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Memorial Tribute to Dereck Stafford Mangus (1978-2024)

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Dereck Stafford Mangus, a beloved Baltimore-based artist, writer, and cultural worker, passed away on Sunday, July 7 at the age of 46. His death was confirmed by his brother-in-law Peter Melish.

To honor Dereck, we reached out to a number of his co-workers, colleagues, family members, and friends to share their personal remembrances of him. He was one of those people who felt larger than life, pulsing with serious energy, and it was infectious. We will all miss him so much. To contribute a story, send an email to [email protected].

 

Dereck Mangus, Dereck 2013, photomontage
Dereck Mangus, Johnston Square Ruins #5

Rob Kempton, Friend and BMA Guard

I first met Dereck Mangus in 2016, the year I started working as a museum guard at the BMA. We became fast friends and found commonality in our shared interests in literature, obscure music, art, and art house films. He always kept a book close by and introduced me to Rachel Cusk, an inspiration for him. Years later, we’d take up sculpture garden maintenance as seasonal conservation technicians. Together, we baked under the hot summer sun meticulously applying pigmented wax to bronze figures with a paint brush, smoothing out the streaks with a gloved hand. It gave each of us ownership and agency in the museum, a topic we often spoke of in the galleries we patrolled. 

A Boston transplant, Dereck prioritized visual art and art criticism. Holding two masters degrees, one from Harvard Extension School and one from MICA, Dereck Mangus dedicated a hefty chunk of his life to studying and making art—as well as defending it. 

From the Harvard Art Museum to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to the Baltimore Museum of Art, his perspectives and experiences were shaped indelibly by the art he saw on the job as a museum guard. At the Harvard Art Museum, he became integral to the unionization effort, an aspect he brought to the BMA in 2022. He wrote several articles legitimizing the BMA’s need for a union contract, advocating for workers’ rights and fair pay. In the union’s infancy, he spearheaded the team and urged more staff to vocalize support

He also wrote extensively about art—exhibition reviews and op-eds—contributing to Frieze, Full Bleed, Hyperallergic, BmoreArt, and Artblog. Meanwhile, his photomontages often depicting dilapidated rowhomes and construction sites, which he referred to as Ruins, were featured in group shows at Maryland Art Place and many other galleries in the greater Baltimore area and Ohio. Newer work including an image of his X-rayed hand and an assemblage constructed from a torn-down gallery wall were on view recently at Zo Gallery. 

Dereck Mangus had become a staple in the Baltimore art scene flitting back and forth from art openings and closing receptions, and when he wasn’t showing his own work, he wrote about emerging and established artists around the region often out of curiosity. 

I remember he once sent me a small calendar in the mail he’d made as a gift. The same squares and grids dominating his compositions were echoed in this simple, minimal calendar (classically Dereck). He gave so much of himself, and I found his ability to create prolific work baffling. Where did he find the time? I often asked. It seemed as if he never slept.

 “The work of art is never done. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Though the artist dies, their art lives on,” he noted in his article “Waxing Lyrical.” In light of his recent passing, these words hold new potency, as if I can see him still tinkering away at a project, as permanent as a bronze sculpture.

Following the days of his unexpected and devastating passing in early July, colleagues, writers, friends, artist cohorts, curators, and family members shared anecdotes about Dereck the photographer, writer, scholar, critic, art aficionado, friend, brother, union organizer, and his ever-expanding body of work. 

 

Dereck Mangus, portrait 2024
Dereck Mangus, One Nassau, Boston Construction, 2004, Color filmic photomontage
Dereck Mangus, One Lincoln, Boston Construction, 2001, Black & white filmic photomontage

Jenni Alden, Sister

I visited the Charles Village Pub this afternoon to write down my thoughts. And I know Dereck approved. In fact, it was in honor of Dereck that I was there. I knew my brother. You could count on him in that respect. A great beer over some amazing conversation. And wouldn’t you believe it? A [Bob] Dylan song popped up on the Muzak. Dereck, you are so clearly speaking to me. Now you’ve got me crying in the pub.

We were twins. Born 7 years, 3 months, and 21 days apart. Part of me died that day. I felt it. I’m pretty sure I knew the moment it happened. And to my frustration, at the time not understanding what was to come for four days. But looking back, I felt him in those moments he departed from this world.

Dereck was more than a brother and more than a friend. Something that the English language quite doesn’t have a word for yet. He was a wealth of knowledge, a peer, an artist, a writer, and art critic. He was a son, a brother, a cousin, a nephew, and my most favorite and saddened by, an uncle—my baby brother. 

