BALTIMORE, MD.- The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) announced today the acquisition of approximately 150 works, capturing artistic ingenuity across culture, geography, and time. The BMA continues to be guided by a vision of global exchange, adding works to the collection that represent a vast array of voices from around the world and allowing for more dynamic and nuanced storytelling about art and people. This includes an ongoing focus on uplifting artists from or with ties to the Baltimore region, highlighting the depth of artistry and innovation that exists within the museum’s community.

Among the acquisitions, which include works entering the collection through purchase and gift or promised gift, are paintings by Thomas Hart Benton, Katherine Bradford, Manuel Felguérez, Helen Frankenthaler, Maia Cruz Palileo, Kaveri Raina, and María Josefa Sánchez; sculpture and mixed media works by Kelly Akashi, Ida Applebroog, Tracey Emin, Alicia Henry, and Roxy Paine; a video installation by Josh Kline; textile and jewelry works by Betty Cooke, Ansoumana Diédhiou, and Arline Fisch; and works on paper by Omar Ba, Paul Colin, Auguste Amant Constant Fidèle Edouart, Fathi Hassan, Marlon Mullen, Richard Pousette-Dart, Benjamin Roubaud, Henry Taylor, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Uemura Shōen.

As part of its vision to support artists in the creation of new work, the BMA has acquired Fire on the Mountain (2025), a sculpture by Abigail Lucien (born 1992) from a new body of work commissioned by the BMA for the artist’s first solo museum presentation. Currently on view in the recently reinstalled Contemporary Wing, the work is emblematic of Lucien’s integration of motifs of vernacular architecture, flora, and fauna into formally innovative relief sculpture—both participating in and challenging traditions of fable and allegory. Additionally, the BMA has acquired clouds XVI (2024) by Kenturah Davis (born Los Angeles, CA, 1984), which the artist produced as part of the Sherman Family Foundation Residency in Maine—a program developed in partnership with the BMA. Inspired by the shifting cloud formations she observed in Maine, the work is made with indigo pigment rubbing and debossed text on Igarashi kozo paper and continues the artist’s exploration of perception and materiality. Both works are the first by the artists to enter the museum’s collection.

The BMA has also acquired several works by artists with connections to Baltimore, including a major freestanding sculpture Bale Variant No 0027 (Charm City Girl Stele) (2022) by Shinique Smith (born Baltimore, MD, 1971). This gift from the artist, dedicated in memory of her grandparents, is comprised of bundled and bound garments, ribbon, and dyed fabric and functions as a monument, vessel, and archive of resilience and place-making. The title explicitly references Baltimore, grounding the work in the artist’s biography and affirming her connection to local Black communities, particularly the experiences of women and girls. The group also features works on paper by Mahtab Hussain, Joyce J. Scott, and Nicholas Wisniewski, as well as a genre-defying assemblage by Devin N. Morris.

“The acquisitions announced today reflect the BMA’s deeply intentional and concerted efforts to enhance our collection with new voices and to strengthen holdings of important genres, movements, and creative evolutions,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “Our vision is to leverage our collection to tell a breadth of captivating stories about people, cultures, and the importance of art to nurturing and reflecting the human spirit. We look forward to bringing these new works into our galleries for the enjoyment of our audiences.”
Acquisition Highlights

Cantagalli Workshop. Vase with scenes from the Maqamat al-Ḥarīrī, c. 1900-1910. This black-lustered vase was designed and painted at the Cantagalli factory—Italy’s most famous art nouveau ceramic factory and led by Margaret Tod Cantagalli and her daughter Flavia at the turn of the 20th century. The vase scenes are adapted from 13th-century illustrations of the Maqamat al-Ḥarīrī, a compilation of 50 stories written by al-Ḥarīrī of Basra (1054–1122) and is a unique example of an Islamic subject on a vessel from Italy. The historically sourced images are paired with cutting edge chemistry, visible here in the recently formulated black luster glazing. Within the BMA’s collection, it represents ongoing commitments to amplifying religious diversity, the impact of global exchange on art, and works by women-owned workshops.

