BALTIMORE, MD.- The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) announced today the acquisition of nearly 250 works that reflect the museum’s focus on expanding the range of global voices represented within its collection. The BMA is widely recognized for its concerted efforts to diversify its holdings. Under the leadership of director Asma Naeem, the museum has expanded this longstanding commitment to embrace a more global view of artistic innovation through time. The newest group of acquisitions includes works by artists from or with ties to Brazil, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Republic of Kazakhstan, Senegal, and Sudan, among numerous others. The group also continues the museum’s investment in uplifting artists from both local and regional communities, with works by Derrick Adams, Oletha DeVane, Grace Hartigan, and Thiang Uk. Together, the acquisitions capture the BMA’s investment in actively engaging with both deeply local and broadly global contexts and artistry.
Among the acquisitions, which include works entering the collection through purchase and gift or promised gift, are paintings by Nadoyama Aijun, Alice Rahon, and Rubem Valentim; sculpture and mixed-media works by José Alves, Emanoel Araújo, Manjunath Kamath, Ronaldo Pereira Rego, and Kiyan Williams; video installation by Ebun Sodipo; textiles by Theodore Diouf, Bocar Pathe Diong, and Gulnur Mukazhanova; and works on paper by Nadim Asfar, Marcel Duchamp, Ahmad Ghossein, Susan Rothenberg, and Malick Sidibé. The group also includes historical objects by unnamed artists from the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, and Kashmir (today part of India and Pakistan).
An anonymous gift of more than 180 works by 63 artists further expands the BMA’s contemporary collection with paintings, sculpture, and time-based media works by Sam Anderson, Danica Barboza, Gina Beavers, Lucas Blalock, Alex Da Corte, Rafael Delacruz, Juliana Huxtable, and Martine Syms, among others. This distinctive collection represents a defining moment in New York’s gallery ecosystem and its relationship to Baltimore’s creative communities between 2010 and 2017.
Additionally, Barbara Dauphin Duthuit, widow of Henri Matisse’s grandson Claude Duthuit, has gifted the BMA 10 copper plates and 10 etchings by Henri Matisse. The museum is home to more than 1,600 works by Matisse, making it the world’s largest public collection of the French modern icon. Ten etchings and six of the plates connect to his first major illustrated book, Poems of Stéphane Mallarmé (1932), while four plates depict his daughter Marguerite, who was central to his life and art. This gift joins 181 copper plates and three linoleum blocks that Duthuit gave the BMA in 2024, further
enriching the examples of Matisse’s working materials in the museum’s collection. It also recognizes the BMA’s ongoing commitment to new scholarship on and public engagement with Matisse’s work, which will also be enhanced with three exhibitions opening in March 2026: Fratino and Matisse: To See This Light Again (opens March 11); Matisse and Martinique: Portraits and Poetry (opens March 18); and Matisse in Vence: The Stations of the Cross (opens March 29).
“The acquisitions announced today reflect the BMA’s expansive vision for diversifying our collection with works that tell global narratives of art and culture and that connect local and global experience,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “We believe artistic innovation and compelling stories of the human spirit transcend historical and geographic boundaries. Our collecting practices embrace a deep sense of discovery that invites our visitors to connect with an incredible range of voices, from close to home and across the world. I look forward to sharing these captivating works in our galleries and to continuing to imagine broadly what a truly global collection can be and mean for our communities.”
Acquisition Highlights
Alice Rahon, Fiesta de Abril, 1945
Alice Rahon (1904–1987) is an important, yet still underrecognized, artist within the transnational history of Surrealism. Born in France but active for most of her career in Mexico, Rahon forged a singular artistic language rooted in poetry, prehistoric imagery, and the vibrant cultural environment of her adopted home. Fiesta de Abril is one of her earliest mature works and stands as an exceptional example of her characteristic rhythmic forms, which here include figures, animals, kites, and pyramid-like motifs in festive procession under a radiant sun. The acquisition is the first for the BMA by the artist and aligns with the museum’s commitment to expanding the narrative of modernism beyond a European frame.
Kiyan Williams, Statue of Freedom (Marsha P. Johnson), 2024
This sculpture by Kiyan Williams (b. 1991, United States) is the third edition of a powerful work that debuted at the 2024 Whitney Biennial. The sculpture borrows its title from the historic bronze atop the Capitol Building. Williams recasts the Statue of Freedom as Marsha P. Johnson, drawing on Diana Davies’ photograph (c. early 1970s) of the pioneering artist and activist at a Gay Liberation Front protest. Williams’ interpretation is life size as opposed to towering over the public and poised with a protest poster and cigarette in lieu of the sword and shield of the original, subverting the conventions of monuments. Cast in chrome-plated aluminum, its mirrored surface plays with distortion and reflection, disassembling the surroundings into fragments and shifting established perceptions of the world.