 

Victoria Mangus, Family Member

Dereck was riding his bicycle in Somerville when a driver cut him off. Then Dereck hoisted his bike over his shoulders and grabbed an egg from a nearby store. He found the car and threw the egg at it, which splashed onto another car. That driver then followed him around the city. Dereck was later arrested that day because throwing an egg into traffic was considered a lethal weapon. 

I’d ask Dereck to tell that story so many times he wouldn’t tell it anymore. It was the way he said it that made it so funny though. I can’t do his story justice. It was way funnier when Dereck said it. 

 

Dereck Mangus, Working on a mailer, 2016
Dereck Mangus, Johnston Square Ruin #1, 2020

Jess Bither, Friend and former BMA Guard

I remember the image that was glowing on the screen at the front of the room when I first met Dereck Mangus. It was a photograph by Man Ray documenting a collaboration between friends, time, and dust. Dereck was presenting his thesis in a dark auditorium, and afterwards we had a conversation about art (we uncovered a mutual interest in Gordon Matta-Clark). This initial conversation extended and migrated to text messages. It ebbed and flowed in different spaces for eight years. Beyond art we talked about politics and formative experiences. We traded books and sent each other songs that made us cry—“Have you read this poem? Have you heard this Bonnie Prince Billy song?” He shared the art he made when he wasn’t focusing on academic pursuits.

Dereck was deeply curious about the built environment, and this informed his art. Going on a walk with Dereck was like going on a walk with a child hungry to know everything about what he was seeing, even (perhaps especially) things most people would pass by without noticing. On some of his walks he would snap pictures of buildings in different states—in the process of becoming, or in the process of being torn down. He mined this collection of pictures to create a series of photomontages, many featuring Baltimore structures. 

There’s an exciting resistance to precision in Dereck’s composites. The misalignments exist as artifacts of his process. I am especially drawn to the photomontages of buildings in the Johnston Square neighborhood. I wonder—Am I looking at something enduring, or something that has already disappeared? Is it possible for something to be sturdy and fragile at the same time?

Dereck spent a lot of time thinking about his various projects while keeping an eye on the art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. In 2019 he put the idea in my head to apply for a job as a security guard at the museum, so that I too could be surrounded by art all day and have time to think. I liked working with him, as a guard and as a curator for Guarding the Art. It was meaningful work. I’ll always remember the day that the staff at the BMA overwhelmingly voted in favor of unionizing—I switched lunch breaks with another guard so that I could meet Dereck in the garden and give him a hug. It’s weird to think that I will never get to hug him again. My brain doesn’t know what to do with that information.

Dereck was constantly at the museum. He put in a lot of overtime hours, so if you frequently attend the BMA’s special events you probably encountered him at one time or another. At the end of a long shift sometimes the guards accidentally lean against the white walls and their jackets leave behind bruise-colored marks. Then art handlers have to come in and paint over the smudges to make the galleries look pristine again. In a daydream I return to for comfort, they allow an impression to remain on the walls, just this once. I don’t know why I’m fixated on this idea… I suppose when someone dies all the markers of their existence feel worthy of preserving. Grieving is so strange. I will miss my friend very much.

 

Dereck Mangus, 2022, portrait by Justin Tsucalas for BmoreArt Issue 14
Dereck Mangus, Taking a shot, 2013

Asma Naeem, Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director, The Baltimore Museum of Art

In the galleries was where my conversations with Dereck would usually occur. Surrounded by frames and sculptures and a hush, with only the beings or the other forms from the painted surfaces watching and listening, Dereck and I would talk about everything from his thoughts on the latest installation to what we were reading. He was always, in a word, serious. 

Sometimes a half smile would spread across his face. Usually when I would mention his favorite writer, David Foster Wallace. I would joke that Wallace was allergic to brevity, leading Dereck to propound all the reasons why I was wrong. Dereck was a thinker, an unbounded writer and maker, whose mind was moving in so many directions at once. He was as much a part of the constellation of the BMA as the Hals, Titian, Chardin, and Matisses. They will miss him – as will I.

 

Patrick Swickard, Friend

One of the last times Dereck and I hung out together was at an art gallery downtown.  We were there for an event a few days in advance of an art opening he had art in.  None of the wall text was up yet and we spent most of the event sipping some free wine and nibbling on gallery snacks as we sat perched in front of another artist’s artwork (a sort of miniature diorama featuring little felted sheep standing on a gray felt surface that looked like a landing pad).  This served as an inspiration for Dereck to speculate about the meaning of the work, the artist’s decisions about why it looked the way it looked, lamenting the lack of a title that could give us some guidance for deciphering all this, etc.  

