This Week: 2026 Maryland Film Festival, Donald V. Bentley Memorial Lecture at the BMA, book signing and reception for Deborah Brown English at Creative Alliance, Amina Ross lecture + film screening at UMBC, Passion Plays festival at Baltimore Theatre Project, closing reception for Alternating Currents at Area 405, opening reception for Pharmaco/Liberation at Making Space Bmore, Out of Order and KIDOOO at MAP, Mixed Perception opening reception at Atrium Artspace, Everything Conceals Something Else opening reception at Gallery CA, 2026 Artist Open Studios Tour, CityLit Festival at MDCHC, Solarpunk opening reception at Crow’s Nest, and an opening reception for Roy Crosse at Eubie Blake — PLUS applications open for the JCC residency and more featured opportunities!
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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Wednesday, April 8 – Sunday, April 12
@ SNF Parkway Theatre
Maryland Film Festival 2026 presents bold, independent cinema from emerging and established filmmakers whose work you won’t find anywhere else. From inventive debuts to singular voices from around the world — all Maryland premieres — this year’s slate reflects MdFF’s signature mix of quirkiness, craft, and strong local focus. Explore features, shorts, repertory screenings (16mm and 35mm), and special presentations that invite you somewhere new.
The Freedom Bell: An Evening with Frances Harper at the BMA
Thursday, April 9 :: 6-9pm
@ The Baltimore Museum of Art
Join us for the sixth annual Donald V. Bentley Memorial Lecture, an evening of art and history, celebrating the 200th anniversary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth, presented by the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts. Food and drinks will be provided Silk & Salt Boutique Catering and Revel Productions LLC Mobile Bartending Services.
“The Freedom Bell” evening opens with an address by historian Dr. Martha S. Jones, who has evoked Harper in all of her published works. The audience will hear African American spirituals performed by Baltimore’s Jonathan Pettus Chorale, which includes many alumni of the celebrated Morgan State University Choir. With a backdrop of music by Peabody Institute cellists, a post-address reception will feature food, drinks, and a pop-up exhibit designed by Dr. Raynetta Wiggins-Jackson, lead curator of the BHCLA’s Curating and Archiving Black Baltimore project.
Each year, the Center invites distinguished intellectuals and arts practitioners to address topical, historical, or philosophical issues connecting the work of the arts to the renewal and revitalization of civic life.
The Donald Bentley Annual Memorial Lecture is a unique platform to drive debate and critical reflection on the role of the arts in our everyday lives and in our imagining of a future just world.
Time’s Breath: An Odyssey in Words and Pictures | Book Signing and Reception
Thursday, April 9 :: 7pm
@ Creative Alliance
Time’s Breath: An Odyssey in Words and Pictures, a new exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Deborah Brown English, will open at Creative Alliance in March. English’s debut illustrated novel, Time’s Breath: An Odyssey in Words and Pictures, which also serves as a catalogue for the exhibition, was published to rave reviews in September.
Creative Alliance is located one block from the Southeast corner of Patterson Park, with the Main Gallery located inside the Patterson Building at 3134 Eastern Avenue. The exhibition will be on view to the public from Tuesday-Saturday, 12pm-5pm. Exhibition admission is free.
Time’s Breath combines English’s paintings and works on paper with accompanying fiction, connected by an overarching narrative that resurfaces a mysterious island and a lost civilization. In a lighthouse off the coast of Norway, a book is found within the debris of a small boat. It contains pictures and stories, written in several hands. Together, they tell the tale of a volcanic island in the North Atlantic called Tokket Fall, lost a century before, and of the community that lived there—people, animals, and mythical beings.
Amina Ross | Eye of a storm: an aesthetic practice of turbulence | Artist Lecture
Thursday, April 9 :: 7-8pm
@ UMBC
In this artist lecture, Ross unearths the possibilities of a multi-media practice through an active engagement of turbulence. How might an art practice pull apart the complexities of our current conditions by offering transitory spaces of refuge? How might transformation of an unbearable reality become possible only through “staying with the trouble”*?
Coming into an awareness of a world outside of oneself is a textured terrain. Glissant names this navigation of the other “turbulence”**. Our moment, marked by precarity, is readily named turbulent. An eye of a storm is a place of ephemeral peace. Metaphors of meteorological tumult loop like an R&B refrain. These weather conditions articulate the uncontrollable forces of change that we live within. Through their work, Ross suggests embracing this constant fluctuation, riding the waves of this storm, and being together even when being together is difficult, as strategies for navigating and staying alive through the unknowable.