Ansoumana Diédhiou. Polygamie, c. 1978. This magnificent tapestry was designed by Ansoumana Diédhiou (Senegalese, 1949-2001), who trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Dakar and became a prolific tapestry designer in the workshop established as part of an ambitious arts program established by Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor in 1966. Following Senegalese independence, tapestries such as this one celebrated distinctly Senegalese elements of culture and history and captured a distinct artistic style drawn from historic art from across the African continent. These tapestries show a powerful response to colonial efforts to stifle Senegalese creativity and the use of the arts in independence era policies. Polygamie is the first such tapestry to enter the BMA’s collection and is one of just a few examples in public institutions in the U.S.

Tracey Emin. The Doors VIII, 2023. Tracey Emin (born London, England, 1963) burst onto the scene in the 1990s as part of the Young British Artists and is among the most significant contemporary artists working today. With brilliant candor, Emin’s work mines personal experience to explore the construction of the self and communal experience. The Doors, first commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in London, features three monumental doors with 45 bronze portraits of unnamed women and responds to the persistent lack of representation of women in leading museum collections. The Doors VIII is from the third of six editions of the work. The acquisition marks the first major work by Emin to enter the BMA’s collection and champions the breadth of the artist’s celebrated career.

Manuel Felguérez. Conocimiento permanente, 1968. Manuel Felguérez (Mexican, 1928-2020) was a pioneering member of the Generación de la Ruptura (Breakaway Generation)—a group of artists who, beginning in the 1950s, broke with the nationalist precepts of Mexican muralism and reacted against the Mexican School of Painting. Conocimiento permanente (permanent knowledge) is an early work and reflects the artist’s use of thick, textured brushstrokes and color gradations of oil paint applied with palette knife to blend geometric and gestural abstraction. It reflects the idea of aesthetic pleasure, which Felguérez believed to be universal and eternal. It is the first work by the artist to enter the BMA’s collection and expands the museum’s narratives of global modernist art.

Maia Cruz Palileo. The Invitation, 2024. Drawing from historical photographs, particularly American colonial archives from the Philippines, Maia Cruz Palileo (born Chicago, IL, 1979) explores migration, memory, and Filipino-American identity. In their paintings, these found images are further reinterpreted through a personal lens with the incorporation of abstracted motifs from their own family photos and oral histories. Their paintings feature lush, tropical settings rendered in rich, sometimes unsettling color palettes. The Invitation is a tour de force within Palileo’s oeuvre, with the artist leveraging textural contrast to depict a scene with visual and spiritual complexity. It is the first work by Palileo to enter the BMA’s collection, supported by two major gifts from first-time donors to the museum.

María Josefa Sánchez. The Crucifixion or Cell Cross, 1641. This small painted cross by María Josefa Sánchez (active c. 1639-1652) is a rare example of a work by a Spanish woman artist from the early modern period. Remarkably signed and dated at the base of the cross, the work depicts Jesus with great realism at the moment of his Crucifixion, showing him still alive with his gaze turned upward. Such objects, known in Spain as cell crosses, or cruces de celda, were used in private devotional contexts, such as contemplation and prayer in a monastic cell setting. The painting takes a unique format by following the shape of the wooden cross, thereby creating an inextricable link between the physical object and the painted representation of Christ. This work builds on the BMA’s efforts to deepen its collection of early modern women artists, as well as those artists working on the Iberian peninsula in this period.

Henry Taylor. Fade to Black, I Did Not Pay the Electric Bill, 2024. Henry Taylor (born Ventura, CA, 1958) is one of the most recognized painters of the 21st century, with an approach to figuration that crosses cultural and personal boundaries with wry humor. For this self-portrait, Taylor capitalizes on the sugarlift technique to produce the suggestion of brushstrokes. Sugarlift enables the artist to translate the hallmarks of his painting practice—vertically stacked bands of color, drips and visible impasto—into the depth of a black and white graphic image. The work, executed in a series of successive states of which this edition is the final one, creates a sense of weighty psychology and vulnerability reinforced with the title’s wit. This is the first work by Taylor to enter the BMA’s collection.