Occasionally another guest would wander into the area and Dereck would pull them into our conversation, asking for their take on that piece as well as the other works which were also untitled and not necessarily in their final form for the opening. This routine was occasionally broken when he would notice another guest looking at his own untitled artwork on the wall.  It was fun to see him get excited at seeing someone look at his art, and a few times when this happened he would leap to his feet and wander over to tell them he was the artist and to ask their opinion and what they saw in the piece and explain his own methodology and thinking.

Dereck incorporated photography into much of his artwork, and I occasionally was lucky enough to tag along with him while he was taking photographs for this purpose. This often involved going along to take pictures of a building in various stages of construction or decay and trying to hit it at a time of day when the lighting was just right, often from the top level of an adjacent parking garage or some similar location. It was interesting seeing how his brain worked for this process.  As someone who does photography myself (mostly street photography), it was fascinating to see how another photographer’s brain works.

Dereck’s typical way of working for the projects I observed would be to come back to the same location on different days at different times of day to get photos of a particular building under different stages of construction or decay and under different lighting conditions, then use the many, many photos he had taken of the same subject over time to construct a collage, producing an interesting portrait of that building.

I’m really going to miss my friend. 

 

Dereck Mangus, Appreciating Rothko, 2009
Dereck Mangus, Johnston Square Ruins #8

Alex Lei, Former BMA Guard

When I first started as a security guard at the BMA, Dereck was one of the first people to invite me out and make me feel like a part of the family. His excitement about art, any art—literature, film, photography, painting—was boundless, even to a fault.

I remember years ago as we were both trying to get our footings with freelance writing, Dereck expressed a frustration with having to waste so much time pitching when he just wanted to get to the meat of it and write, write, write. It would always be when he was at his most passionate, his most animate—when he couldn’t wait to share about how a piece of art moved him. It didn’t always seem easy for him to break out of his shell, but when he did, his excitement was bursting, explosive. 

However, many years ago, when we were first getting the groundwork of the union movement together, I remember seeing Dereck emotional like I hadn’t seen before—there were tears in his eyes. We talked about when he was a museum guard back in Boston, and what the union there meant to him, and how genuinely inspired he was seeing his coworkers new and old come together, join hands, and stand up for each other. It seemed to fill him with hope. He broke out of his shell again and became a leader in fighting for his coworkers, and I think he inspired us all there.

 

Shane Moritz, Former BMA Guard

Dereck and I worked at the BMA together, 2016-17. He was that rare person who took my book recommendations. Not only that, he’d return with such keen insights, expanding my otherwise inattentive reading of whatever it was. One I remember distinctly: Denis Johnson’s posthumous The Largesse of the Sea Maiden. Johnson’s fearless facing up to his own mortality in that one hits especially hard in the event of this tremendous loss. Dereck will be missed. 

 

Lowery Stokes Sims, independent curator and art historian, mentor for Guarding the Art

I got to know Dereck Mangus when the Baltimore Museum of Art was organizing Guarding the Art, a ground-breaking exhibition curated from the Museum’s permanent collection by members of the security staff.  At one time or another, each participant would provide the rationale of their choice of works of art, and Dereck’s was one of the most striking if only for its prosaic logic.

Painted in 1830-35 and attributed to Thomas Ruckle, “The House of Frederick Crey,” depicts a scene in  a street in Baltimore, including the Washington Monument by Robert Mills (inaugurated in 1829—the first such to the founding father in the country) which can just be glimpsed at the far right edge of the painting. Dereck explained that he was attracted to the painting because the scene was comparable to the one that he saw each morning when he caught the bus to work. 

As I soon realized from my subsequent encounters with Dereck in the Museum that he was also an artist and writer, and that the BMA was not the first place he worked as a guard. Additionally he was a person of definite ideas and strong opinions …. about everything. I enjoyed reading his posts on Hyperallergic, including the one he did on the Guarding the Art exhibition, in which he asserted that the project, in his words, “has the chance to become the model for how museums honor and respect the dignity of their guards moving forward — not just at the BMA, but at museums around the world.”

 

A group photo of the Guarding the Art curators, with Dereck Mangus standing fourth from left next to BMA Director Asma Naeem (photo courtesy the Baltimore Museum of Art)
Art writer, museum guard, and artist Dereck Stafford Mangus (photo by Christopher Myers, courtesy the Baltimore Museum of Art)
Dereck Mangus, 2022, photo by Justin Tsucalas for BmoreArt Issue 14

Mikita Brottman, Friend

In April, I needed to get an author photo for the jacket of a book I had coming out in July. Dereck offered to take it for me – he didn’t expect payment. I told him I have a phobia about being photographed. He promised to make it as easy as possible. 

