Lately there has been a global discussion of a Baltimore renaissance. I have complicated feelings about it—which inspired a ranty, caffeine-induced Substack newsletter, a new and unfiltered side to my writing practice.
Mostly, I question the idea of Baltimore arriving somewhere new as opposed to existing in an ongoing process of discovery, growth, and improvement. I also wonder about the kind of person who chooses this city, which requires some extra effort and grit, over another where you can simply follow the herd or the headlines or the money.
Baltimore itself is a hidden gem. Sure, it has flaws, but for anyone who dares, it offers up sparkling and surprising opportunities that wildly exceed expectations. It’s the perfect city for people who enjoy making discoveries and having adventures. Wealth is not a harbinger of taste in Baltimore; rather it’s a confidence in ones’ own agency, a fierce independence honed by authentic experience.
As a child, I remember the enchantment of ascending the Metro escalator into the otherworldly architecture of the Morris Mechanic Theater. I recall the magnetism of Louie’s Bookstore Cafe and visiting the Inner Harbor on school field trips to the Aquarium and Science Center. As a teenager, I loved Fells Point thrift stores like Oh Susanah and Killer Trash, Sticky Fingers skate shop, and the now defunct Orpheum movie theater. For me, there was always a sense that the treasures you discovered, whether a physical object or an experience, reinforced an independent sense of self.
When BmoreArt upgraded from an online publication to include a print journal in 2015, an interviewer asked me, “What are you going to write about after you cover all the good artists in Baltimore?” This assumption, that one could ever run out of compelling stories in this town, is absurd.
Even now, having lived here for over twenty-five years, I am still amazed at the new discoveries I am afforded, where unique architectural spaces, cultural projects, and art galleries are too multitudinous to keep up with and often hidden in plain sight.
In an age of online stay-at-home comfort, it can be intimidating to try a new place and meet new people. This is one reason BmoreArt has continued our tradition of hosting release parties in different iconic Baltimore locations, spaces that would otherwise require an invite to a private event. Like the city itself, our online and print publication is brimming with opportunities to experience excellence, to feel the pride of belonging to something larger than oneself.
In Issue 19, we celebrate Baltimore’s “hidden gems” through the stories of individuals and organizations often operating below the public radar but making a solid contribution to city life. This issue reveals a thriving hub of culture workers, events, traditions, and institutions that bend over backwards to entice us.
We also provide an intimate look into the lives of some of our most public cultural leaders, like Jonathon Heyward and Hilton Carter, as well as beautiful books that document unique aspects of creative life. It includes fine art jeweler Lauren Schott, painter Linling Lu, multihyphenate creator David Wiesand, dancer and researcher Brinae Ali, as well as intentionally designed spaces for community like Tashiding, Pearlstone Park, and Le Comptoir du Vin.
I don’t know if Baltimore will remain a hidden gem or if it is on the cusp of a much larger revival. A renaissance is an appealing idea, but it will require that our public spaces and infrastructure, business and cultural ecosystems, residential and communications networks meet the moment together.
For our part, BmoreArt will continue to illuminate a path forward, to help you make your own gleaming discoveries in a city that is both large and small enough that each of us can make a difference if we pay close attention and show up.
On the cusp of our 20th Print Issue (Nov. 1, 2025!! SAVE the DATE!!!) and 10 years of print publishing, I want to thank the Robert W. Deutsch foundation for their generous support which makes our work possible.
I want to send a heartfelt thank you to our ongoing and regular advertising partners whose beautiful pages you can see in the magazine! Reader please take note – these are all mission-aligned arts organizations and community advocates who deserve our support and attention! They support BmoreArt because they believe in our mission and share our values – we are not a commercial publication, which you can see in our ratio of ad pages to articles.
Thank you to the Baker Artist Awards, Visit Baltimore, Creative Alliance, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Phaidon & the Amos Badertscher Foundation, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Rubys Grants, Maryland Center for History and Culture (MCHC), Alex Cooper Auctioneers, The Charles and Senator Movie Theatres, Academy Art Museum, the MFA Program at Wilson College, the Walters Art Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art on our back cover. It truly takes a village of support – and we all benefit from collective success.
Many thanks to True Chesapeake for hosting our release party on May 15 with sponsorship from Union Brewing and the Baltimore Spirits Company.
To all of our subscribing members who attend our events, share our online stories, and receive our print journals in the mail, thank you for helping us to to do the work that we do. If you’re reading this now and didn’t realize BmoreArt offers membership plans at varying levels of engagement, I hope you will consider joining our growing community. As we move forward into increasingly unprecedented times, we need each other more than ever—and so do Baltimore’s hidden gems.
