BALTIMORE, MD.- As part of its strategy to illuminate new narratives through its growing global collection, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) will open its newly re-installed contemporary wing on February 26, 2025. The new presentation, titled Crosscurrents, explores the different ways that artists working across the past six decades have engaged with, challenged, and found solace in turbulent times.
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The galleries feature 67 works, including a new commission by interdisciplinary artist Abigail Lucien. Foregrounding their Haitian-American heritage, Lucien’s practice engages with notions of future possibility, history, and senses of belonging. This exhibition, titled Abigail Lucien: Under Other Skies, features ten steel sculptures that evoke the artist’s concept of a “third space”—a place where truth and myth exist together and hold equal weight. The installation, which conjures elements of nature and architecture, speaks directly to the complex aspects of diasporic experience.
Nearly half of the works in Crosscurrents are on view for the first time, including Peace Keeper (1995/2020) by Nari Ward and Lay Me Down in Praise (2022) by Justen Leroy. Peace Keeper is among Ward’s most important installations and reflects his unflinching critique of racial oppression. Originally conceived for the 1995 Whitney Biennial and later recreated for the New Museum, the work features a hearse tarred with black grease and peacock feathers, entrapped within a metal cage. It is described by the artist as an opportunity “to give energy to ideas about trauma and [about] change.” Peace Keeper is presented in dialogue with Elegy to the Spanish Republic CII (1965) by Robert Motherwell, conceived as a monumental commemoration of human suffering and cycles of life and death in response to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
Justen Leroy’s three-channel video installation presents slow-moving footage of geological events like volcanic eruptions and glacial melt set to a transfixing soundtrack informed by blues, R&B, gospel, and jazz music. Lay Me Down in Praise (2022) offers an evocative rallying cry for environmental crisis, connecting directly to one of the most urgent issues of our time through the expression of Black voices. This installation is part of the BMA’s ongoing initiative Turn Again to the Earth, which explores topics related to climate and sustainability.
Crosscurrents also includes a broad focus on artworks exploring experiences of nature, ecological change, and human exploitation and restoration of the environment. Dreamseeds is an interactive installation by Baltimore-based artists Hannah Brancato and Sanahara Ama Chandra and curated by Merrell Hambleton, BMA Director of Public Engagement. Installed on the upper floor of the museum’s East Lobby, this participatory work invites visitors to share their wildest dreams for the earth, contributing to a vision for our collective future. Among the other objects related to Turn Again to the Earth—identified with a special label—are Weed Pots (c. 1960-1978) by Doyle Lane, Gulf Distortions (2011) by Soledad Salamé; Tightrope – Familiar Yet Complex 4 (2016) by Elias Sime; Eastpoint (September 14, 2004) (2004-2006) by Wolfgang Staehle, and The Light that Got Lost 1 (2020) by Jowita Wyszomirska.
Among the other works featured in Crosscurrents are: Pher Bahar Ayee (Come Spring Again) (2022) by Rasheed Araeen; The Shroud (2010) by Brent Crothers; Biden’s Entry Into Washington 2021 (American Portrait as Landscape) (2021) by Mark Thomas Gibson; Untitled (Fort National)
(2019) by Lillian Bayley Hoover; Dislocation Blues (2017) by Sky Hopinka; Water body (2016, printed 2018) by Elle Pérez; Judson 3 (1970) by Faith Ringgold; and Touchstone (2021) by Shahzia Sikander. Together, the featured objects capture the depth of the BMA’s collecting and the opportunities for storytelling that the collection enables.
“Our contemporary collection showcases some of the most daring imaginings of how artists connect with the environment and offers a rich and dynamic resource for exploring the beauty and complexity of our world. We are committed to bringing new works on view to engage our visitors in a depth of ideas and expressions and to ensuring that our collection galleries are a vibrant part of the museum experience,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “I am excited to debut the new commission works by Abigail Lucien and the extraordinary installations by Justen Leroy and Nari Ward.”
Crosscurrents is curated by Jessica Bell Brown, former BMA Curator of Contemporary Art; Cecilia Wichmann, Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art; and Leila Grothe, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art; with Antoinette Roberts, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art; Dylan Kaleikaumaka Hill, Meyerhoff-Becker Curatorial Fellow; Oscar Flores-Montero, Curatorial Assistant for Contemporary Art; and Maura Callahan, University of Maryland Fellow.
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