“I can bring all my equipment—camera and laptop—to your place tomorrow and do the whole thing there in your presence,” he emailed, “from taking the photos and showing them to you on the camera back, to settling on the best few and having you watch over my shoulder as I edit them in PhotoShop. Then, I’ll leave you the best dozen or so, both in color and in black and white. You’ll see…This should be fun if you let it be!”

​Despite his advice, I insisted on staying out of the light, with the blinds closed. Dereck pandered to my anxiety, but he knew the pictures wouldn’t work. He was right. With no loss of enthusiasm, he offered to try again. “My vision is this,” he wrote. “We meet either for the early or later golden hour light, have you stand near one of the south-facing windows, and have you posed there as if you were just looking off into the distance and then turned to look at someone (the camera) at that instant: Boom! Perfect portrait!” On the way over, he texted, making fun of me. “Comb your hair and put on a little makeup,” with a picture of a lipstick. “Not funny,” I replied. “You’re too serious,” he wrote. 

​In the final jacket photo, I’m standing in front of the Belvedere Hotel, in the daylight. It’s exactly what I needed: a serious, high-quality professional headshot. Attributed to my dear friend: Dereck Stafford Mangus.

 

Katie Cooke, BMA Manager of Curatorial Affairs

Dereck and I first met in 2016 in the BMA’s visitor services department, but I worked with him more recently on the Guarding the Art exhibition from 2020-2022. Dereck and 16 others from the security team collaborated closely with departments across the museum to realize this groundbreaking show which garnered much media attention. Each security officer selected an artwork from the BMA’s collection to feature in the exhibition and worked tirelessly to research, write about, and install their object. 

Dereck chose a small oil painting that I had never seen before, Thomas Ruckle’s House of Frederick Crey from 1830–35. The painting depicts a scene of Mount Vernon, where Dereck lived in Baltimore. While it had been on view in the BMA’s American Wing Galleries for years, I had never noticed it. As Dereck observed, the work had hung too high in the gallery for us to properly notice the details. In Dereck’s label about the piece, he wrote about his research findings: “Crey was the first Baltimorean to pave the streets of the city with cobblestones.

Studying the picture in the gallery, I puzzled over why Ruckle seemed to have stopped painting the cobblestones, when in fact I was witness to an accurate record of 19th-century road work, and a tribute to his fellow veteran’s post war occupation. This detail resonates not only with my own art, which explores the built environment, but also with the current upgrading of national infrastructure as part of the Build Back Better plan of Joseph R. Biden, Jr., the 46th–and current–U.S. President.”

The most thrilling part of working on Guarding the Art with Dereck and the team was seeing how they made the show so personal, how they made it come to life. Dereck was dedicated to making Guarding the Art a success – he even took the time to design his own graphic ID options for the show, observed conservation of his selected painting, made many media appearances, and gave tours to visitors. Dereck will be remembered in countless ways at the BMA and beyond – as an artist, a writer, and a caring colleague. He will be dearly missed.

 

Dereck Stafford Mangus, “Epilogue to a Bike Accident” (2018–2024), lightbox, surgical tape, and x-ray (photo by the artist)
Dereck Mangus, Charlie Funk, 2012, photomontage

Liz Faust, Independent Curator

“Can art change the world? In respect to those suffering and about to suffer, we must say no. However, art does change lives, and lives can change the world.” – Jerry Saltz, Vulture Magazine

Dereck Mangus, and many of us, are a part of this amalgamous machine named the art world. Within this world exists systems, rules, tastes, and shifts that are often tied to regional peculiarities. Dereck defied simplistic categorizations, oscillating between roles that traditionally define us: those with power to create change but have too much to lose and the powerless who have nothing left to lose and thus, shake the world at its core. 

An artist and a critic, Dereck came to Baltimore from Boston. There, he was much of what he was now, a museum guard, an artist, and a writer. He witnessed what Boston was and coming from those experiences, he saw what Baltimore’s art institutions could grow into.

His last exhibition, which concluded just three weeks ago at Zo Gallery in Woodberry, was curated by me. Titled Fragment(ed)ing, it explored artists who employed or pointed out fragmentation. Selecting Dereck was an obvious choice for me; the exhibition featured three of his pieces, including his final creation—a construction reminiscent of Rauschenberg. This piece was crafted from detritus reclaimed during gallery renovations: half of his wonky bicycle wheel (Dereck was a non-driver, his bike a constant companion), and a jagged, menacing shard from a broken Coca-Cola bottle.

The show also showcased an earlier work that exemplified his style—taking the “whole” flat reality we see through our own eyes, breaking it apart, and reconstructing it. His photographic constructions often presented multiple viewpoints of the same subject, creating impossible yet compelling realities. Another piece featured an old x-ray of his hand post-Boston bicycle accident, mounted atop his trusty old Lightbox used for decades to create his earlier works.

