BALTIMORE, MD.- The Baltimore Museum of Art today announced that it has acquired more than 200 works across its encyclopedic collection. The acquisitions reflect the BMA’s ongoing commitment to expanding its holdings with works that represent global voices, across time and culture, as well as those by artists with ties to the Baltimore region. This approach to collection growth ensures that the museum can share with its audiences a depth of perspectives, experiences, and artistic innovations, from its own arts community and well beyond.
Among the contemporary works acquired are paintings, sculpture, ceramics, and mixed media objects by Bernadette Despujols, Rhea Dillon, Hew Locke, Roberto Lugo, Raúl de Nieves, Dyani White Hawk, and Billie Zangewa, and photographs and works on paper by Bethany Collins, Shihoko Fukumoto, Lyle Ashton Harris, Naoya Hatakeyama, Rinko Kawauchi, Nikki S. Lee, Samella Lewis, and Stacey Lynn Waddell.
Works by artists from the Baltimore region include a suite of 25 black and white photographs by I. Henry Phillips Sr. that capture daily life in and around Baltimore in the 1950s and 1960s; two major works by Joyce J. Scott, whose 50-year career retrospective recently closed at the BMA; photographic portraits of Joyce J. Scott and her mother Elizabeth Talford Scott by Carl Clark; an expansive installation made of found and collected fabrics by Erick N. Mack; a painting by Louis Fratino that explores queerness, love, and intimacy within a domestic environment; and a mixed media work on paper by Jowita Wyszomirska that speaks to natural cycles of growth and decay that have occurred across the mid-Atlantic region for centuries.
Historical works entering the collection include the paintings Portrait of Sultan Abdulhamid I (r. 1774-89) (early 19th century) by an unknown artist who may have been a follower of Konstanin Kapidagli, Peonies (c. 1918) by Norwegian artist Margrethe Jensen, and a pastel drawing of a Young Girl with Headscarf (c. 1885) by Henriette Daux; a vessel with human figure (before 1928) by Voania of Muba; decorative and functional objects such as a Deccan embroidered floor spread (late 18th century), a dandelion clock (1903), and two vases (c. 1903) by Alfred Daguet; and a cribbage board with high-relief decoration of fish, a seal, a wolf, and foxes (c. 1910) attributed to an unidentified Cup’ig artist.
Additionally, the museum received two major gifts that expand the BMA’s already strong holdings, including 181 copper plates, three linoleum blocks, and an illustrated book by French artist Henri Matisse. The BMA is home to the largest public collection of Matisse works, and this transformational gift further provides scholars, researchers, and conservators opportunities to learn about Matisse’s printmaking practice in the BMA’s Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies. BMA Trustee Amy Gould and her husband Matthew Polk also donated a remarkable group of historic and modern textiles representing the cultures of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. These artworks help the BMA tell the stories of these peoples and their long histories of artistic excellence across time and space while making a significant step forward in the museum’s mission to present art that speaks for diverse cultures, past and present, across the globe.
