Category: Feature
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In the Galleries: Children’s Takes on Contemporary Art
Artist, writer, and BMA Security Officer Dereck Magnus shares his encounter with students and Glenn Ligon’s 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 sculpture consists […]
Dereck Magnus | 11.19.2019 -
6 Questions for a Curator: Katy Siegel
We get a lot of questions about being a curator—everything from how does one become a curator to how do curators put together exhibitions. BMA Senior Research Curator and co-curator of Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art offered to answer some of the most frequently asked and most interesting questions we’ve received about curatorial work. Do […]
Andrea Boston | 10.30.2019 -
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 -
Preserving the Legacies of Women Artists
Simone Brangier Boas. Maria Hamel Finkelstein. Elsa Hutzler. And Helen Jacobson. These artists, who all had close ties to Baltimore, created significant paintings and sculptures—as critical to their time as works by their male counterparts—yet little documentation of their careers exists. Knowing the deep wealth of knowledge that lies in Baltimore’s tight-knit communities, the BMA […]
Staff | 10.02.2019 -
Filling in the Void: The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection at Work
When she started collecting, Pamela Joyner was looking for art she enjoyed. She wanted to embellish the homes she shares with husband Alfred Giuffrida. The mission to reframe art history came later. Joyner had always appreciated abstraction, and she was drawn to black abstract painters. So, she began researching and learning more about the artists […]
Melanie Martin | 09.19.2019 -
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