for the Museum’s most generous donors to enjoy a deeper exploration of the BMA’s collection and exhibitions through a carefully curated series of events offered throughout the year.

BMA Council Benefits Include Invitations to exclusive Council events, including opening receptions for major exhibitions

Curator-led tours followed by a prix-fixe group lunch Exclusive cocktail receptions and curator presentations 10% discount at Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen 15% discount at the BMA Shop Free parking at the BMA East and West lots

Special recognition at the Museum’s entrance and in the online Annual Report Subscription to the Members magazine, BMA Today Reciprocal Members privileges at hundreds of North American museums with the Museum Alliance Reciprocal Program (MARP), North American Reciprocal Museum (NARM), and Reciprocal Organization of Associated Museums (ROAM) Opportunity to travel with the Museum Travel Alliance

BMA Council enrollment begins at the $1,650 Patron’s Council level. To join or learn more, call 443–573–1800 or email council@artbma.org.

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Dining

Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen

BMA MEMBERS SAVE 10% Please note the 10% BMA Member discount is not valid during select events.

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BMA Today

HOURS Monday and Tuesday Closed Wednesday–Friday 11:30 a.m.–8 p.m.

Saturday Brunch: 11:30 a.m–3 p.m.

Dinner: 4:30–8 p.m.

Don’t wait to reserve a table It’s never too early to make reservations for a special day or celebration, and you certainly will want to reserve a table at Gertrude’s on Easter (April 20), Mother’s Day (May 11), or Father’s Day (June 15). Gertrude’s is open for brunch and dinner on those holidays and will serve the regular menu as well as seasonal specialties. Reservations for these dates often fill up weeks in advance.

Sunday Brunch: 10 a.m.–3 p.m.

Dinner: 4:30–7 p.m.

Planning a wedding or other event?

RESERVATIONS

and friends, or a wedding, Gertrude’s makes your event memorable.

gertrudesbaltimore.com or 410-889-3399.

your time with us perfect. Call 410-889-3399 for more information.

Whether you’re planning a corporate party, a celebration with family No matter the size of your group, we will cover all the details to make

PHOTO BY ERIKA NIZBORSKI

Lauded by Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, The Washington Post, Edible DC, and The Baltimore Sun, this multiyear winner of Baltimore magazine’s “Best of Baltimore” serves locally sourced farm-fresh food that preserves Chesapeake culinary traditions.

Our Picks

BMA Shop

Issue #176

1.

Members save 10% or more at the BMA Shop

Proceeds from the BMA Shop benefit the Museum’s educational programs.

1.

Richie Dromedary Plush Toy

by Jellycat London, $59.95

2.

Brass Sculptural Cuff Bracelet

by Sibilia, $155

3.

Brass Sculptural Necklace

by Sibilia, $215.00

4.

Ochre Lines Bowl by Now Designs, $6.95

5.

Ochre Lines Plate by Now Designs, $7.95

6.

Fine-Weave Shallow Baskets, Rwanda, $78.00

7.

Black Is Beautiful, Kwame Brathwaite, $45.00

5.

3.

4.

2.

6.

PHOTOS BY NICOLE MILLER

7.

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Calendar

Ongoing Exhibitions LaToya Ruby Frazier: More Than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland 2021–2022 Through March 23, 2025 Raúl de Nieves: and imagine you are here Through May 4, 2025

New Exhibitions Watershed: Transforming the Landscape in Early Modern Dutch Art February 9–July 27, 2025 Air Quality: The Influence of Smog on European Modernism February 9, 2025–February 22, 2026 Earth as Medium: Extracting Art from Nature April 6–August 17, 2025 Baker Artist Awards April 27–July 27, 2025 Black Earth Rising May 18–September 21, 2025

Left, above: LaToya Ruby Frazier. More Than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland 2021-2022. 2022.

Baltimore Museum of Art, Gift of Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland, BMA 2023.114. © LaToya Ruby Frazier, Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery.

Commissioned by Carnegie Museum of Art for the 58th Carnegie International and funded in part by National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship, 2021–22; Left, below: Jan van der Heyden. Diagram of the Old and New Fire Pumps from Beschryving der nieuwlyks uitgevoden en geoctrojeerde slang-brand-spuiten en hare wyze van brand-blussen, tegenwoording binnen Amsterdam in gebruik zijnde (The Description of the Newly Invented and Patented Hose Fire Engine and Her Ways of Fighting Fires, Now Used in Amsterdam).

