Exhibition Guide

Sarah Oppenheimer designed W-120301 and P-010100 in response to the architecture of The Baltimore Museum of Art. By inserting aluminum and reflective glass between the building’s interior spaces, the artist alters our perception of existing galleries, the artworks hung within them, and fellow visitors.

For centuries, artists have explored the concept of space. Painters have wrestled with the challenge of creating a sense of spatial depth on a two-dimensional surface. Sculptors have thought about how their imagery unfolds in three-dimensions and relates to the place in which it is exhibited. Oppenheimer’s work addresses the virtual and newly imagined spaces of the contemporary world. Literally cutting holes through walls, floors, and ceilings, the artist enables museum-goers to gain radical views of what is happening in rooms other than those that they occupy.

This expanded access to artworks and social interactions has a parallel in a software or Internet user’s ability to experience and exchange vast amounts of information with a gaze directed at a single computer screen. On a more conceptual level, the artist’s constructions evoke the scientific theory of “wormholes,” which might allow travel across otherwise unbridgeable expanses of space and time.

Applied to museums, Oppenheimer’s work reflects a rethinking of conventions for organizing art room-by-room according to time period and geographic location. New opportunities to see through architectural boundaries yield juxtapositions of objects that suggest the fluidity of art history. These unexpected gallery encounters also draw attention to the importance of a community of viewers in bringing the institution and its collections to life.

For alternate views of W-120301, please continue to the landing of the Contemporary Wing Staircase and also to Gallery 16 on the top level of the Wing. For views of P-010100, please continue to the lobby of the Contemporary Wing and also to Cone Gallery 7.