Current Exhibitions
Featured Exhibition
Meditations on African Art: Pattern
Through August 24, 2008
The third and final installation in the BMA’s Meditations on African Art series, Pattern features more than 70 diverse works—many on view for the first time—that define the shape and surface of African art. Dramatic textiles, fragile adinkra dye stamps, delicately carved ivories, boldly painted shields, and figurative works show the role of pattern in cultural style, body adornment, and dynamic visual design. Nigerian-born, London-based artist Mary Evans will create several site-specific works for the exhibition, including: video montages detailing the slave trade in British port cities, West Africa, and on plantations in the southern U.S. that are viewed through a kaleidoscope; floor–to–ceiling intricately patterned murals; and framed works on paper. She also created a series of rosettes for the windows above the BMA's Visitors Entrance.
This exhibition is curated by Karen Milbourne, former BMA Associate Curator of African Art. The Meditations series is generously sponsored by Polk Audio, Matthew Polk and Amy Gould.
Front Room: Jim Dine
Through October 5, 2008
The BMA’s experimental project space features approximately 20 prints, drawings, and paintings by American artist Jim Dine (born 1935) that reflect his lifelong interest in Jungian questions of the human’s place in the world, particularly his own. Examples include a group of five expressionistic lithographs called The Crash (1960)—the first prints the artist made—which reveal his anguish following the death of a friend in a car accident. The remarkable etching Five Paintbrushes (1973) explores the sensuality of human hair, and the illustrated book The Temple of the Flora (1984) weds poetry and botany. Two recent acquisitions to the BMA’s collection shown for the first time are: A Side View in Florida (1986), an enlarged hand-colored image of a skull from Gray’s Anatomy, and Raven on Lebanese Border (2000), a masterful combination of both etching and woodcut techniques. The Five Hammer Études (2007), a print of familiar tools, was given by the artist on the occasion of this exhibition, strengthening the BMA's already comprehensive study of the artist's work.
Conversation with Jim Dine
Wednesday, September 10, 7 p.m.
Free
Join artist Jim Dine in conversation with Ann Shafer, Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs. Front Room: Jim Dine will remain open until 7 p.m. A dessert reception follows the lecture. Space is limited. For reserve your space call 443-573-1832 or programs@artbma.org.
Jim Dine on Film
Saturday, September 13, 2 p.m.
Free
Enjoy screenings of the 1978 interview (38 min.) between Jim Dine and Kate Horsfield, co-founder and executive director of the Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and the 1995 Richard Stilwell documentary, Jim Dine: A Self Portrait on the Walls (28 min.).
This exhibition is curated by Ann Shafer, BMA Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs.
The Front Room series is generously sponsored by The Rouse Company Foundation.
Bonnard & Vuillard
Through October 19, 2008
This intimate exhibition features more than 40 works on paper and paintings by two of the most experimental artists at the turn of the century, Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) and Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940). Drawn entirely from the BMA's rich collection of late 19th- and early 20th-century French art, the exhibition includes five paintings, three drawings, and more than 30 lithographs, etchings, posters, and illustrated books that trace the change in style for both artists as they evolve from a late 19th-century interest in everyday life to a colorful exploration of domestic life in intimate interiors through the 1920s and 30s.
This exhibition is curated by Katy Rothkopf, BMA Curator of European Painting & Sculpture.
Also on View
A Grand Legacy: Five Centuries of European Art
Free exhibition
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.
