On view through 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, named by The New York Times and ESSENCE magazine as a must-see 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, 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 book (Thames & Hudson, 2025) featuring works by more than 150 contemporary artists.
Members, reserve your free tickets at artbma.org/blackearth.
The exhibition is guest curated by writer and curator Ekow Eshun with support from Katie Cooke, Manager of Curatorial Affairs.
Black Earth Rising is supported by Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff, the Hardiman Family Endowment Fund, The Dorman/Mazaroff Art Exhibition Fund, Baltimore Gas and Electric, the Sigmund M. and Mary B. Hyman Fund for American Art, The Clair Zamoiski Segal and Thomas H. Segal Contemporary Art Endowment Fund, the Wolf Kahn Foundation, the Victor J. Schenk Trust, and The Cowles Charitable Trust.
The Turn Again to the Earth initiative is generously supported by the Cohen Opportunity Fund, the Henry Luce Foundation, Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff, Baltimore Gas and Electric, Johns Hopkins University & Medicine, the Eileen Harris Norton Foundation, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, and the Clayton Baker Trust.
