Current Exhibitions

Across central Africa’s matrilineal belt, the most important artworks were those that depicted the female body. In these 19th and early 20th century communities, group identity and familial responsibility flowed through the maternal line. Artists responded to this reality by sculpting visual markers of motherhood onto a range of objects associated with status and authority. In these societies, mothers not only created life and nurtured families, but also stood at the center of the moral order, ensuring the continuity of entire communities. From monumental headdresses of elderly mothers to sculptures that represent mythic female ancestors, this exhibition brings together nearly 40 objects from public and private collections to demonstrate how artists have represented the power of African mothers and used maternal imagery to signal moral, cultural, and spiritual authority.

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By the late 1800s, the United States government had confined the Lakota people of North and South Dakota to reservations and had taken away their freedom to roam the plains, hunt buffalo, and practice their religion. Surprisingly, during this same period Lakota women began incorporating the American flag and patriotic iconography into traditional beadwork designs.

Filipino-American artist Stephanie Syjuco’s three-part installation at the BMA examines how images construct and fortify white supremacy and exclusionary narratives of history and citizenship.

Installed outside of the Museum, To the Person Sitting in Darkness (2019) reinterprets the U.S. flag based on Mark Twain’s 1901 essay for the North American Review that condemned efforts by Western nations to lay claim to the non-Western world. Twain remarked, “And as for a flag for the Philippine Province,... [w]e can just have our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and crossbones.” Syjuco has constructed the flag on a grand scale exactly as Twain described it.

German artist Katharina Grosse’s exuberant large-scale, in-situ paintings explore how and where a painted image can appear in our lives. Often painted directly onto and across architectural structures and objects or into landscapes, her extraordinary, colorful works invite visitors to engage with painting on both a visual and a physical level.

For this exhibition at the BMA, the internationally acclaimed artist has created a new site-related environment, Is It You? The expansive installation has transformed the central gallery in the Contemporary Wing by partially suspending cloth from the ceiling, creating an enveloping “room” with undulating walls. Grosse then spray painted the fabric, allowing the paint colors and the shape of the fabric to combine to form a vibrant and immersive experience for visitors.

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Adelyn Breeskin: Curating a Legacy explores Adelyn Breeskin and her extraordinary career as BMA Director from 1942-1962 through archival materials and examples of the beloved works the Museum acquired under her curatorial vision and leadership. Throughout her 32-year career at the Museum, beginning with her tenure as the BMA’s first curator of prints in 1930 and, later, the museum director, Breeskin secured the renowned Cone Collection for the BMA and accomplished countless other achievements, including commissioning the U.S. Pavilion for the 1960 Venice Biennale.

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Mickalene Thomas’ immersive two-story installation transforms the BMA’s East Lobby into a living room for Baltimore. The experience extends onto an enclosed terrace where the BMA hosts a series of events, such as film screenings, artist talks, performances, workshops, book clubs, and self-care seminars. Influenced by the 1970s and 1980s, Thomas’ signature aesthetic incorporates geometric patterns, prints, textures, wood paneling, and shag carpeting, among other nostalgic motifs.

In 1921, a young Henry Moore (British, 1898-1986) walked through the doors of the British Museum and encountered the stone carvings of ancient America for the first time. Moore was attracted to what he called the “stoniness” of the artworks, their “truth to material,” and sought to emulate this in his own work. As an art student in the early 1920s, he obsessively sketched hundreds of these works to learn how to approach three-dimensional form.

Installation View, Henry Moore and the Pre-Columbian Past. Henry Moore. _The Three Rings_. 1966. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Ryda and Robert H. Levi, Baltimore, BMA 1987.225. © The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved, DACS /www.henry-moore.org