Dereck was known for his kindness and his passion for connecting with others through art, evident in the small gifts he distributed at the exhibition’s closing reception. As both a friend and curator, I saw him not merely as a creator of objects or concepts, but as a figure on the precipice of institutional critique—questioning not only the art world but also the broader societal systems that govern our lives.

I cannot say how he would have reacted to this characterization, but I can imagine his contemplative response—a tilt of the head, eyes drifting to the side, his baritone voice tinged with a hint of Boston accent: “I’ve been thinking about what you said.” We will never truly know his thoughts on these matters.

Regardless of the labels he might have embraced, Dereck was unequivocally a critic—a role increasingly rare in today’s world. With his passing, our community feels a profound loss, a void that resonates deeply within us all.

His legacy is rich and I hope I can do it justice. Be well, my friend. It was an honor. 

 

Agreement, 2021 (A street scene Dereck and I coincidentally photographed on separate occasions. We discovered this during a conversation following an article he’d written about tags/graffiti. I am grateful for the opportunities I had to talk about art – and life in general – with Dereck. -AJ Visgil, BMA colleague/fellow artist)
Dereck Mangus, portrait, 2024

Cara Ober, Editor and Publisher at BmoreArt

I met Dereck Mangus close to a decade ago at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), where he worked as a museum guard and where I attended countless press events as an arts journalist. I knew that he was a published art critic and, whenever possible, we would discuss the current exhibition and trade museum gossip. It was only within the past year that we began working together regularly as editor and writer, when he pitched BmoreArt a story about an experimental performance he attended that was so confounding and odd, it kept him up all night, writing. After that, his story pitches came in fast and furious, and our team of editors did its best to keep up with him.

A month or so ago we hosted a talk at CPM with a visiting art critic and ended up, later that evening, running into Dereck at the Mount Royal Tavern. It turned out he had worked with the critic as an editor and it was a fortuitous meeting, a wild summer night in Baltimore, and the ideas and energy for the future seemed infinite. I don’t really know what to do with this information but I am definitely mourning the loss of a person who showed up in big ways for others and mourning all the ideas, projects, and writing that Dereck was planning to do.

 

Lief Mobley, BMA Guard 

Dereck had no quit in him. He worked harder than all of us. Not just his job, but perpetual creative projects, always wrapping up one thing and looking forward to the next. Even in the darkest times, he forged on when most would fall apart. But he was an alloy of toughness and tender. A gentle giant. A little known secret is that he would cry to the opening bars of Adagio for Strings (who could blame him for that?)  and so he avoided hearing it in public as much as humanly possible. I had more laughs with him than most and definitely some fiery shouting matches too. 

I respected the fact that he never shied away from standing his ground. He believed strongly in living by a code of what’s right is right, and if you needed a shirt he would give you his. He befriended a houseless mentally ill man that no one else seemed to be able to approach due to the delicate nature of his illness, but he was patient with him, and he listened to him, and he gained his trust, by giving him small gifts and taking his picture. He would spend his lunch break in the park talking with this man, when no one else would. When he had sometimes scary public outbursts, Dereck would be able to get him back to a calm state somehow. 

I will miss his whip-smart mind, his raspy voice, that I often teased him about, but most of all the laughs we shared. There will be a huge void left without him in our lives, but I believe he would want us to keep living and smiling, never giving up and fighting the good fight. 

 

Melissa Pangan, BMA Guard

I’ll always admire how important art was to Dereck. No matter what was going on in his life, he was always working on his visual art and writing. I’m glad one of my last memories of Dereck was attending his art opening at Zo Gallery and seeing how happy he looked being in his element, surrounded by art and friends.

 

Dereck Mangus, Johns Hopkins Medical Demolition #1, 2019–2020, mixed media
Dereck Mangus, Square Calendar #2: November, 2020, mixed media

Mark Luthringer, Friend

Shortly after I met Dereck, he shared a copy of a thesis paper he had written about the history, usage, and meaning of grids in art and visual culture. I didn’t know him that well, but had worked a lot with grids of images and was curious what he had to say. That might seem like a pretty dry subject, but Dereck’s paper was so good: thorough, studious, and informative without being overly academic, and a well paced, entertaining read. Just like all his written work. 

For me, hanging out with Dereck was sort of like being back in school. He had an amazing memory for Art History, especially Photo History, and he loved to talk about Art. His zeal for its intellectual side was infectious, and it will be sorely missed. I wish I still had a copy of that paper.