1735. George Peabody Library Special Collections, Johns Hopkins Libraries

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BMA Today

Issue #176

March

April

1 SATURDAY Chair’s Council Dinner, 5:30–8:30 p.m.

2 WEDNESDAY Creative Connections at the BMA, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.

2 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

6 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

5 WEDNESDAY Creative Connections at the BMA, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.

10 THURSDAY 5th Annual Donald V. Bentley Memorial Lecture and Reception

May

June

1 THURSDAY Members Shopping Evening, 5–7 p.m.

1 SUNDAY Members and Corporate Council Ice Cream Social, 1–4 p.m.

12 WEDNESDAY Council Tour: Turn Again to the Earth, 4–5 p.m.

2 FRIDAY–4 SUNDAY Members Spring Shopping Days

Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

16 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

4 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

23 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

7 WEDNESDAY Creative Connections at the BMA, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.

8 SATURDAY Contributors Brunch: Watershed, 8:30–10:30 a.m.

9 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

A Deep House of Soulful Vision: The Paintings of Terry Thompson, with Special Guest Franklin Sirmans, 6:30–9 p.m.

Franklin Sirmans. 2013 Museum Associates/LACMA.

4 WEDNESDAY Creative Connections at the BMA, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.

8 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

12 THURSDAY JJC 40th event (tentative)

27 THURSDAY Teacher Night: Turn Again to the Earth, 4:30–7 p.m.

13 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

11 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

30 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

20 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

18 SUNDAY Members Preview Breakfast: Black Earth Rising, 9–11 a.m.

26 SATURDAY Teacher Workshop: Turn Again to the Earth, 9 a.m.–1 p.m.

Council Talk and Reception: Black Earth Rising, 6–8 p.m.

Members: $25; Non-Members: $35

Baker Artist Awards, 6–10 p.m.

Community Day: Turn Again to the Earth, 12–4 p.m.

22 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

27 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

25 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

29 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

Top: Photo by Chloë Williams; Center: Franklin Sirmans. Photo credit 2013 Museum Associates/ LACMA; Right: Photo by Maximilian Franz

15 SUNDAY Free Family Sunday, 2–5 p.m.

20 FRIDAY Art After Hours, 8–11 p.m.

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Q&A

ensuring our impact continues to

Wallis Director] has an equally

be wide reaching.

bold and inspiring vision for the important role education plays at the BMA, in Baltimore, and in the state more widely, and she

Our educators are continually

has encouraged us to think about

thinking about how we can

how we can continue to work in

connect art to lifelong learners

collaborative and multidisciplinary

of all ages. We serve students

ways to reach our audiences.

(pre-K through grade 12) through

I’m excited to be a part of the

multi-visit programs such as

BMA’s future.

Close Encounters and Learning through the Arts, and we serve hundreds of families each month

What is your most memorable experience with art?

during our weekly Free Family

I have so many! One of my earliest

Sundays art-making experiences.

was seeing one of Giotto’s frescos

We lead tours for college-age

and marveling at how an artist

students and professors, as well

could convey such deep human

as adults from all over the state.

emotion just using paint on a flat

We’ve also recently expanded

surface. I realized then that art

our programming across the

was something I wanted to

Elisabeth Callihan

learning continuum—Baby Art

dedicate time to studying. Closer

Date, a program for infants and

to home, the recent Joyce Scott

their caregivers, and Creative

exhibition Walk a Mile in My

Connections, a program for adults

Dreams reminded me that art

with memory loss and their care

transcends its materials—to

partners—ensuring that visitors

connect us to one another,

of all ages always have a way to

provoke thought, and generate

engage with the BMA.

new perspectives.