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box), 1934
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box) records the planning and creation of Marcel Duchamp’s (1887–1968) celebrated sculpture The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, created between 1915 and 1923. This portfolio, often referred to as simply The Green Box, both charts Duchamp’s conceptual process in designing the famously enigmatic sculpture and reflects his interest in contemporary applied science and multidimensional geometry. The Green Box includes 94 components, including working drawings and notes, and epitomizes Duchamp’s vision of process as an artwork in its own right. The Green Box joins two Duchamp multiples in the BMA’s collection, as well as a Berenice Abbott photograph of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even that was hand-colored by Duchamp (c. 1936).
Théodore Diouf, Symbiose (c. 1980) and Les Esprits de la Nuit (1979), and Bocar Pathe Diong, Sangomar (c. 1980)
Designed by Théodore Diouf and Bocar Pathe Diong and woven at the Manufacture Sénégalaises des Arts Décoratifs de Thiès, these tapestries exemplify the creative vitality of post-independence Senegal. Commissioned as part of President Léopold Sédar Senghor’s ambitious cultural program, they merge modernist abstraction with African visual traditions, celebrating themes of nature, spirituality, and ancestral heritage. Through bold color, dynamic composition, and symbolic forms, these works assert a distinctly Senegalese modernism that augments the BMA’s global modern art collection. These works will be presented in a forthcoming exhibition in fall 2026.
Salah Elmur, Farewell Wall, 2024
Salah Elmur (b. 1966, Sudan) is a leading Sudanese painter whose work bridges the country’s modernist legacy and contemporary experience. Elmur inherited the visual language of the Khartoum School, the mid-20th movement that sought to express a new national identity through the synthesis of African, Nubian, and Islamic forms. His art extends this lineage through what he calls “figurative abstraction, which engages with the rhythms and beauty of ordinary life.” Farewell Wall exemplifies Elmur’s ability to turn intimate scenes into universal reflections. The painting amplifies the BMA’s commitment to artists from eastern Africa and joins recently acquired works by Ibrahim el-Salahi, Lubaina Himid, Merikokeb Berhanu, Skunder Boghossian, Ficre Ghebreyesus, and Jomo Tariku.
Gulnar Mukazhanova, Shadows of Hope #15, 2024
Gulnur Mukazhanova (b. 1984, Republic of Kazakhstan) grew up in a rural region home to intense coal mining under the USSR as well as several forced labor camps. The artist’s engagement with abstraction is a source of freedom and an opportunity to excavate generational trauma. The large-scale felted textile is part of a larger installation first developed in residency at CHAT art centre in Hong Kong. This segment captures abstract color gradations that evolve from black to vivid red, pink, and orange hues and represents the artist’s first use of the color black as an acceptance of her sense of fear. The work also reflects the vastness of the Kazakh Steppe. The work is the first by Mukazhanova to enter the collection and advances the BMA’s goal to collect non-Western contemporary art.
Emanoel Araújo, Untitled, 1991, and Untitled, 1989
Emanoel Araújo (1940–2020) played a critical role in defining Brazilian art as an artist, curator, and visionary leader. Among his many accolades, he founded and led the Museo Afro Brazil in São Paulo and coined the term Afro-Brazilian as an artistic and cultural movement. Both Untitled (1991), a large-scale polychromed wood sculpture, and Untitled (1989), a work on paper, capture the dynamic abstract forms and bold colors that defined Araújo’s work and reflect the distinct qualities of Afro-Brazilian abstraction. The works are the first by Araújo to enter the BMA’s collection and establish new pathways to explore modernism outside of the Western canon, diasporic experience, and the artistic legacies of Brazil, especially among Afro-Brazilian practitioners.
Manufacturer: De Drie Klokken (The Three Bells), “Deree van Baltimore” Tobacco Jar, c. 1750–1775
This 18th-century tobacco jar was made in Delft, the center of blue and white tin-glazed earthenware production, in a factory founded by the earliest known independent woman Delftware maker, Barbara Rotteveel (before 1675, after 1706). This jar is one of only three known surviving jars with “Deree van Baltimore” (Tobacco from Baltimore) printed on the face, announcing that the contents are from Baltimore, Maryland. A vivid scene of Black laborers barreling tobacco on a tropical shore signals the global trade networks linking Maryland’s plantations to European markets and reveals the entanglement of artistry, commerce, and slavery.
Unidentified Kongolese Artist, Personal Crucifix, 18th century
This brass crucifix from the Kongo Kingdom (located in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola) is the first Christian artwork from central Africa to enter the collection as well as the oldest work in the collection from that area. Intended as a pendant, the crucifix blends Catholic iconography with Kongo spiritual aesthetics to convey both faith and status. Christ’s stylized figure is framed by a patterned border recalling elite textiles, while additional figures—interpreted as intercessors—signal the fusion of Christian and Kongo cosmologies. By reflecting the kingdom’s deep engagement with global Christianity and its adaptation within African cultural frameworks, this crucifix expands narratives of global exchange and religious hybridity in the BMA’s collection.