Featuring interviews with Patricia Nguyen, Ladan Osman, Jozi Zwerdling and Damarni Tyrell and Friends.
* Donna Haraway, “Staying with the trouble”
** Édouard Glissant, “Poetics of Relation”
PASSION PLAYS | A FESTIVAL: For Women Serving Time
Friday, April 10 – Sunday, April 12
@ Baltimore Theatre Project
Persian-American poet and scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz joins pianist and composer Adrienne Torf come together to make a new piece of opera-theater that fuses Faure’s Requiem, jazz elements, and Brechtian theatrical traditions in a powerful contemplation of the human experiences contained in “female incarceration in America.” This extended poem-opera sheds light on the lives and resilience of women in the U.S. prison system, their hopes, dreams, fears, and day to day experiences, offering a voice to a population often overlooked. Elizabeth Mondragon, Carly Ozard, Shana Oshiro, Louisa Wacott, Melissa Wimbish, and Judy Yannini join the composer herself, leading a Weill-esque instrumental ensemble from the piano, to animate the important original work.
Alternating Currents | Closing Reception
Friday, April 10 :: 5-9pm
@ Area 405
AREA 405 presents Dre Bryton’s solo exhibition, Alternating Currents. On view from March 20 to April 10, 2026, the exhibition explores the artist’s fascination with the shapes, scales, and forms of supercomputers from the 1970s and 1980s, sparking a contemporary conversation about the integratability of individual artistic expression and technological development.
Baltimore-based Dre Bryton worked at the System Source Computer Museum as a maintenance professional, handling modern-day computer hardware on a daily basis. Mesmerized by the monumental scale and presence of computers from both past and present, he developed a practice deconstructing found furniture that mimics the geometric shapes and color schemes of these machines in sculptural form.
The designs of modern computers are influenced by the International Style, an art movement from 1920 to 1940 that emphasized functionality and construction methods in architecture and art. Its radically simplified and geometric aesthetic highlights rationality and continues to inform the mass production of furniture and technology today.
Bryton’s fascination with these forms is not purely aesthetic; it represents an imaginative future. From futurism to debates about the existence of human consciousness in cyborgs, and the increasingly human-like nature of AI, our obsession with these topics reflects bold speculations about the survival or extinction of humankind. More importantly, these comparisons between technology and humanity serve as an examination of the identities of us humans.
In previous works, Bryton has deconstructed mattresses and sofas, transforming them into orderly, almost cubistic sculptures. The shift from soft to hard parallels human history: from craft to mass production, human to cyborg, emotion to logic. While his work draws from modern stylistic choices, our ongoing fascination with technology keeps it relevant in a contemporary context.
In Alternating Currents, Bryton takes a new approach, investigating formal concerns in sculpture and painting inspired by his love for the designs of vintage computers encountered during his work as a cataloguer.
Dre Bryton: Alternating Currents is made possible by a grant from the T. Rowe Foundation..
Pharmaco/Liberation | Opening Reception
Friday, April 10 :: 5-8pm
@ Making Space Bmore
Making Space Bmore presents Pharmaco/Liberation, a group exhibition curated by Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) Curatorial Practice MFA candidate Juan T. Garcia. Artists Jorge Bordello, Mae Howard, Holland Houdek, Lohitha Kethu, Jess Keyes, Ellie Krakow and René Treviño examine healthcare through clinical themes and medical materials directly—pills, implants, biometric feedback, and diagnostic imaging. Across the gallery, visitors encounter objects and images that treat the body not as a passive subject of medicine, but as an active site where questions of access, authority, and resistance play out in material terms.
The show opens with a reception on April 10 from 5–8 PM. Admission is free.
OOO and KIDOOO Event + Silent Auction // After Party
Friday, April 10 :: 6-10pm // After Party :: 10pm-1am
@ Maryland Art Place
Maryland Art Place (MAP) is excited to announce Out of Order (OOO), MAP’s Annual Spring Benefit Exhibition & Silent Auction, on Friday, April 10, 2026, at 6 o’clock in the evening. This year marks the 29th year of OOO. The auction will be both a virtual and physical exhibition and will be held in the MAP building located at 218 West Saratoga Street, just within the Bromo Arts District. OOO is a highly celebrated exhibition-event, and a ‘one-night-only’ opportunity for patrons and collectors to acquire contemporary art at unbelievably low silent auction prices.
MAP is happy to continue KIDOOO, a youth version of Out of Order. KIDOOO was created as an opportunity for young artists to exhibit their work in a major arts venue, extending MAP’s services to students in elementary, middle, and high school level art classes.
