Current Exhibitions
Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s
Through May 26, 2019
Nearly 90 Surrealist masterworks of the 1930s and 1940s by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, and André Masson are presented through a timely lens—that of war, violence, and exile.
To hear the exhibition’s free audio guide featuring the exhibition curator and other experts, please bring your fully-charged smartphone and earbuds or headphones with you on the day of your visit. The BMA also has a limited number of iPods available for guests to borrow.
This exhibition and related programs have been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by generous funding from Transamerica and The Alvin and Fanny B. Thalheimer Exhibition Endowment Fund, and The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.
André Masson. There Is No Finished World. 1942. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Bequest of Saidie A. May, BMA 1951.333. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Hitching Their Dreams to Untamed Stars: Joyce J. Scott & Elizabeth Talford Scott
Through December 1, 2019
MacArthur award-winning artist and Baltimore icon Joyce J. Scott’s earliest art lessons were at the knee of her mother, the renowned fiber artist Elizabeth Talford Scott. The eldest Scott passed down to her daughter knowledge inherited from generations of craftspeople in their family who had honed their expertise and persisted in their artistry through the extreme deprivations of slavery and its aftermath in sharecropping, migration, and segregation. “They couldn’t buy things,” Joyce J. Scott recounts, “so they made things. And they wouldn’t just make something, they’d make something beautiful.”
This exhibition is generously sponsored by John Meyerhoff, M.D., and Lenel Srochi-Meyerhoff, Clair Zamoiski Segal, the Estate of Margaret Hammond Cooke, and the Jean and Allan Berman Textile Endowment Fund. Special thanks to Joyce J. Scott and Goya Contemporary, Baltimore.
Front Room: The Mary and Paul Roberts Collection
Through June 30, 2019
The BMA is incredibly grateful for the generosity of dedicated supporters Paul Roberts and his late wife Mary, who passed away in November of 2018.
The Roberts recently gave 35 exceptional works on paper to the Museum, drawn from their superb collection of Contemporary art. The Roberts’ most recent gift follows their decades-long support of the BMA. Paul and Mary were longstanding Members of the Museum’s Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art and Paul served on the Board of Trustees from 2006–2011, and continues to serve on the Contemporary Accessions Committee. Their extraordinary gift reflects the Roberts’ eye for selecting works with exquisitely rendered geometries, as well as expressive, exuberant compositions. Many of the most significant American artists of the mid- to late-20th century are represented, including Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Diebenkorn, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Glenn Ligon, Agnes Martin, Elizabeth Murray, Barnett Newman, and Martin Puryear. The collection also reaches from Mexico to Germany with artists Gabriel Orozco and A. R. Penck.
This exhibition is generously sponsored by Clair Zamoiski Segal.
Louise Lawler. Hoof. 2006. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Gift of Mary and Paul Roberts, Baltimore, BMA 2018.118. © Louise Lawler. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York
Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg / Delights of an Undirected Mind
Through May 26, 2019
The psychologically charged installations and films by Berlin-based artists Nathalie Djurberg (Swedish, b. 1978) and Hans Berg (Swedish, b. 1978) are intended to spark our deepest fears and desires. Their painstakingly created stop-motion animations, set to a blend of psychedelic and techno music, along with fantastical large-scale installations, embrace Surrealist motifs, playing on the unnerving and illogical, all while tapping into the subconscious and absurd. The three featured contemporary fables introduce seemingly innocent characters, who transform into nightmarish beings—from a sly smoking wolf to a sexually uninhibited giraffe.
Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg / Delights of an Undirected Mind. 2016. Courtesy of the Artists, Lisson Gallery, London, Gió Marconi, Milan, and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
Expressions of Nature: Early 20th-Century Landscapes
Through September 22, 2019
From a charcoal drawing and spare and subtle watercolors to thickly painted bold explorations of color and form on canvas, this exhibition explores how a selection of European and American artists from the BMA’s collection depicted nature in the early 20th century.
Claude Monet . Charing Cross Bridge, Reflections on the Thames. 1899-1904. The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Helen and Abram Eisenberg Collection, BMA 1945.94
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
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
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.
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.
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.