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BMOREART’S PICKS: BALTIMORE ART OPENINGS, GALLERIES, AND EVENTS FEBRUARY 26 – MARCH 4

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BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is updated on a daily basis.

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This Week !! This Week !! This Week !!Building Your Collection: Connect + Collect Panel 2
Thursday, February 28th • 7pm

Motor House
120 West North Avenue : 21201

Connect + Collect is a new initiative brought to you by BmoreArt’s Cara Ober and Jeffrey Kent, an artist and curator based in Baltimore, designed to create awareness and momentum among new and experienced collectors, and to promote a culture of collecting in Baltimore.

Our second panel is with DC-based collector Darryl Atwell, founder of Kinetic:Conversations in Contemporary Art at American University and NY-based Independent Curator Dexter Wimberly, Founder and CEO of the upcoming Art World Conference to be hosted in NY in April 2019. Topics to be discussed include differences between collecting art directly from artists or purchasing through galleries, how to form collecting communities and groups, and best practices for building ethical, respectful, productive relationships between artists and patrons.

We welcome artists to this conversation who want to strengthen relationships with collectors, as well as those who want to build private and public collections, including curators, collectors, gallerists, and art professionals.

Our panel will be followed by a reception in The Showroom and each ticket includes an adult beverage at the bar.

Top Image: Darryl Atwell “Still Inspired” at the Gantt Museum via The Charlotte Observer


Souls of Mine: New works by Beverly McIver | Reception
Thursday, February 28th • 6-8pm

C. Grimaldis Gallery
523 North Charles Street : 21201

C. Grimaldis Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new and recent paintings by North Carolina-based artist Beverly McIver.

Beverly McIver’s paintings are a voyage in self-revelation from her earlier self-portraits in white face (the clown) to black face (confronting the black stereotype); to the unmasking of her skin, body and feelings as she explores her identity as an artist and as an African American. New works from her yearlong fellowship at the American Academy in Rome turn her introspective self-portraits to “those who courageously share their authentic selves with the world,” depicting black women in body paint and men dressed in drag. This will be her third solo exhibition at C. Grimaldis Gallery.

McIver has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, most notably the Anyone Can Fly Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, 2017; Rome Prize Fellowship, 2017; Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2017; Marie Walsh Sharpe Fellowship, 2012-2013 and 2003; Radcliffe Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, 2002; Creative Capital Grant, 2002; John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2001; and the Anonymous Was A Woman Grant, 2000. Her work is in public collections nationwide, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, North Carolina Museum of Art and the Weatherspoon Art Museum.
“Blinding Light, Whatever May Rise I”, 2018, oil on canvas, 40 x 53 inches
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The exhibition will open on Thursday, February 28 with a reception from 6 – 8 p.m and be on view through February 16. Hours for C. Grimaldis Gallery, which is free and open to the public, are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m

Commons Collaboration: Elissa Blount Moorhead and Mina Cheon
Thursday, February 28th • 7-9pm

Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive : 21218

Conversation: Elissa Blount Moorhead + Mina Cheon, Moderated by Lee Heinemann

Presented in conjunction with Commons Collaboration: Get Your Life!, acclaimed Baltimore-based artists Elissa Blount Moorhead and Mina Cheon will talk about their video-making practices through the lenses of collaboration, power, and family. Moderated by artist Lee Heinemann, the conversation will take place inside the Get Your Life! (GYL!) exhibition in the Joseph Education Commons.

GYL! is a youth-led production company that creates collaborative video projects between middle school students, practicing artists, and institutions. See GYL’s exhibition on view at the BMA now through fall 2019.

+ Elissa Blount Moorhead, artist, curator, mother, and producer, has created public art, books, exhibitions, and cultural programs for the last 25 years. She is currently a creative partner at TNEG film studios, which creates films and time based-installations.

+ Mina Cheon (천민정 PhD, MFA) is a Korean-American global new media artist, scholar, and educator who divides her time between Korea and the United States. Cheon has exhibited her political pop art known as “Polipop” internationally and draws inspiration from global media and popular culture to produce work that intersects politics and pop art in evocative ways.

+ Lee Heinemann is an artist and organizer who makes programs and events in collaboration with individuals and institutions. Lee is the founder of Get Your Life! and the Education and Community Engagement Manager at ArtCenter/South Florida.


Yarrow Mamout in Baltimore
Saturday, March 2nd • 2-4pm

The Peale Center
225 North Holliday Street : 21202

In 1819, Yarrow Mamout was an 84 year old craftsman, land-owner, financier and devout Muslim, who made his home in Georgetown after enduring over 40 years of slavery. Born in Guinea in 1736, he was enslaved and brought to Maryland at just 16 years old, and after gaining his freedom, became well-known and respected for his entrepreneurship, work-ethic, and cheerful spirit.

In January 1819, Charles Wilson Peale completed his portrait of Yarrow, one of only two portraits of people of African descent he would paint throughout his career. In February of 1819, that portrait was displayed at the Peale Museum in Baltimore for one weeks time, alongside Peale’s other recently completed portraits of famous Americans.

200 years later, join us for a panel discussion to explore the incredible life of Yarrow Mamout, the significance of this painting, and the history of Muslims in America in the 19th century.

Panelists include Amir Muhammad, curator of America’s Islamic Heritage Museum and Cultural Center and author of Muslims in America, Carol Stolis, Project Associate Curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Author of The Art of the Peale’s, and Jim Johnson, author of the only biography of Yarrow Mamout and his family, From Slave Ship to Harvard.

