BALTIMORE, MD.- The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) announced today the acquisition of approximately 75 works, spanning time, culture, and geography and capturing a spectrum of artistic innovation. The acquisitions reflect the museum’s ongoing commitment to diversifying its collection with works by artists from the Baltimore region and across the globe, allowing for greater cross-cultural storytelling and reflecting a depth of creative ingenuity. Among the new acquisitions are a textile by Mary Ellen Crisp; paintings by Mark Thomas Gibson and Lubaina Himid; works on paper by Chitra Ganesh, Rania Matar, Natani Notah (Diné), Shahzia Sikander, and Lorna Simpson; photographs by Tamiko Nishimura and Gail Thacker; sculpture by Cheryl Pope and Lucia Hierro; and a new commission by Robell Awake—a rising star of the furniture world, who uses 19th-century African American chairmaking forms and techniques to create contemporary works that speak to the imagination of Black makers across time.

The BMA’s longstanding investment in artists with ties to the Baltimore region continues with the acquisitions of works by Linda Bills, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, and Sara VanDerBeek. The group also includes Viewfinder Quilt #1 and Viewfinder Quilt #2 (both 2020) by the MICA Pandemic Quilters. Taking the traditional form of a Baltimore Album Quilt, these two quilts were produced after a prompt was sent to individual makers to create quilt squares using appliqué techniques that illustrate what had come into focus for them in 2020. These two works document the experiences of the coronavirus pandemic, the fight for social justice and growing awareness of racial oppression, and the importance of nature and the environment. The quilters first banded together following a public program led by Susie Brandt (now Professor Emerita of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) Fiber Department) presented in conjunction with the BMA’s 2015 American Crazy Quilts exhibition. Originally comprised of MICA students and faculty, the group later expanded to include other MICA staff, alumni, and friends, members of the African American Quilters of Baltimore, and participants from across the U.S. The MICA Pandemic Quilters produced 14 Viewfinder quilts over two years.

The acquisitions also notably include a significant promised gift of 37 works from the collection of BMA National Trustee Sylvia de Cuevas. The gift includes paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, and decorative arts with outstanding examples of works by modern icons such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Fernand Léger, as well as works by important Surrealist artists Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, René Magritte, and Victor Brauner. This is the first representation in the collection of work by Brauner, whose figures are often derived from tarot card imagery and Romanian folklore. The group also includes nine graphic pieces and three sculptures by French feminist artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who is also new to the BMA’s collection. Other artists represented in the gift are Michelangelo Pistoletto, one of the leaders of the “Arte Povera” movement in Italy, and Pavlos Dionyssopoulos, known as Pavlos, who developed his experimental paper sculptures during the emergence of Nouveau Réalisme and Pop Art.

“The acquisitions announced today speak to the BMA’s focus on both acclaimed and under-recognized artistic movements and creative breakthroughs, from our own community and across global cultures,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “As we consider the growth of our collection, we are particularly attuned to storytelling: how we can deepen commonly understood artistic narratives with a range of voices and bring to the fore those stories that have been obscured or erased. Our collection is core to our work as an institution and allows for ongoing research and innovation in our audience-centered presentations. I am delighted by the thoughtful range of works entering our collection and look forward to sharing them with our visitors.”

Acquisition Highlights

Mary Ellen Crisp. Diana. c. 1934.

Artist Mary Ellen Crisp (1896-1973) was a seamstress and dress designer who began making embroideries in the 1920s, and exhibited her work in several New York galleries and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This large-scale embroidery depicts the goddess Diana on horseback, accompanied by two hounds. The geometric solidity of form, the depiction of a strong and independent female figure, the abstracted style, and the decorated patterning of the trees and vines in the background distinctly connect this to the Art Deco movement and represent Crisp’s incredible skill and vision.

Mark Thomas Gibson. Biden’s Entry Into Washington 2021 (American Portrait as Landscape). 2021.

