BALTIMORE, MD.- From March 6 through August 14, the Baltimore Museum of Art presents Joan Mitchell, the long-awaited retrospective of the internationally renowned artist who attained critical acclaim and success in the male-dominated art circles of 1950s New York, then spent nearly four decades in France creating breathtaking abstract paintings that evoke landscapes, memories, poetry, and music. This comprehensive exhibition features 70 works spanning the artist’s career, including rarely seen early paintings and drawings, vibrant gestural paintings that established her reputation in New York, and enormous multi-panel masterpieces from her later years that immerse viewers with their symphonic color. Numerous loans from public and private collections in the U.S. and Europe include works that have not been shown publicly in decades and never in a single exhibition. The BMA’s presentation also includes many archival photographs, letters, poems, and other materials from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, providing additional context about the development of the artist’s work and influences.

The BMA is the only East Coast venue for Joan Mitchell. The exhibition debuted at SFMOMA in September 2021, and a new presentation will open at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in October 2022. In conjunction with the opening, the BMA will begin extending its hours to 9 p.m. on Thursdays starting on March 10. Adding evening hours is among the BMA’s strategic priorities as part of its efforts to increase community access and is supported by a generous gift from the Rouse Company Foundation. Additionally, the retrospective coincides with the final month of the exhibition All Due Respect, which features new work by four artists with ties to Baltimore who have previously received Joan Mitchell Foundation awards. All Due Respect includes installations by Lauren Frances Adams, Mequitta Ahuja, Cindy Cheng, and LaToya Hobbs, and highlights Mitchell’s desire to support the lives and careers of working artists through her foundation.

Co-organized with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Joan Mitchell is the result of more than three years of research and first-hand review of hundreds of paintings by exhibition co-curators Katy Siegel, BMA Senior Programming & Research Curator and Thaw Chair of Modern Art at Stony Brook University, and Sarah Roberts, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA. They were supported by research teams from both museums and Stony Brook University, as well as a dedicated fellow funded by the Joan Mitchell Foundation. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue have established a new depth of scholarship and understanding about Mitchell’s work as a transnational artist, as well as her profound impact on the trajectory of art.

“Across her life, Joan Mitchell experimented with how painting could embody physical experience and capture a wide range of emotions—including grief, sensual pleasure, humor, joy, and a kind of metaphysical soaring in the face of death—as well as connections to people and places,” said Siegel. “Mitchell also grappled with conflict between the social roles prescribed by her gender and social status and her desire for true creative freedom. She was not simply ‘making it’ in an environment created and occupied by men, she was actively remaking painting and its possibilities. This exhibition is an opportunity to ask what it means to live a life with art at its center and to reconsider the art and narratives of the postwar era.”