This event is FREE, with a $10 Suggested Donation to the Peale Center.

Stay for a 4PM Time Travel Tour at the Peale for an additional $20. Limited to 12 guests. More info at www.time-travel.tours


Now and Never: Anuj Malla and Emily Wallmueller | Opening Reception
Saturday, March 2nd • 6-8pm

St. Charles
2701 North Charles Street : 21201

St. Charles is pleased to present Now and Never a collaborative installation between Baltimore based artists Anuj Malla and Emily Wallmueller.

This artist duo begins their collaborative installations by scavenging material in the streets of Baltimore. Their work embodies fragments of misplaced interior design logic, utilizing a mixture of manufactured objects. Rather than building a functional space, Malla and Wallmueller create uneasy placement of peculiar elements. In their collaborations each artist surrenders their authorship by merging their material interest.

This installation is a space to question our relationship to objects, revealing a dilemma with how one builds self-perception. Products are not only consumed because they are functional, but also because they are an extension of our identities. Malla and Wallmueller’s sculptures mimic, and mock our consumer desires. Now and Never is also a space for objects to possess a new identity separate from our own. This installation is a playful assemblage of repurposed parts, acting as characters simultaneously narrating and building their environment.

www.stcharlesprojects.com, insta: @stcharlesprojects


Liquidation /// Oneiric Emblems | Opening Reception
Saturday, March 2nd • 7-10pm

Current Space
421 North Howard Street : 21201

Current Space is proud to present Liquidation, a solo exhibition by Dre Britton and Oneiric Emblems, a solo exhibition by Vianney Paul. Please join us for the opening reception.

Opening Reception: March 2nd, 7-10pm
Exhibition Duration: March 2nd – March 23rd
Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, noon – 4pm


Women’s History Museum Biennale: Poupées Gonflabes | Opening Reception + Gallery Grand Re-Opening
Saturday, March 2nd • 7-10pm

Springsteen
422 South Highland Avenue : 21224

In Women’s History Museum Biennale: Poupées Gonflabes, Mattie Barringer and Amanda McGowan propose a realm of possibility through an artificial boutique. A semi-abandoned storefront of mysterious origin features overlapping symbols of fashion retail, department stores, beautification, cinema palaces, peep shows, and womanish commoditization in all its forms. As these visual details co-mingle, a world of fantasy and aspiration emerges, but these seductive symbols of desire have attached to them the polluting intention of making money at any cost. The “Magazine Stand,” a collaboration with photographer Tyler Jones, features  magazine layouts leading into endless menageries of display that are detached from temporal reality or clear intent. The layouts were inspired by fashion and sex publications throughout many eras, but the imagery presents a feverishly clothed body.

As we continue to hurtle into an ever- accelerating internet capitalism, featuring an endless reel of new brands, new seasons, and new items to buy on our screens, a physical space where something is for sale feels like an artifact. However, the WHM “storefront” leading to the group show also represents a dubious barrier to community — and makes visible the seductive obsession with materialism, vanity, advertising, delusion, and ego. This is a constant conflict that leads to the failure and inability to break free from the ties to capitalism and the obscured violence it yields. The hollow boutique looms as a dead-end reminder of the lure of these forces, and Fashion’s Failure under capitalism.

To avoid the alienation of commerce, and in keeping with the project’s collaborative origins, WHM’s retail center functions as a gateway to the Biennale, a group show bringing together artists that have all contributed their practice to WHM in one form or another. The Biennale features works from across genres, mediums, and methods, yet however divergent the works remain, they intersect in their expressionism, lack of apathy, and defiance of societal limits imposed upon bodies. This is significant within a capital driven art scene that usually rewards abstraction, minimalism, and obfuscation. Much of the work concerns fashion, or perhaps other forms of corporeal compromise. Women’s History Museum Biennale: Poupées Gonflabeshopes to elaborate on the glittering contradictions behind every institution.

Featuring works by:

Ada O’Higgins

Ajakia Smith

Alma María Arias

Aran Shanmugaratnam

Bryn Barnett

Candice Williams

Dachi Cole

Daffy Scanlan

Firpal Jawanda

Gabriela Rivera-Morales

Gogo Graham

Hedda Carlson

Hu Diè

Keke Hunt

Kelley McNutt

Kip Kirkendall

Loren Mindak

Mati Hays

Mountain Pollen

Noel Freibert

Odessa Straub

Sean- Kierre Lyons

Tyler Jones

Yves B. Golden

Women’s History Museum, founded in New York City in 2015, is the moniker under which Mattie Barringer and Amanda McGowan make work. WHM began in its initial iteration as a series of experiential fashion shows that existed as ephemeral artworks in and of themselves. These fashion shows were created in close collaboration with other artists who often doubled as models, including contributions such as music, makeup, sculpture, hair, nails, shoes, and video. Women’s History Museum engages with Fashion as a medium that has the potential to exist beyond regurgitative spectacle but has the ability to change the fabric of reality. WHM was founded to foster community through making clothing and art, to react against feelings of isolation, powerlessness, and emotional instability, as well out of the desire to create novel and previously unseen images of beauty.

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The best weekly art openings, events, and calls for entry happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas.

This week: String Theory artist talk at Motor House, Bishme Cromartie at Museum of Industry, contract workshop with MDVLA, Emerge Baltimore Vol. 3 opening reception at Bromo Arts Tower, Mai Sennaar book talk at Clifton House, A Night OUT with Iron Crow Theatre, Station North Art Walk, and more!

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