Category: Behind the Scenes
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The BMA at 110: A Selection of Milestones, 1914 to 2024
In the wake of the Great Fire that destroyed much of Baltimore in 1904, the city’s civic leaders rallied around the belief that a great city needed a great museum. From this beginning, the Baltimore Museum of Art has grown into a major cultural destination that cares for an internationally celebrated collection of more than […]
Amanda Sparrow | 11.13.2024 -
Lightning Strikes Twice
Guarding the Art: A Frontline Perspective Opens in Phoenix When the Baltimore Museum of Art announced it was inviting its security guards to curate an exhibition, the enthusiasm for this initiative promptly crashed the Museum’s website. The guards were thrilled to have this unexpected professional development opportunity and more recognition for their appreciation and knowledge […]
Anne Brown | 01.24.2024 -
Designing Making Her Mark
In this interview, BMA Exhibition Designer David Zimmerman shares his experience transforming the galleries to present the 235 works on view in Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800. My name is David Zimmerman and I am the Exhibition Designer for the BMA. I am responsible for the physical design of […]
Staff | 12.26.2023 -
Bark Cloth Defies Categorization
As much of a textile as it is a painted canvas or a work on paper, barkcloth—made from the inner bark of trees—confounds Western notions of art. By not fitting neatly into the artistic genres taught in predominantly Euro-American institutions, bark cloth prompts us to question and challenge the structures that shape our surroundings, said […]
Irene Bantigue | 07.28.2023 -
The Experiment Realized, What Happens Next?
In the final days of the groundbreaking exhibition Guarding the Art, curator and Museum guard Rob Kempton offers an analysis of what it has meant to serve as a curator and how it has—at least for now—changed the relationship between guard and visitor at the BMA. Since its opening in March, I have watched visitors […]
Rob Kempton | 07.06.2022 -
What is Mother Power?
The Next Generation of Arts Professionals Explore the Answer in A Perfect Power: Motherhood and African Art In the matrilineal societies of Central Africa in the 1800s and early 1900s, when kinship was traced through the maternal line, mothers were credited not only with creating life and nurturing families, but protecting communities, strengthening leaders, and […]
Staff | 12.18.2020 -
Jay McKean Fisher’s Legacy
Jay McKean Fisher’s impact on the BMA cannot be overstated. In more than 45 years in curatorial and leadership roles, he helped secure museum-making collections, more than doubled the number of works by Henri Matisse in the BMA’s collection, curated celebrated exhibitions, and perhaps most importantly, engendered an enthusiasm for art among the countless visitors […]
Anne Brown | 07.09.2020 -
In the Galleries: An Unexpected Encounter with Leonardo Drew
On opening night of Melvin Edwards: Crossroads and Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art, a man dressed in a hot pink blazer looked intently at Edwards’ monumental installation Homage to the Poet Leon Gontran Damas. Rendered from welded steel Homage fills the entire first room of the exhibition space. Onlookers can merely conjecture about […]
Rob Kempton | 01.07.2020 -
In the Galleries: Children’s Takes on Contemporary Art
Artist, writer, and BMA Security Officer Dereck Stafford Mangus shares his encounter with students and Glenn Ligon’s Untitled (America America) A few weeks back, a magical if fleeting moment occurred in the Museum. A few children from a school group exiting the Contemporary Wing slowed down while passing Glenn Ligon’s Untitled (America America). This conceptual […]
Dereck Mangus | 11.19.2019 -
Behind the Scenes: Curating Women Behaving Badly
For the past six years, I’ve been an Art History graduate student at the University of Delaware and a resident of Baltimore. Though I live only a few blocks away from The Baltimore Museum of Art, it wasn’t until the summer of 2019, as the International Fine Print Dealers Association Curatorial Intern, that I was […]
Jordan Hillman | 10.24.2019
