Current Exhibitions
Featured Exhibition
Mournful Maidens: Love & Loss in American Embroidery
September 9, 2009–February 21, 2010
Free exhibition
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a preoccupation with love and loss was evident in the embroideries worked by American schoolgirls. This intimate exhibition features 18 embroideries, prints, and mourning jewelry from the BMA’s collection that show a morbid fascination with death decades before Edgar Allan Poe wrote his haunting stories and poems.
Woodcuts Now
December 9, 2009–March 28, 2010
Free exhibition
This exhibition highlights a selection of monumental woodcuts that show how contemporary artists are taking the oldest form of printmaking into new directions. Examples include Christiane Baumgartner’s diptych Allee I and Allee II, where film stills are painstakingly recreated as woodcuts by rendering two negative images of trees and a road through a system of irregularly carved horizontal bands. Sculptor Mel Kendrick creates abstract compositions by assembling plywood cutouts—each piece distinguished by its wood grain and tool marks—on the printing press. Alison Saar uses woodcuts to re-evaluate her multi-media sculpture in a two-dimensional form, and Richard Bosman exploits jagged edges, bold forms, and strong contrasts of light and dark for his ambiguous scenarios. Other artists featured are Sanford Biggers, Chuck Close, and Matthias Mansen.
Also on View
The Cone Collection
Ongoing
Visit some of your old favorites with works by Matisse, Picasso, Pissarro, Courbet, and a self-portrait by Degas-back on view at the BMA for the first time in several years. Discover new works by Matisse on view alongside those of his contemporaries in this new installation showing this great artist’s importance in the 20th century. See the incredible 3D technology, featured in last year’s special exhibition Matisse: Painter as Sculptor, a groundbreaking study of Matisse’s creative process and the culmination of the first technical study of Matisse’s sculpture by BMA experts. By combining art historical research with 3D laser scanning, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, and other methods, they uncovered how Matisse created works in series. Don’t miss this groundbreaking view of Matisse’s sculpture now on view in this exciting multimedia display.
A Grand Legacy: Five Centuries of European Art
European Art Galleries
Ongoing
A Grand Legacy: Five Centuries of European Art features the monumental Rinaldo and Armida, one of the world's finest paintings by Sir Anthony van Dyck, as well as masterpieces by Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin.
Collection Highlights
Paint!
American Decorative Arts Gallery
Ongoing
Discover a dazzling sample of japanned, ebonized, grained, and polychromed American and European furniture. These delicate and bold 18th- and 19th-century clocks, cabinets, tables, and chairs are gathered from Baltimore, Boston, and beyond.
