Category: Behind the Scenes

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  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

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  Recently Retired Senior Registrar Melanie Harwood Reflects on Five Decades at the BMA

  When Melanie Harwood began volunteering at the BMA in 1972, she had no idea that she was embarking on a 50-year career at the Museum. She had just graduated with an art history degree from Wellesley College and had some experience working in an art gallery in Boston when she moved to Baltimore with her […]

  Anne Brown | 02.27.2023

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  The Surreal Realities of War

  The Baltimore Museum of Art is committed to presenting exhibitions and programs that demonstrate art’s relevance in contemporary culture. While Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s explores art from the previous century, the BMA’s special tours with U.S. Marine Corps veteran Hans Palmer provide a first-person perspective on a more […]

  Anne Brown | 04.01.2019