Current Exhibitions
Featured Exhibitions
Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008
October 12, 2008–January 4, 2009
Experience the supersize, provocative, and playful work of acclaimed Austrian artist Franz West. Considered one of the most important living artists today, Franz West has created an extraordinary body of work since the 1970s. Discover this influential and provocative European artist in the first comprehensive survey in the U.S. of his celebrated career, premiering at the BMA.
Even before you enter the BMA, examples of how West (pronounced Vest) has helped redefine sculpture as a social and environmental experience greet you on the Museum grounds with their giant, colorful forms. You can touch or sit on these intriguing sculptures and not get yelled at. Inside the galleries, the exhibition is organized as a series of mini-installations beginning with the artist’s most recent work—a 25-foot-tall aluminum sculpture made expressly for this exhibition. Bold and colorful, this enormous looping sculpture titled The Ego and the Id has a place for you to take a seat and become a part of the art.
Front Room: Dieter Roth & Rachel Harrison
October 12, 2008–January 4, 2009
Free exhibition
The BMA’s experimental project space pairs the work of Dieter Roth (German, 1930–1998) and Rachel Harrison (American, b. 1966), to coincide with the BMA’s exhibition on Franz West. Separated by generations and continents, the featured artists overlap both formally and conceptually in an array of approximately 10 to 15 two-and three-dimensional works. Both draw inspiration from the stuff of everyday life, ranging from daily cast-offs and bric-a-brac to magazine pictures. Roth takes a simple postcard and transforms it into a glittery pastiche of images that embrace the abstract as well as the photographic. Harrison, whose work was featured in the Whitney Biennial 2008, fashions three-dimensional forms that range from the bulbous to architectonic. In their connections to Franz West, Harrison is a contributor to the exhibition and Roth was a friend and participant in the art scene of Vienna, where West still resides.
Curated by Darsie Alexander, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art.
Also on View
The Cone Collection
Cone Gallery refresh opens November 5
Visit some of your old favorites with works by Matisse, Picasso, Pissarro, Courbet, and a self-portrait by Degas-back on view at the BMA for the first time in several years. Discover new works by Matisse on view alongside those of his contemporaries in this new installation showing this great artist’s importance in the 20th century. See the incredible 3D technology, featured in last year’s special exhibition Matisse: Painter as Sculptor, a groundbreaking study of Matisse’s creative process and the culmination of the first technical study of Matisse’s sculpture by BMA experts. By combining art historical research with 3D laser scanning, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, and other methods, they uncovered how Matisse created works in series. Don’t miss this groundbreaking view of Matisse’s sculpture now on view in this exciting multimedia display!
Taking in the View: English Watercolors and Prints
Through December 7, 2008
Free exhibition
This intimate exhibition features approximately 25 watercolors and prints from the BMA’s collection that show the transformation of landscapes in the late 18th- and early 19th- century. These works—including several new additions to the collection—range from views of specific topography by animalier Robert Hills and Victorian artist Louise Rayner to idealized, imaginary visions by amateur artist and country surgeon John White Abbott. During the next 100 years, these two conceptions merged and images of landscapes such as J.M.W. Turner’s stunning Grenoble Bridge (c. 1824) reached new heights of expressive power and beauty.
Curated by Ann Shafer, Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs.
A Grand Legacy: Five Centuries of European Art
European Art Galleries
Ongoing
A Grand Legacy: Five Centuries of European Art 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.
Collection Highlights
Baltimore Album Quilts Revisited: A Matter of Style
Berman Textile Gallery
Through 2008
Reconnect with three of the famous Baltimore Album Quilts, including the beloved Captain George W. Russell quilt and a new addition to the collection. Another selection of quilts will be on view in January.
Above: Friends of Captain George W. Russell. Detail, Baltimore Album Quilt. 1852. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Purchase with exchange funds from Gift of Edith Ferry Hooper; The Aaron and Lillie Straus Foundation; and Mrs. Frank Kent; and Bequest of Alfred Duane Pell, BMA 1971.36.1
Kongo Figures
Wurtzburger African Art Gallery
Through 2008
Behold several treasures from the Kongo’s kingdom of Central Africa: a vivid diviner’s mask, a figurative flywhisk, and three stunning minkisi figures—united and on view for the first time.
Paint!
American Decorative Arts Gallery
Ongoing
Discover a dazzling sample of japanned, ebonized, grained, and polychromed American and European furniture. These delicate and bold 18th- and 19th-century clocks, cabinets, tables, and chairs are gathered from Baltimore, Boston, and beyond.
