Category: Feature
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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 […]
Jessica Novak | 07.09.2020 -
Candice Breitz: Too Long, Didn’t Read
The artist’s work confronts our celebrity-obsessed culture, click-based empathy, and attention economy A 2015 open letter to Amnesty International (AI) from Meryl Streep, Gloria Steinem, and more than 400 other prominent figures and organizations reads: “… your ‘Draft Policy on Sex Work’ is incomprehensibly proposing the wholesale decriminalization of the sex industry, which in effect […]
Jessica Novak | 02.28.2020 -
In Conversation with Mickalene Thomas
The artist discusses her hopes for how Baltimore receives her work and what it feels like to go first You can hear in Mickalene Thomas’ voice her affection for Baltimore and enthusiasm for this moment in BMA history when she speaks by phone from her Brooklyn studio about her immersive two-story installation now on view […]
Jessica Novak | 12.19.2019 -
Drawn To with Ernest Shaw
Which works of art at the BMA draw you in? For Ernest Shaw, an image-maker and educator born and raised in West Baltimore, it’s Gary Simmons’ charcoal drawing, Triple Burn, on view through January 5, 2020, in Every Day: Selections from the Collection. The symbolism and technique in Simmons’ work aligns with Shaw’s colorful approach […]
Andrea Boston | 12.12.2019 -
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. Katy Siegel, 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 […]
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 -
RePlay / Panel Discussion with Keith Calhoun, Chandra McCormick, Norris Henderson, Monica Cooper, and Annie Anderson
“The minute you step into Angola, you step back in time,” photographer Keith Calhoun recounted for an audience gathered at the BMA, where photography and video of the prison by Calhoun and Chandra McCormick is on view through October 27. For more than 30 years, New Orleans natives Calhoun and McCormick, married since 1988, have documented […]
Andrea Boston | 10.10.2019 -
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 -
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