Current Exhibitions
The Baltimore Museum of Art’s outstanding collection encompasses 90,000 works of art, including the largest holding of works by Henri Matisse in the world, as well as masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh.
A summertime oasis, the BMA’s Sculpture Gardens feature a 100-year survey of modern and contemporary sculpture on nearly three landscaped acres in the heart of the city. Admission to the collection is free to everyone, every day.
If you are traveling to see a particular work of art, please call ahead to 443-573-1730 to make sure it is on view.
On Paper: Figure Drawings from the Benesch Collection
April 20 – September 14, 2014
Free exhibition
A selection of 10 drawings from the 1960s and 70s by contemporary masters David Hockney, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, and others reveals there are as many approaches to the human figure as there are artists. This is the second exhibition from the Museum's Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection, a group of more than 140 outstanding drawings by international contemporary artists.
Curated by Ann Shafer, Associate Curator for Prints, Drawings & Photographs.
The Renoir Returns
March 30– July 20, 2014
Free exhibition
TELL THE RENOIR'S STORY The BMA's new blog starts with a collaborative storytelling challenge. Acclaimed writer and producer David Simon pens the opening lines.
More than 60 years after its theft from the BMA, Pierre-Auguste Renoir's On the Shore of the Seine (c. 1879) returns to public view! A special two-gallery exhibition reunites the 5 ˝ -by-9 inch painting with more than 20 masterworks bequeathed to the BMA by visionary Baltimore collector Saidie May, who purchased the Renoir in 1925.
Highlights of the two-gallery exhibition include masterworks such as Piet Mondrian's Composition V (1927), Paul Klee's Traveling Circus (1937), Joan Miró's Portrait No. 1 (1938), and André Masson's There Is No Finished World (1942), which demonstrate May's role as an early champion of pivotal 20th-century artists.
Curated by Senior Curator of European Painting & Sculpture Katy Rothkopf.
Front Room: Sterling Ruby
March 16 – June 15, 2014
Free exhibition
The BMA presents an exhibition of provocative soft sculptures by acclaimed artist Sterling Ruby, deemed "one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century" by The New York Times. Crafted from red, white, and blue fabric, Ruby's enormous pillow-like forms resemble the fanged mouths of vampires and create a visual metaphor that suggests a critical outlook on the current state of American culture and politics.
Ruby’s work often employs practices associated with therapy and craft and frequently addresses oppressive political, social, and artistic power structures. The 11 soft sculptures on view combine imagery associated with the United States with fragments of vampires, undead creatures that feed off the living. Though seemingly inviting and celebratory at first glance, upon further inspection, the soft sculptures emerge as symbols of insatiable hunger, overwhelming power, and potential violence.
Curated by Curator of Contemporary Art Kristen Hileman.
Black Box: Camille Henrot
March 5 – June 15, 2014
Free exhibition
"[Grosse Fatigue features] ... an expanding field of images that pop up, roil, collide, and implode across a computer screen, a digital tabula rasa that itself perpetually reinvents the world ..." - ARTFORUM
The BMA is the first museum in the US to present French artist Camille Henrot’s Grosse Fatigue, winner of the Silver Lion Award at the 2013 Venice Biennale. The energetic 13-minute video on the origins of life and creation myths incorporates behind-the-scenes footage of the prestigious collections at the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of Natural History. Images of these anthropological objects, often manipulated by colorfully manicured hands, are presented in a rapid succession of desktop computer frames. The film's bold spoken-word soundtrack set to a driving hip-hop beat mixes scientific history with creation stories belonging to religious, hermetic, and oral traditions.
The exhibition is organized by Curator of Contemporary Art Kristen Hileman and presented in collaboration with The Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Media Studies.
Generously sponsored by Elaine and Solomon Snyder.
German Expressionism: A Revolutionary Spirit
Through September 14, 2014
Free exhibition
More than 35 vivid paintings, drawings, prints, watercolors, and sculpture present an overview of the revolutionary art movement that flourished in Germany during the first three decades of the 20th century. The exhibition features powerful examples by Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and other artists associated with the two most prominent Expressionist artist groups: Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), as well as several independent expressionists.The exhibition includes several of the BMA’s outstanding, rarely shown color woodcuts, as well as loans from private collections.
Curated by Associate Curator of European Painting & Sculpture Oliver Shell.
Contemporary Art Wing Now Open!
There’s always something new to see at the BMA. The Museum’s exciting new presentation of the art of our time keeps the visitor experience lively and fresh through two new exhibition series and the return of the acclaimed Front Room series.
Guyton\Walker. Untitled. 2011. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Fanny B. Thalheimer Memorial Fund, BMA 2011.39.1-27. Courtesy of Greene Naftali Gallery, New York
Sarah Oppenheimer
Architectural intervention
November 18, 2012 – Ongoing
The BMA is the first major museum to commission and acquire a site-specific installation by award-winning artist Sarah Oppenheimer. For the dramatic two-part work, the artist opens sightlines between the 2nd and 3rd floors of the Contemporary Wing and through the wall between the contemporary and Cone collections, inserting meticulously crafted aluminum and reflective glass. The groundbreaking architectural intervention allows you to see unexpected views of fellow visitors, art works, and galleries above, below, and across from you.
Oppenheimer received a BA in Semiotics from Brown University and an MFA from Yale University, where she is a visiting critic in painting and printmaking in the School of Art. Her work has been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe at venues including the Rice University Art Gallery, Houston; the Saint Louis Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and the Skulpturens Hus, Stockholm.
Oppenheimer’s architectural intervention at the BMA is generously funded by the Nathan L. and Suzanne F. Cohen Contemporary Art Acquisitions Endowment and a gift from the Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Visit your favorite works by Matisse, Picasso, Pissarro, Courbet, and Degas in the world-class Cone Collection galleries. Special exhibitions inspired by or from the collection are often presented in these galleries as well.
Please Note: A traveling exhibition of works from the BMA's Matisse collection is on a year-long tour to Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and San Antonio from August 2013 through October 2014. During this time, visitors can see German Expressionism: A Revolutionary Spirit (through September 14, 2014).
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.