 

Alex Dicken, former BMA Guard

When I heard, I was thinking about the beginning/planning stages of Guarding the Art, I remember going out for drinks with him and Jess to do off the clock brainstorming/ planning at Brewers. After GTA opened, I remember the positive reception from his gallery talk about Mount Vernon’s history. Also getting book recommendations from him when working in the gallery.

 

Eric White, BMA Guard

Dereck Mangus was one of the funniest guys I knew. When I told him that, he thought I was joking, and then I asked him to do a sketch comedy video with me. He accepted immediately and told me he had some experience in performance. He nailed it! Dereck was brave, witty, and very intelligent. He was an artist, writer, and good person. He strived to play by the rules and be as honest as possible. He will be deeply missed.

 

Dereck Mangus, Dereck #2, 2014, photomontage

Peter Nesbett, Director at the Mitchell Art Museum, Annapolis, MD

Three things struck me about Dereck’s writing. The first is that the shows he picked to review seemed driven more by curiosity than career ambition. Yes, he wrote about shows at the BMA and the Hirshhorn, but he also covered more regional venues like DCAC and MoCA Arlington. There was an integrity in that. 

The second was that this curiosity led him to do things that required an amount of effort out of scale to the compensation he would receive. By that I mean, he seemed happy to travel from Baltimore to DC by train, metro, and then foot, and then back again, all for a single review and a pocket full of change. This type of behavior is rare these days—and rightfully so, as we all clamor to get paid for what our labor should be worth—but I also find it refreshing. (We can’t let our principled positions deny us personal fulfillment.) 

And finally, I liked that he was experimenting with an experiential critical approach. Reading him, I felt like I was with him. He’d take me to the door, lead me upstairs, and then guide me through a gallery, while letting me in on his thoughts at the same time. Sadly, his life ended too early for him to fully develop this style of writing.

I never met Dereck. Two weeks before he died, I’d pitched him two shows, one at AAM-accredited Mitchell Art Museum in Annapolis, where I am the director, and another at Triple Candie, a 22 sq. ft. gallery on Pennsylvania Avenue SE in DC that I run with Shelly Bancroft. It didn’t surprise me that Dereck chose the latter. He said he would take the train to Union Station and then walk the mile-and-a-half up and over the top of Capitol Hill. We left it that he would visit the week of July 15th.  

 

Leila Grothe, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the BMA

Dereck was someone who always showed up. We came to know each other during our close involvement organizing the Baltimore Museum of Art’s first union. The work is demanding, but no matter what was needed, Dereck was always ready to help. He would join gatherings on his day off, attend a meeting at his lunch hour, or record a video for social media on the spot. No matter the request, his answer was always yes and his eyes were bright. 

One time, we needed him to sit at the table with our team while we bargained with management. When we bargain, our team quietly listens to anything that management wants to share, then we discuss internally once they’ve left the room. We’re representing many interests in that space, and it’s not the time to shoot from the hip. Now, we talked about this with Dereck, but when the moment came and management shared some thoughts with us, Dereck immediately rolled up his sleeves and began thinking up solutions at the table. 

Dereck is a problem-solver, a debater, and ultimately someone who believes in finding a better way. Dereck was being Dereck. I asked him a few days later if he wanted to join us again next time, and he told me that sitting silently isn’t going to be his strong suit. He knew himself. His big heart, his passion for justice, his quick thinking, his generous gravely voice should be unbridled. Dereck was one-of-a-kind and will be sorely missed. 

 

Dereck Mangus, Nelson Kohl Apartments, 2018, photomontage

Richard Gorelick, BMA Guard

When I started working as a BMA gallery guard, I started looking out for the guard I had met at Mick O’Shea’s the previous summer, spring, or winter who had told me about his working at The BMA and how it just kind of worked out well for him. I remembered he had a beard (or I thought he had a beard), but I didn’t run into him for a few days (or for one day or a few hours), but I told some other guards the guard from Mick O’Shea’s had a beard (I thought), and they said it might be Derek (that’s how I thought Dereck’s name was spelled). And when I met Dereck, finally, it was definitely the guy I had met at Mick O’Shea’s. As we became friendly, Dereck said he had some new writing up on BmoreArt that I could read, and I was like, “Uh oh.” But then I read it, and it was really, really, really, really good. Really good.

 

Desmond Johnson, Friend

In the last several weeks, I’ve been going through some stressful times myself. Learning of Dereck’s passing hit right on one of those tough days last week and just added to the darkness. But I know that dude brought light and helped everyone he met shine a bit brighter. I found myself looking in our text threads and in my Notes app for the Aldous Huxley quote he shared with me. Reading it again Dereck was right about how much it can help. Though he’s not here physically, his reach, his influence, his impact….lasts.

