Category: Feature
-
Telling the history and creating the mythology of Harriet Tubman
When you step into the BMA’s Contemporary Wing and look left, sparkling stars might catch your eye. Look closely at the work featuring the stars and you’ll notice the sparkle is actually a cluster of shimmering glass beads, metallic buttons, and strips of tulle stitched into a night sky illuminating Harriet Tubman’s path across the […]
Andrea Boston | 08.06.2019 -
Was This the Oddest Exhibition in the BMA’s History?
You’re standing in a maze inside the BMA, looking at two clocks. One has a round face inside a square frame with three lines running down its center. The other has a square face and square frame with one curved corner. Which one represents good design? Your answer could bring you one step closer to […]
Renee Hoffman | 07.12.2019 -
Louisiana State Penitentiary’s Rodeo: A Spectator’s Account
Although the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, it did not ban forced labor for men and women convicted of a crime, no matter how minor the offense. The nation’s largest maximum-security facility, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, bases its operations on this distinction. Roughly 6,500 men incarcerated at the facility are required to work onsite, […]
Leslie Cozzi | 06.12.2019 -
GWCC: The Business of Screen Printing
“Every time you take too much tape, it’s a dollar off your check,” Kisha Webster says with a laugh. Webster, the Executive Director of the Greenmount West Community Center (GWCC), is watching several youth practice taping screens during a screen-printing class Baltimore-based Jet Tees is running at the center. “You need to respect the resources,” […]
Melanie Martin | 05.23.2019 -
Drawn To with SHAN Wallace
Which works of art at the BMA draw you in? For the latest installment in our series Drawn To, we posed this question to SHAN Wallace. Watch the award-winning photographer, educator, and freedom fighter from East Baltimore discuss her spiritual and artistic connections to the masks, sculptures, and textiles on view in Subverting Beauty: African […]
Andrea Boston | 05.21.2019 -
Artist Oletha DeVane on Materials and the Meanings They Hold
The Baltimore-based artist’s sculptures embody spirits and call for social justice Every material carries a meaning. No one visually or verbally articulates this with greater eloquence than Oletha DeVane, a matriarch in Baltimore’s arts community. The artist’s practice over the past several decades as an artist, educator, curator, and arts advocate is central to a […]
Virginia Anderson | 05.17.2019 -
A Secret Map and Layers of Meaning
“Here I have a story about the Emancipation of people in needle and thread and fabric,” Joyce J. Scott has said about Plantation, a quilt that her mother created. Plantation depicts two perspectives—one of a starry night sky, and the other of the fields below—collapsed together into a single composition. The constellation of stars […]
Melanie Martin | 05.15.2019 -
Get to Know Get Your Life!
Project Runway meets All That meets a Wayans Brothers’ parody is how a TV executive might pitch Get Your Life!’s video projects—written, designed, directed, and performed by Baltimore City middle schoolers. Their visions are made a reality by Baltimore artists and the results are outlandish characters and astute takes on pop culture rendered in high […]
Jessica Novak | 05.15.2019 -
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