Turn Again to the Earth
The BMA marks its 110th anniversary with an ambitious initiative centered on the environment.
In February 2023, Maryland Governor Wes Moore announced the goal of achieving 100% clean energy in the state by 2035. The BMA is stepping up to the challenge by embarking on an ambitious environmental initiative that will kick off in November 2024 as part of the Museum’s 110th anniversary celebration.
Turn Again to the Earth, a title inspired by the writing of environmental activist Rachel Carson, will include:
- A series of 10 exhibitions and installations that capture the relationships between art and the environment across time and geography.
- The development of a sustainability strategic plan.
- A citywide eco-challenge led by the BMA encouraging other civic and cultural organizations in the region to embrace environment-related conversations and sustainable planning efforts.
“In these troubled times it is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.” – Rachel Carson, environmental activist and writer
Featured Exhibitions
LaToya Ruby Frazier: More Than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland 2021-2022
LaToya Ruby Frazier’s acclaimed and deeply evocative installation celebrates the essential work of community health workers in Baltimore during the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Watershed: Transforming the Landscape in Early Modern Dutch Art
A selection of approximately 40 paintings, prints, and drawings from the BMA’s collection explores the role of water and landscape in defining the early modern Dutch Republic.
Air Quality: The Influence of Smog on European Modernism
This focus exhibition of nine works explores the relationship between burning fossil fuels—namely, coal—and the emergence of European modernism.
Earth as Medium: Extracting Art from Nature
Artworks are made of and made through the transformation of earth, air, light, animals, and plants. This focus exhibition foregrounds the natural-ness of all artworks and tells a history of artmaking’s relationship to the natural world.
Black Earth Rising
This ticketed exhibition presents radically beautiful artworks by contemporary African diasporic, Latin American, and Native American artists who are engaging with the splendor of the natural world with a parallel consciousness of its fragility.
Deconstructing Nature: Environmental Transformation in the Lucas Collection
More than 50 19th-century works on paper investigates how European and American artists both documented and contributed to the transformation of the environment into an industrial resource to be hoarded or shared.
Engaging the Elements: Air, Fire, Water, Earth
This focus exhibition explores artistic engagement with the natural environment as a source of creative inspiration worth celebrating and protecting.
The Way of Nature: Art from Japan, China, and Korea
For centuries, East Asian cultures have considered human life as part of a much larger system that encompasses the natural world. More than 40 artworks from Japan, China, and Korea demonstrate a way of living where mountains and seas, animals—both wild and supernatural—and plant life and insects are symbolically meaningful and historically pervasive in visual culture.
Crosscurrents: Works from the Contemporary Collection
All of the Contemporary Wing galleries will be reinstalled in 2025 with themes that range from the environment and ecology to social protest, recuperation, and migration.
Programs
Contributors Brunch: Watershed
Saturday, March 8
Council Day Tour
Wednesday, March 12
Teacher Night: Turn Again to the Earth
Thursday, March 27
Teacher Workshop: Turn Again to the Earth
Saturday, April 26
Council Talk and Reception: Black Earth Rising
Sunday, May 18
Community Day: Turn Again to the Earth
Sunday, May 18
Dreamseeds
Dreamseeds, an ongoing, socially engaged project and workshop series by artists Hannah Brancato and Sanahara Ama Chandra, is a new addition to our Turn Again to the Earth initiative debuting on the wall in front of the Thalheimer Galleries. This immersive, interactive installation, constructed from handmade paper, will invite visitors to share their wildest dreams for the earth, contributing to a vision for our collective future.
See upcoming programs at artbma.org/events.
Across the Museum
Multi-sensory Experiences
Turn Again to the Earth will bring the environment into the galleries, offering opportunities to touch sample materials alongside related artworks, localized sound stations that combine the sounds of nature with stories of climate change through art, and new interpretive text for 40 artworks in the collection.
New Audio Guide
Eight Turn Again to the Earth community advisory members, including environmental activists, academics, and artists, selected a work from the BMA’s collection and shared personal perspectives on climate justice inspired by their chosen artwork. Launching this spring, the audio guide will be available as a BMA Digital Guide and on the Bloomberg Connects app.
This initiative is generously supported by the Eileen Harris Norton Foundation, Johns Hopkins University & Medicine, and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield.
Image: Omar Ba. Droit du sol–droit de rêver#1 (Right of Soil–Right to Dream #1). Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Fund established with exchange funds from gifts of Dr. and Mrs. Edgar F. Berman, Equitable Bank, N.A., Geoffrey Gates, Sandra O. Moose, National Endowment for the Arts, Lawrence Rubin, Philip M.Stern, and Alan J. Zakon, BMA 2023.6. © Omar Ba