He clung to this quote/poem and reflected on it when times got tough. He found it useful and hoped I would too: “Good seeing you earlier! Here’s that Huxley quote / poem again in case you wanted to revisit it: 

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.
So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.”

Dereck Mangus, Square Calendar #1, 2016
Dereck Mangus, Gift #2, 2019, collage

Amanda Jirón-Murphy, Curator, Resident Artist + Collector Liaison, Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington

On behalf of MoCA Arlington I want to say that we are so deeply saddened to hear about the sudden passing of Dereck Magnus. Dereck came to MoCA Arlington back in May to see the exhibition “Tales of the New World” by Johab Silva, which he wrote about with great thought and care for the May 24 digital edition of BmoreArt. 

Dereck came to meet me at the museum on a Monday afternoon and was extremely gracious from the get-go. Right away he struck me as being passionate about…well, just about everything, but in particular art and cinema and culture. I was really struck by Dereck’s quick and astute observations. He gave Johab’s exhibition his full attention and spoke enthusiastically to me about everything it conjured for him, specifically the 1983 movie “Koyaanisquatsi” by Godfrey Reggio and the Alejandro Jodorowsky film “The Holy Mountain.” I walked Dereck through the entire museum, and he got really excited by artist Liz Enz’s exhibition “No Grids, No Masters” because of its multifaceted use of the square as a motif, something he was also interested in as a photographer. He talked at length about Marxism, the modernist use of the square and the industrial revolution vis a vis textile production, all of which Liz was also referencing in her work. Dereck even stopped in and spent time visiting with one of MoCA’s resident artists, Olivia Tripp Morrow. He left saying he was excited about the space, and that he’d like to return in the future.

Dereck’s writeup about “Tales of the New World,” meanwhile, was a massive gift to me, MoCA Arlington and Johab Silva. What a thrill it was to see it on your homepage when the story landed! Artists are really starved for the kind of writer that Dereck was, and both Johab and I felt extremely lucky that Dereck showed so much enthusiasm for seeing the show and writing about it with so much care. Dereck’s writing was everything that you’d want to see in an arts journal: unpretentious, generous and thoughtful. I’d like to think the article reflects who Dereck was as a person.

It pains me to know that he is gone. The fact that he made such an impression on me is a testament to the uniqueness of his spirit. 

 

Linda Smith, Songwriter and Recording Artist, Former BMA Guard

In my 15 years on the security staff at the BMA, I encountered many other fellow artists, people who found being around great art everyday to be an hourly wage occupation preferable to, say, working at Target. Though Dereck Mangus started out in the Visitors Services dept. back in 2016, he soon transferred to the galleries as a security officer and eventually became known to us as someone who not only made art but also wrote about and reviewed it. Because I worked the night shift and he was a day shift officer there were few opportunities for extensive conversations over the years. We might only have a brief exchange in passing every now and again.

Gradually, I came to understand how serious he was about art and writing and often thought that he might certainly have qualified for a better paying position in the museum. I understand that he did apply for other jobs there, though it was generally understood that the museum seldom if ever promoted security personnel to other positions, no matter what one’s level of education was. (Staff in other departments often had more luck, as I observed.)

Later on, just before I retired in 2021, I had the opportunity to work some day shifts and to speak with Dereck more often. Though I would not be present to see it happen, I was very glad to witness the beginning of the effort towards unionization, something long overdue and much needed. Though discussions among staff were still under the radar, it finally seemed like a real possibility, with similar efforts happening in museums throughout the country as they cautiously reopened during the pandemic. Dereck was very much a part of these early discussions and was an important player because he had already experienced unionization at another museum. He knew the pitfalls but he also knew that it could be successful. With his help, it was.

Last April, I heard from Dereck out of the blue via FB Messenger. We had not been directly in touch for a few years and I was surprised to hear from him. He wanted to come to a show at Normals Bookstore where I would be performing some songs with my friend Paul Baroody (also a former BMA staff member.) Dereck said that he didn’t have enough cash to pay to get in but that he would bring some books to sell. It was great to see him and very touching when he told me that he “really needed” to come to our show. I had no idea about the difficulties he had experienced in his personal life until after the show and only then did I understand what he meant. I was glad that our performance seemed to have helped him in some way. It was a reminder that music and art and books can make a difference in ways that other things don’t and can’t.

A couple of months later, in June, I saw Dereck again at an opening in Hampden. This time he was the artist proudly displaying his work and I was part of the audience, so to speak. He was surrounded by friends and happily posing for photos with his art. I know he loved writing about art but as an artist he loved making it even more; having it seen by others is a validation whenever and wherever one can manage to arrange it. Many of us spend so much time not making art because we simply have to pay rent and buy food that such moments of recognition become doubly precious. After years spent as a museum guard in the daily presence of art by other artists, or hours given to writing about the work of other artists for various publications, Dereck seemed to be on a path toward more moments like this, moments that would be all his own.

