Category: Now On View
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Watch the Throne
Since its emergence in the 1970s, hip hop has grown into a global phenomenon, driving innovations in music, fashion, technology, and visual and performing arts. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip hop, The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century captures hip hop’s extraordinary influence through more than […]
Asma Naeem | 03.29.2023 -
Five Most Loved Artworks at the BMA
Hearts for Art returned this past Valentine’s Day weekend, and votes for the favorite artworks of 2023 have officially been counted. During this annual celebration, now in its tenth year at the BMA, visitors are invited to wander the galleries and leave paper hearts in front of the works they love the most. This year’s […]
Staff | 02.23.2023 -
A Critical Moment in Inuit Art History
The stone-cut prints[1] of Inuit hunting scenes—Searching for Seal Holes by Innukjuakju Pudlat and Kiakshuk’s Summer Caribou—stand out immediately in Artic Artistry, an exhibition of mostly small sculptures and functional objects by Greenlandic, Alaskan, and Inuit artists. Made in 1960, Searching for Seal Holes and Summer Caribou represent a key moment in Inuit art history […]
| 11.29.2022 -
A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration
The Great Migration (1915–70) saw more than six million African Americans leave the South for destinations across the United States. Now open at the BMA, A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration explores how this pivotal period in American history transformed nearly every aspect of Black life and culture through newly commissioned […]
Staff | 11.16.2022 -
A Timeline of The Freedom Quilting Bee
At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the quilters of a small, rural town in Alabama founded the Freedom Quilting Bee. The woman-led cooperative used their craft skills to establish new forms of income and expand their quilting audience. Gee’s Bend, Alabama, is home to generations of extraordinary Black craftswomen, who represent a crucial […]
Stella Hendricks | 03.08.2021 -
Anti-Chinese Messages Poured Out of 19th-Century Pitcher
Why does this object with an aggressive racialized scene remain on view at the BMA? The first time I saw Karl L.H. Müller’s ‘Walrus’ Beer Pitcher, I felt nauseous. The porcelain pitcher on view in the BMA’s American Wing features a white man choking a Chinese man, who is depicted with Western stereotypes of Chinese […]
Sarah Cho | 05.07.2020 -
OBSERVATIONS FROM THE ARTIST: SHAN WALLACE ON 410
Baltimore native SHAN Wallace uses her camera to tell personal, often political, and indelibly poetic stories about her hometown. Her site-specific installation, 410, is on view at The Baltimore Museum of Art beginning March 1 through June 28. Named for the area code that encompasses the city, 410 is conceived as a love letter to […]
Staff | 02.28.2020 -
Elissa Blount Moorhead and Bradford Young In Conversation with Arthur Jafa, Part 1
How do life, breath, joy, and pain manifest in black experience from cradle to grave? How are health and wellness nurtured? Elissa Blount Moorhead and Bradford Young’s Back and Song considers the labor and care provided by generations of black healers, including their historic contributions to and resistance of Western medicine’s flawed and discriminatory structures. […]
Staff | 02.28.2020 -
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 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