Mark Thomas Gibson (born Miami, FL, 1980) identifies as an American history painter, bringing scholarly rigor to his research-based practice. Inspired by contemporary political cartoons and the carnivalesque mob in James Ensor’s Christ’s entry into Brussels in 1889 (1889), Gibson has created a parallel scene of the early 2021 American political landscape, replete with incendiary symbols such as the confederate flag. As in Ensor’s magnum opus, Gibson reveals how significant events recede in the maelstrom of spectacle.

Lubaina Himid. Posture Master. 2023.
Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska. Any Posture One Shilling. 2024.

Lubaina Himid (born Zanzibar, Tanzania, 1954) is central to Britain’s Black Art Movement and best known for vivid figurative paintings that explore the complexities of Black diasporic presence in Western imperial contexts. This magisterial painting is a harlequin-like portrait of the 17th-century British contortionist Joseph Clark, also known as the “posture master.” The accompanying double-sided print, made collaboratively with artist Magda Stawarska (born Poland, 1976), reflects a darker interior thought, “AS TWISTED AS MY TEARS,” connecting the act of contortion to an outcry of despair and desperation.

Cheryl Pope. Hoop Dreams. 2010.

Cheryl Pope (born Chicago, IL, 1980) explores themes of identity, community, history, and power. Hoop Dreams draws inspiration from Pope’s time working at Chicago’s James Jordan Boys and Girls Club after college. For many of the boys she encountered, dreams of playing basketball in the NBA provided hope for a better life, and yet for many this would not be possible. The artist captured this tension by juxtaposing a gilded basketball atop a shackle.

Shahzia Sikander. ERA. 2024.

Shahzia Sikander (born Lahore, Pakistan, 1969) has placed traditional South Asian illuminated manuscript techniques in conversation with contemporary idioms to great acclaim. In recent years, her practice has expanded to produce three-dimensional objects such as this large-scale diptych made of pigmented wet paper pulp with hand drawn details. The verdigris coloration of the figures’ skin alludes to pigments used in Persianate miniature painting, which often included copper as a binding preservative. The title ERA is an intentional reference to past and present movements for women’s rights across the globe. The border designs incorporate motifs from Sikander’s work—horned figures, animals, flowers, silhouetted figures with flowering hair—that are ancient symbols of strength, wisdom, and female power.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum. Arrival (Pierneef). 2023.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum (born Mochudi, Botswana, 1980) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses drawing, painting, installation, and animation. Her works invoke mythology and geology with layered references to literature, film, and theater, as well as the remembered landscapes from her upbringing in Botswana, Canada, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Malawi, and Panama. This three-panel painting imagines a fictional femme fatale who embodies “the person who goes and comes back,” and explores what it means to occupy “a liminal body, a body partially accepted.” Sunstrum earned an MFA from MICA and the BMA is among the first major U.S. museums to acquire the artist’s work.

Dorothy Torivio (Acoma Pueblo), Sandra Victorino (Acoma Pueblo), P. Estevan (Acoma Pueblo), and M.C. Antonio (Acoma Pueblo). Jars. c. 1980s.

The BMA has received a gift of seven ceramic jars by four contemporary women artists from the Acoma Pueblo community in New Mexico: Dorothy Torivio (1946-2011), Sandra Victorino (born 1958), P. Estevan (born 1967), and M.C. Antonio (born 1965). Each artist used techniques passed down from family members to transform hand-harvested clay into thin-walled vessels built from stacked coils that were then smoothed and burnished. The repetition of forms across makers signals a sustained significance of pottery at the heart of Acoma culture.

Unidentified artist from Nigeria or Chad. Qur’an. c 1850-1899.

The acquisition of this Qur’an supports the BMA’s work to enhance holdings of art representative of Islamic practices across the African continent. The beautiful and well preserved object illustrates both canonical elements of the text as well as regionally specific characteristics. In particular, this Qur’an uses Barnawi, a script mostly from areas of Nigeria and Chad. It is also accompanied by a leather case that allows for portability. This is significant as many ethnic groups of Northern Nigeria and Chad practicing Islam have historically lived nomadic or semi-nomadic lives. The addition of the work to the collection allows for cross-cultural exploration across Islamic visual practices.