BmoreArt

1. Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams at the Baltimore Museum of Art

It’s nearly impossible to pick just one excellent exhibit shown at the BMA in 2024. They created a museum-wide survey of Indigenous artists, exhibited locals Jackie Milad and Nekisha Durrett alongside Fred Wilson, and is currently host to an incredible homage to Baltimore home health workers, LaToya Ruby Frazier’s “More Than Conquerors.” In recent years, the institution has clearly answered the question of what it means to be Baltimore’s museum and share the best the city has to offer with the world. That’s why it has been so gratifying to see the BMA invest significantly in MacArthur genius Joyce J. Scott, our culture queen and “round the way girl” from Sandtown; our bard of bawd, improvisational jazz singer, and prolific purveyor of savage beauty.

Anyone who saw Scott’s 50-plus-year retrospective Walk a Mile in My Dreams, whether local visitor or out-of-towner, was offered an unparalleled, unprecedented, groundbreaking, and generally mind-blowing experience. Working with BMA curator Cecilia Wichmann, Scott seamlessly captured Baltimore’s grit and swagger, aesthetic prowess, and innovative use of materials. She unflinchingly explored the most overt violence, rage and racism, as well as the most intense aspects of maternal and romantic love. Scott’s show affirmed that this city is home to great artists because it provides the freedom, space, urgency and community necessary to make it so. When our museums play an active role in elevating the work of the best Baltimore-based artists, we all win.

2. Ethiopia at the Crossroads at The Walters Art Museum

It’s not fair to compare Baltimore’s two major museums, but it’s also impossible not to. While the BMA is a frenetic hotbed of activity and energy, the Walters offers quiet contemplation. Architecturally, the museum is gorgeous,  inspired by Italian palazzos, but the art largely stays the same from year to year and is organized by historical time period and place of origin.

There is one main dedicated space for changing exhibits, but it’s located in a basement-level bunker that offers none of the power or charm of the rest of the building. Over the past year, these topical exhibits have been curated from the permanent collection along thematic lines rather than time period, around general subjects like “process” and creative influence across time and genre, in order to reflect a shared history. However without an infusion of contemporary work designed to provide context, they often lack urgency and relevance.

One exhibit that stood out from the rest is Ethiopia in the Crossroads, curated by Christine Sciacca with co-curatorial consultation from Tsedaye Makonnen, a contemporary Ethiopian American artist originally based in Washington, DC. Combining Sciacca’s deep research and the museum’s unique holdings of Ethiopian art with the curatorial insight of a living artist proved to be the catalyst that elevated this exhibit into groundbreaking territory, where works by Bettye Saar, Wosene Worke Kosrof, and Helina Metafarina were placed alongside centuries of historical works, enlivening both into a comprehensive and challenging conversation about the way history is shared and constructed. 

Crossroads was the one Walters exhibit of the past decade that achieved significant national recognition via a Washington Post review and an award from Apollo Magazine, all well deserved. It strategically included the growing Ethiopian immigrant community from the Baltimore-Washington region, and placed the work of contemporary Ethiopian, African, and African-American artists into pivotal and central positions within a larger historical context. 

This infusion of life-giving energy from local and global contemporary art and artists, not as a programmatic footnote or singular accent in an exhibit, but as a central operating principle, placed centuries of Ethiopian art into a larger and ever-evolving continuum. This exhibit exemplifies an approach that is needed to animate the entire museum and bring it back to life.

3. Elizabeth Talford Scott: Black Woman Genius–Tapestries of Generations at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum

One positive trend in 2024 was the city-wide tribute: No Stone Left Unturned: The Elizabeth Talford Scott Initiative. Organized by Maryland Institute College of Art’s Exhibition Development Seminar and the Baltimore Museum of Art with the Estate of Elizabeth Talford Scott at Goya Contemporary, the initiative brought nine Baltimore Museums and Universities together to celebrate the work of another trailblazing artist from Baltimore: Elizabeth Talford Scott, mother to Joyce.

As part of this, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum took a multigenerational approach linking three generations of fiber-based artists influenced by Scott, offering a community centered and multifaceted approach to fiber-based storytelling. 

Brilliantly curated by Imani Haynes, Black Woman Genius: Elizabeth Talford Scott—Tapestries of Generations was a powerful, cross-generational conversation between ten Black women fiber artists from the Mid-Atlantic region. It brought an influx of regional foot traffic to the museum, especially from artist communities wanting to see themselves reflected. The show featured contemporary works by: Kibibi Ajanku, Aliana Grace Bailey, Aliyah Bonnette, Mahari Chabwera, Dr. Joan M.E. Gaither, Murjoni Merriweather, Glenda Richardson, Joyce J. Scott, and Nastassja Swift. 