BMA’s New Chief Education Officer on Supporting Life-Long Learning and Visitors’ Connections to Art

We are also in the midst of Turn Again to the Earth,

What inspires you?

a year focusing on art and the

I am inspired by people working

environment. We are developing

collaboratively to take on

an array of public programs to

challenges, particularly with the

explore important issues and to

creativity and innovation artists

engage our audience in thinking

bring to the table; LaToya Ruby

about our own relationship to

Frazier’s More than Conquerors is

the land and nature.

a great example. Frazier uses her

Outside of the Museum’s

How do you see your position as Chief Education Officer promoting and strengthening the Museum’s mission and goals?

The Baltimore Museum of Art is dedicated to creating connections between art, Baltimore, and the world, ensuring a space that is

art to highlight a group of local

walls, we continue to welcome

community health workers,

by the Museum’s vision to be “the

visitors at our Lexington Market

whose efforts expand access to

most relevant publicly engaged

site. Every Thursday through

health care. Work like this

museum in the United States.”

Saturday, you can visit us there

inspires me to find new ways to

Rather than a static display of

to make art and participate in

contribute positively to my

objects, the BMA feels more like

public programming created

community. Each one of us has

a dynamic dialogue with the

in partnership with artists and

the potential to create meaningful

public, with art as the catalyst for

community partners. I highly

change, and all of our individual

those conversations. Education

recommend a visit if you haven’t

actions roll up to collective

plays a key role in supporting this

been yet!

impact. I see this drive and

practice, by creating engaging

commitment in my BMA

Education is one of the bridges

partnerships, and thought-

What excites you most about the BMA in this moment?

between art and the world around

provoking interpretation that

I started at a really exciting time

whom we work—and that inspires

us—connecting the local and the

are informed by visitor input.

in the history of the Museum: our

me every day.

global and creating meaningful

In my role as CEdO, I will be

110th Anniversary. The BMA has

points of connection with our

supporting my team to continue

such a remarkable legacy, and

visitors. Our work is also driven

the great work they are doing and

Asma [Naeem, Dorothy Wagner

welcoming to all. The work of

30

future. She recognizes the

BMA Today

public programs, community

colleagues and in the artists and the community members with PHOTO BY MITRO HOOD

What are some of the major initiatives that Education is working on?

New Acquisition

Issue #176

Born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, in 1986, Bernadette Despujols taught architectonic design at the School of Architecture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela before moving to the United States to pursue an MFA in visual arts at the California Institute of the Arts in 2010. Since then, she has been living and working in the US, training her gaze on her family, the home, and the emotional connections she shares with her sitters. Despujols creates intimate, psychologically informed portraits of immigrants, relatives, and loved ones.

Mi hermana y sus hijas en Febrero is a portrait of the artist’s sister Tamara and her three daughters, created in the artist’s home in Miami. Her work explores intimacy and bonds, often depicted through portraits of motherhood and family.

Her work explores intimacy and bonds, often depicted through portraits of motherhood and family.

mi hermana y sus hijas en Febrero Bernadette Despujols

Her use of impasto—thickly layering paint, which she then carves out to reveal the underpainting beneath—pays tribute to the psychological portrait paintings of Alice Neel and Lucian Freud.

The works’ complex patterning and perspective and the sitters’ placement within homes nods to Despujols’ training and continued interest in architecture and the built environment.

In addition to this interest in architecture, photography has been a central element in her work.

Despujols begins her compositions by taking photographs and finishes them from memory in the studio. She has collaborated with photojournalists from Venezuela, painting portraits of families within the communities that have been uprooted or affected by El Arco Minero, a long-running mining operation in Venezuela that illegally extracts gold, bauxite, coltan, and diamonds from the Amazon rainforest. Describing her overarching aim, Despujols states: “I activate common elements of self-perception—such as guilt, social expectations, sexual desire, and intimate bodily connections and thoughts—to explore the perception that womanhood is somehow always connected with a kind of guilt, and to draw a fine line between sardonic humor and sheer abjection” (Bomb, 2018).

Bernadette Despujols. mi hermana y sus hijas en Febrero. 2023.

Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Fund established with exchange funds from Gifts of Dr. and Mrs. Edgar F. Berman, Equitable Bank, N.A., Geoffrey Gates, Sandra O. Moose, National Endowment for the Arts, Lawrence Rubin, Phillip M. Stern, and Alan J. Zakon, BMA 2024.209. © Bernadette Despujols

W inte r/Spring 2025

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