Celebrating the Museum's 110th Anniversary

BMA Ball Honorary Co-Chairs

Maryland Governor Wes Moore and First Lady Dawn Moore
Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke and Patricia Schmoke
R&B GRAMMY® winner John Legend (Appearance not confirmed)

 

BMA Ball Co-Chairs

Amy Elias
Michael Sherman
George Petrocheilos and Diamantis Xylas

 

After Party Co-Chairs

Darius Graham
BMA Board of Trustees Vice-Chair

Tonya Miller Hall
Senior Advisor, Office of Arts & Culture for the City of Baltimore

Questions: bmaball@artbma.org

 

John Akomfrah (b. 1957, lives and works in London, United Kingdom) is an artist and filmmaker whose works are characterized by their investigations into memory, post-colonialism, temporality, and aesthetics, and often explore the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. Akomfrah was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective and currently collaborates with Smoking Dogs Films. His works have been presented in numerous solo exhibitions, most recently at The Box, Plymouth, UK (2023); Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany (2023); Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (2023) and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. (2022). He represented Great Britain in the 60th Venice Biennale this year and participated in the Sharjah Biennale in 2023. He has also been featured in many international film festivals, including Sundance Film Festival, Utah (2013 and 2011) and Toronto International Film Festival, Canada (2012). He was awarded the Artes Mundi Prize in 2017 and a Knighthood for services to the Arts in the 2023 New Year Honours.

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s (b. 1982, Braddock, PA) practice engages with social justice movements, cultural change, and the American experience through a wide range of media, including photography, video, performance, installation, and books. She often uses collaborative storytelling that captures the voices and stories of individuals represented in her artworks. Her prior projects have addressed topics of industrialism, rust belt revitalization, environmental justice, access to healthcare, access to clean water, workers’ rights, the nature of family, and communal history. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions across the U.S. and Europe. In May 2024, the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened the first museum survey dedicated to her work, titled LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity. In 2024, TIME named her among the 100 most influential people of the year. Other recent accolades include the 2020–21 National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship and a commission for the Carnegie Museum 58th Carnegie International—More Than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland 2021-2022—which will be exhibited at the BMA in November 2024.

Sherrilyn Ifill is the inaugural Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University School of Law and a leading voice in the nation’s ongoing conversation about civil rights. Prior to this appointment, she served as the seventh president & director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. Ifill is a recipient of the Radcliffe Medal, the Brandeis Medal, the Thurgood Marshall Award from the American Bar Association, and the Gold Medal from the New York State Bar Association. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019. In 2021, TIME magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is also the recipient of numerous honorary doctorates. Ifill received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vassar College, and a J.D. from New York University School of Law. Following law school, she served as a Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York and served for five years as an Assistant Counsel litigating voting rights cases at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She taught at the University of Maryland School of Law for several years beginning in 1993, and served as Distinguished Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School in fall 2023. Ifill is also a scholar in residence at the Museum of Modern Art. Her new book about race and the current democratic crisis in the United States entitled “Is This America?” will be released by Penguin Press in 2024.