Although Talford Scott passed away in 2011, she spent a lifetime making experimental fiber-based works that were not necessarily recognized as art until the end of her life. In this exhibit, her persistence as a trailblazer is celebrated, and her vast impact on an entire community of Black women working in fibers is evident in every gorgeous thread, stitch, quilt, and cloth, and was punctuated with video, photos, and inspirational quotes.

4. Josh Kline: Capture and Sequestration at art hall 

Baltimore’s newest contemporary gallery, art hall, is located in a former Hells Angels biker bar in Old Goucher. Beautifully renovated, the space features work by significant international artists, scaled purposefully for a Baltimore audience. It opened with an exhibit of Antione Catala, and then, was followed by work from Josh Kline’s Personal Responsibility exhibit, which debuted at the Whitney Museum in 2023 and is also currently displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. It’s the first time that Kline’s “Capture and Sequestration” videos were shown as an immersive, four-channel video and it speaks directly to America’s past, present, and future relationship to natural resources.

Downstairs in the video gallery, four objects burn on four giant screens: sugar, tobacco, cotton and oil—the commodities that propelled America into a global superpower that dominates the globe economically, culturally and militarily. These are also the materials that caused the enslavement of African people, the theft of Indigenous land, and the industrial revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries. As the fires progress, you realize you’re watching the burn happen in reverse so the objects gradually become more discernible: a box of Domino sugar, a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, denim jeans, and a red plastic gasoline can.

The view segues into a smoke-filled blue sky that is sucked into pipes; in another scene hands wrap up the four different objects in rope, chains, and plastic and neatly bury them in the ground. The entire loop lasts a few minutes but moves at a clip that keeps your interest. In the gallery upstairs, each of the four buried bundles are displayed on Velveeta-orange pedestals under orange lights, reminiscent of traffic cones and hazmat suits.

This show powerfully reminds us that artists see the world through a different lens and cadence. Even the most troubling or impossible scenarios can be transformed into something compelling and beautiful. What if we could magically suck the carbon out of the air and safely keep it underground? What if we could reverse the climate crisis and then apply a similar approach to other toxic issues plaguing humankind? Kline depicts “carbon sequestration,” an experimental process where carbon dioxide and other harmful substances are captured and stored deep underground, in order to present a solution for climate change—literally out of our own ashes.

5. Bearing Witness and NOW: Joyce J. Scott and Tim Tate at Goya Contemporary

Best known for her beaded sculptures, elaborate jewelry, installations, performances and quilts, Joyce Scott has also long been a prolific printmaker.

Shown concurrently to her BMA retrospective, Bearing Witness: A History of Prints at Goya Contemporary offered proof that Scott’s graphical sensibilities are as strong as her tactile proclivities, featuring 30 works on paper made over the last 50 years. I’m sorry to keep bringing up Scott, but 2024 really was her year and there’s no good reason NOT to celebrate it, especially because she’s the kind of artist who brings others along with her, working collaboratively and inclusively.

In the smaller, back gallery at Goya, NOW: Collaborations by Joyce J. Scott and Tim Tate, co-founder of the Washington Glass Studio, collaborative glass works presented the same aesthetic boldness, political acuity, and impish wit that animate any medium Scott touches. The largest work—a collaborative wall mosaic where glass squares were embedded with beads, metal, wood, and other found objects—chronicles a news cycle of American and global issues from 2020 on in symbolic, cheeky, and deadly serious terms.

6. Monica Ikegwu, Megan Lewis, and Devin Allen at Galerie Myrtis – three-way tie

Galerie Myrtis is nestled in an Old Goucher brownstone, a beautiful space that features work mainly by Black artists verging on national careers. In 2024, Myrtis mounted three major solo exhibitions by Baltimore-based artists on the cusp of international fame: painters Megan Lewis and Monica Ikegwu, and photographer Devin Allen. In many cases, this was their first major solo exhibition in the region, after being exhibited in national museum surveys like The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century exhibit at the BMA. 

In Extensions, Monica Ikegwu’s oil portraits capture a timeless presence with brushwork so smooth it expertly captures glowing, soft skin and silky fabrics that render her subjects majestic. In Moon in Scorpio painter Megan Lewis depicted Black men larger-than-life and in color-saturated hues, using thick swaths of paint to present intimate but universal glimpses of iconic personalities. And Devin Allen’s solo exhibit of black and white photography, The Textures of Us, celebrates tranquil moments, community gatherings, and street festivals, capturing a cross section of Baltimore personalities that are regal but also real. All three exhibits deserve to be lauded for offering Baltimore audiences a chance to invest early in burgeoning talent.

7. Material, Chakaia Booker, Leonardo Drew and Trenton Doyle Hancock; curated by Seph Rodney at CPM

The best thing about the Bolton Hill-based CPM (Critical Path Method) gallery is its lowkey but mighty ability to place significant national artists in conversation with Baltimore. Every exhibit at CPM in 2024 was worth viewing, including solo exhibits by Devin Morris and Lior Modan, but for me, the most exciting and challenging show this year was Material, guest curated by NYT art critic Seph Rodney, featuring original works by Chakaia Booker, Leonardo Drew, and Trenton Doyle Hancock.

