Current Exhibitions
Subverting Beauty: African Anti-Aesthetics
Through November 17, 2019
This exhibition features approximately two dozen works from sub-Saharan African’s colonial period (c.1880-c. 1960) that are accumulative, composite, crude, counterintuitive, and disproportionate. More importantly still, it explores the reasons why artists working during this turbulent period in the continent’s history turned against beauty in order to express the meaning and vitality of their day-to-day existence.
Henry Moore and The Pre-Columbian Past
Through November 17, 2019
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
DIS | A Good Crisis
Through November 17, 2019
Commissioned by the BMA, the New York-based collective, DIS, debuts a video series on the wide-reaching impact of the 2008 financial crisis.
DIS. A Good Crisis. 2018. Courtesy of DIS
Commons Collaboration: Get Your Life!
Through November 17, 2019
Get Your Life! (GYL!) is a youth-led production company that creates collaborative video projects between middle school students, practicing artists, and institutions. This exhibition gathers works from across GYL!’s practice, presenting video series, costumes, props, and documents.
Get Your Life!, Still from Life As Hollywood, 2014
Time Frames: Contemporary East Asian Photography
Through March 24, 2019
More than 40 rarely shown color and black-and-white photographs delve into various concepts of time, from a reflection on a legend or historical event, to a memory, missed moment, or a future imagined and anticipated.
Masaru Tatsuki.Tenkamaru in a Tunnel, Tochigi. 2005. From the series Dekotora. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Brenda Edelson, Santa Fe, BMA 2015.54. © Masaru Tatsuki
Tomás Saraceno: Entangled Orbits
Through February 24, 2019
"Get lost in immersive, iridescent works that evoke giant bubbles, spider webs, and clouds in a clash of beauty and strength." —Baltimore Magazine
Kuba: Fabric of an Empire
Through February 24, 2019
This exhibition of dazzling Kuba textiles presented in the BMA’s Cone Collection galleries reveals how a central African kingdom independently developed a form of modernist abstraction in the 20th century.
Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day
Through March 3, 2019
Originally presented at the U.S. Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, Mark Bradford’s Tomorrow Is Another Day was born out of his ongoing interest in the inherently social nature of the material world we inhabit. Bradford (American, b. 1961) recycles ordinary materials in an homage to a shared American experience, recalling memories of his mother’s hair salon or the streets of Los Angeles. In its U.S. debut, this exhibition takes on new meaning within the context of the Baltimore community and speaks to the artist’s belief in art as a platform to examine contradictory histories and effect positive change.
Ebony G. Patterson: ...for little whispers...
Through April 7, 2019
Ebony G. Patterson's immersive installation in the Berman Textile gallery memorializes children killed in violent crimes, while asking what it means that society treats some bodies as valuable and others as expendable.
Ebony G. Patterson, ...and babies too..., 2016, mixed media jacquard woven tapestry with digitally-embroidered appliques, hand-embellished cast glass shoes, and toys mounted on custom painted wood plinth, 120 x 58 in. (304.8 x 147.3 cm). Made in collaboration with Temple Contemporary at Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. Courtesy the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago
PDPS 50th Anniversary
Through October 6, 2019
In the fall of 2018, the BMA’s oldest friends group, the Print, Drawing & Photograph Society (PDPS), will celebrate its 50th anniversary by sponsoring an exhibition to highlight a selection of late 19th-century, modern, and contemporary works on paper that PDPS has helped the BMA acquire over the years.
Spencer Finch: Moon Dust
Through October 14, 2024
Spencer Finch’s impressive light installation Moon Dust (Apollo 17), first presented at the 2009 Venice Biennale, will illuminate the BMA’s majestic Fox Court for the next seven years.
Moon Dust (Apollo 17) is on extended loan from the collection of Joanne Gold and Andrew Stern, who are generously sponsoring its presentation at the BMA.
Collection Galleries
Sarah Oppenheimer: Architectural intervention
For this two-part work, artist Sarah Oppenheimer inserted meticulously crafted aluminum and reflective glass between the 2nd and 3rd floors of the Contemporary Wing and through the wall between the contemporary and Cone collections.
American Art
The American Wing includes more than 800 paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts that explore the international character of American art and Baltimore's position as a major center for art production and foreign trade from the late 18th century forward.
Contemporary Art
The Contemporary Wing features more than 100 paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, and moving image works, creating thought-provoking encounters with contemporary art.
Cone Collection
The Cone Collection of modern art is the crown jewel of the BMA, featuring works by Matisse, Picasso, Pissarro, Courbet, and Degas.
Collected by Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone from the early-mid 20th century, the Cone Collection is one of the world’s most important art collections.
Asian Art
Discover 2,000 years of innovation by Chinese artists from 2nd century BCE to today in this presentation of the Asian art collection. Two galleries feature ceramics, furniture, and painting, as well as bronze, jade, and lacquer objects that showcase the beauty and strength of Chinese art.
English Sporting Art
Considered one of the finest collections of British sporting art in America, the BMA’s Woodward Collection features 52 paintings of horses and racing scenes, as well as silver and gold racing trophies.
European Art
This installation 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.
African Art
The BMA's presentation of its renowned African art collection emphasizes the relationships between 85 incredible works, many large-scale, and the lives of the people by and for whom the objects were made. Artists and diverse traditions from more than 40 African empires, kingdoms, and regions are represented.