Linda Smith is a songwriter and recording artist who also makes visual art on occasion. Her music can be heard at lindasmith2.bandcamp.com.

 

Kristen Hileman, Independent Curator

For many years, first as a BMA colleague and then as a reader of his writing, I have admired Dereck’s passionate and independent voice when it comes to art and museums. He combined a probing appreciation of art and ideas with a needed critique of the art world’s hierarchies. Several weeks ago, he reached out about scheduling a visit to a show that I had organized in Washington. Whether or not he would have affirming or critical feedback on that project, I don’t presume to say. Regardless, I know that he would have interpreted the artwork in the exhibition with intelligence, clarity, and originality, and I would have been grateful for his consideration. We are all fortunate to have the insights he committed to writing, and the loss of his perspective in the future dialogue around art and institutions is a sad and heavy one.

 

Roberta Fallon, Co-Founder, Editor and Executive Director, Artblog

As someone who runs an online publication I “meet” lots of people through their writing. That was the case with Dereck Mangus, who I met when he applied to the Artblog Art Writing Challenge in 2019 and had his article awarded honorable mention. In his writing I sensed Dereck’s gravitas as a human, an artist and writer, and also sensed the fearlessness of someone who was taking a risk and revealing himself in his written words. In my experience, arts writers are not so much inclined to self revelation.

Dereck’s forte was to tell a story that revealed himself along with other truths (confessing his joy at discovering the many Duchamp’s at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and how he spun Duchamp’s bicycle wheel when nobody was looking; or weeping in a gallery at the Barnes Foundation before all the beauty there). Even though he didn’t live in Philadelphia, I reached out to invite him to join our writing team and he joined. He wrote about Baltimore, mostly, and I was delighted for that, because the art world is small and we all should know more about each other’s backyards.

Dereck was both a soulful writer, as well as a researcher and idea generator who loved a challenge. When AI crashed onto the Internet’s front page last year, I asked our writing team if anyone wanted to write about AI and I knew Dereck would jump on that, and he did, turning in a fine reasoned essay on the subject that reminded everyone that technology had always caused changes and that those changes always trickled over into the art world. Painting survived the advent of photography, basically, so don’t panic.

He loved being part of a community of writers. During the Covid pandemic, Dereck attended Artblog’s team Zooms and had thoughtful things to say. When we had a team meetup last summer, he came up to Philly with a friend and joined us (then went to the Barnes the next day to see all that beauty!). I am personally heartbroken to think that Dereck is no longer with us. I am humbled to have been a small part of his world for a brief time. He made a contribution.

Dereck Mangus reading list on Artblog

Honorable Mention award, 2019 Artblog Art Writing Challenge

AI and technology article

 

Dereck Mangus, self portrait, Investigating one of the many squares found throughout the built environment
Dereck Mangus, mail art

The City Is a Work of Art by Dereck Mangus

Flying through the city on my road bike, I search for my next shot. My digital camera rides safely within my courier bag as I weave in and out of gridlocked traffic. My legs, pumping like pistons, propel me through the urban landscape; my thoughts synchronize with my movements atop the steel-framed bicycle. Sustained pedaling creates a gentle rhythm, which parallels that of my breathing, that of my heart. I am one with the city.

Cycling is the best way to explore the urban terrain. You can navigate it more efficiently this way. You move at the right pace, neither too fast nor too slow, without taking up much space or contributing to air and noise pollution. You are able to observe things motorists miss. Being inside a car—windows up, AC and radio on—cuts you off from the world. And while walking is great, you can cover more ground on a bike. Riding a bicycle is the perfect synthesis of human being and machine.

The camera is also a machine, the optics of which simulate the functions of the human eye. Like riding a bicycle, photography exists between two poles: in this case, that of the handmade expressiveness of painting and the rapid-fire sequence of moving pictures. Photography, born from the history of Western painting, is situated between Old World modes of picture production and modern film and video. Just as riding a bicycle is the best way for exploring it, photography is the best means for me to communicate my ideas about the ever-changing city.

The city through which I ride is a massive work in progress. I am fascinated by the spectacle of it all. No single image can capture its complexity. This is why I take multiple shots—usually of square forms I come across or buildings under construction, or in ruin—and reconfigure them into photomontages.

My Constructions are cubist-like composites of buildings at early phases of their creation. A similar series, Ruins, documents their demise. The Square Project consists of site-specific squares, arranged into a 3 x 3 format, recalling the gridiron street layouts in which they were found. The city—the subject of my art—also informs my writing.

 

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