In Material, the most simple of art elements become complicated in order to present an argument about the way we categorize artists along identity politics, making it nearly impossible for a Black artist to be recognized foremost for their innovative use of art materials. The show was thoughtfully designed to emphasize each artist’s intentionally honed relationship with specific materials, a way to prioritize an essential aspect of their work that has historically been treated as secondary or tertiary in a gallery setting, making a clear argument that an artist’s love affair with materials is an essential quality of great work.

8. Bria Sterling-Wilson at Waller Gallery

In Joan Poncella, Bria Sterling-Wilson’s solo exhibit at Waller Gallery, the photographer and collage artist honored her grandmother with a new eponymous body of work. Using images from vintage Jet and Ebony magazines, personal photo albums, and family artifacts from the 1970s and 80s, Sterling-Wilson presented her grandmother’s life as a study in grace and resilience. 

The solo exhibit came out of several years of conversations with Poncella, now 85, and utilizes recorded interviews, family photo albums, love letters, lottery tickets, and newspaper clippings documenting her grandmother’s 13-year legal battle with the Maryland Transit Authority. At age five, Poncella was hit by a drunk driver, and she tragically lost one of her legs. As an adult, she had to fight for employment and fair wages, and eventually won. In this show at Waller Gallery, located in a lower Charles Village rowhouse run by Joy Davis, Sterling-Wilson experimented with sculpture as well as photo collage, creating a chandelier out of her grandmother’s prosthetic legs embellished with crystals, glass, and resin that transformed a decade of struggle into a source of elegant inspiration.

9. Walk On By at Creative Alliance, created in collaboration with TENT Rotterdam, and Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister City Committee

The Walk On By exhibition and cultural exchange was named after a Dionne Warwick song that explores the power of connection and loss. Hosted at the Creative Alliance’s main gallery, this exhibit was a unique opportunity to connect two seemingly disparate cities: Baltimore and Rotterdam, through an exchange program designed to create new connections between Afro Dutch and African American artists. 

Coordinated by the Creative Alliance, TENT Rotterdam, and the Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister City Committee, this exhibit was curated by Joy Davis and designed to explore the way these two port cities have cultivated communities of Black artists and the impact of diasporic communities upon the larger culture, emphasizing diverse stories told by individual participants. The show featured art by Schaun Champion (Baltimore), Charles Mason III (Baltimore), Naomi King (Rotterdam), kolpeace (Baltimore), Djon Seedorf (Rotterdam), and Tarona (Rotterdam). The exhibit started at the Creative Alliance in September of 2024 and heads to Rotterdam in spring of 2025, where participating artists will travel with the exhibit to engage with new communities and build strong connections across the Atlantic.

10. Young Blood at Maryland Art Place

This year’s iteration of Maryland Art Place’s annual survey of recent regional MFA graduates was the best in recent memory. It featured newly minted artists from MICA, UMBC, and University of Maryland College Park, with a variety of expertly manipulated materials and processes that felt expansive and contemporary. This exhibit is designed to highlight some of the best work coming out of regional MFA programs, so it rarely offers a comprehensive theme or process, but it effectively presents a microcosm of the richness, sophistication, and diversity of the Baltimore regions’ MFA programs.

Highlights from this year’s Young Blood include MICA Rinehart School of Sculpture graduate Pavlos Liaretidis, whose asphalt casts of digitally scanned roadkill serve as martyrs to our modern highway system. Delicate plaster sculptures by UMBC’s IMDA grad Elly Kalantari reference Louise Bourgoise and the human body, poetically arranged like an expanding metaphor.

Another IMDA grad, Andrew Liang, exhibited pop-inspired 3D cartoons of common objects that embodied America for the artist when he first arrived from Taiwan at age 13. Functioning like a room-sized mobile, tiny trucks, guns, cowboy boots, and fast-food items bob and rotate against a suburban backdrop, where a massive amount of cultural information, as well as pronunciation, is worshipfully catalogued. Most of all, this year’s Young Blood offers us hope that our next generation of Baltimore-based artists will be every bit as successful as the last, no small achievement.

2024 Baltimore Honorable Mentions include multiple exhibits at the Baltimore Jewelry Center, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Current Space, Arting Gallery, MONO Practice, Zo Gallery, and Crow’s Nest with significant exhibitions also at UMBC CADVC and Albin Kuhn Library, Loyola’s Julio Gallery, as well as Hoesy Corona at the Enoch Pratt Library, the Beautiful Decay series curated by Derrick Adams at Hotel Ulysses’ Swann House, and Bruce Willen’s outdoor Ghost Rivers Project.