This year’s theme for OOO is TRASHED – featuring monster trucks + drag wrestling. . Artwork does not need to be on theme to be entered – but it is encouraged. Attendees of the event can expect light fare, open bar, DJ t, ‘drag queens in theme’ and more. And let’s not forget KIDOOO, our signature (free!) kids Out Of Order for children ages 5-16.
Come dressed to impress and join the celebration in support of local & regional artists. Tickets are $45 presale and $50 at the door. Tickets include light tastings and an open bar. All tickets also include free entry to KIDOOO, MAP’s accompanying youth-driven OOO exhibition to be held on the 5th floor of the MAP building the very same evening. To purchase tickets visit THIS LINK
Mixed Perception | Opening Reception
Friday, April 10 :: 6-9pm
@ Atrium Artspace
Atrium Artspace presents Mixed Perception, a group exhibition celebrating the gallery’s second anniversary. Mixed Perception brings together a dynamic group of new and returning artists to explore the ephemeral space where artist and viewer meet. Within this shared moment, meaning is continuously formed and shaped by individual memory, experience, and interpretation. Through varied media and methods, these artworks invite the audience into active dialogue where perception becomes collaboration. Each piece exists as a living exchange of the artist’s intention and viewer’s interpretation. Mixed Perception celebrates the fluid intersection between what is created and what is seen.
Everything Conceals Something Else | Opening Reception
Friday, April 10 :: 6-9pm
@ Gallery CA
The exhibition runs from Friday, April 3rd to April 24th, 2026, with an opening reception on Friday, April 10th from 6 to 9 PM.
Everything Conceals Something Else brings together a group of artists whose works explore themes of concealment, perception, and layered realities — considering how images, objects, and spaces can simultaneously reveal and obscure. The exhibition reflects on the tension between what is visible and what remains hidden, inviting viewers to move through shifting thresholds of meaning.
2026 Artist Open Studios Tour of Maryland
Saturday, April 11 – Sunday, April 12
Fellow art lovers, your next weekend art adventure is waiting!
The 2026 Artist Open Studios Tour is a free, self-guided experience that opens the doors of Maryland’s visual artists on April 11 and 12. Explore working studios, discover original work, and meet the creators behind it all—plus pop into participating galleries and museums along the way. With artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media, and everything in between, there will be something amazing to discover. No tickets, no pressure, no crowds, just a beautiful weekend escape into Maryland’s thriving arts scene, right in your backyard.
23rd CityLit Festival | Bearing Witness
Saturday, April 11 :: 10am-6pm
@ Maryland Center for History and Culture
Baltimore-based CityLit Project is proud to partner with the Maryland Center for History and Culture (formerly the Maryland Historical Society) to present the 23rd Annual CityLit Festival, a FREE day-long celebration of literature, April 11, 2026, from 10 am to 6 pm. Join us for a full day of conversations, readings, book signings with your favorite authors, and workshops that focus on the craft of writing.
This year’s festival theme is Bearing Witness: Literature as a Revolutionary Act. Writers are necessary to document the truth, challenge dominant narratives, and create our own space to speak out.
The CityLit Festival brings multiple sessions offering panels, readings, informational discussions, and craft intensives by a wide variety of writers, editors, and publishing professionals. Related books will be on sale, and a Literary Marketplace provides exhibit space to the area’s diverse community of small presses, self-published authors, literary journals, and organizations serving writers and readers alike.
Baltimore magazine named the CityLit Festival “a can’t miss event on the city’s cultural scene” and “the best place to nurture your inner writer.”
Saturday, April 11 :: 2pm
@ Crow’s Nest
Come celebrate the opening of our spring group show!
Featuring over 20 artworks, step into a world of radical possibility with our spring group exhibit “Solarpunk.“
Artists:
Fiona Bell
Pamela Casper
Rieko Chacey
Alyssa Dennis
Sara Dunn (work featured on first slide)
Victoria Fauve
Alexandra Garove
Emerson Goheen
Numinous Jachens
Xena Ni
Mary & Jim Opasik
Rachel Rusk (work featured on second slide)
O.Z Sanders
Alexi Scheiber
Samantha Sethi
Taylor Smith-Hams
Tse-Wen Tsao
ROY CROSSE: Contrast Between Dreams and Reality | Opening Reception
Saturday, April 11 :: 6-8pm
@ Eubie Blake Cultural Center
The Eubie Blake Cultural Center (EBCC) will present ROY CROSSE: Contrast Between Dreams and Reality, a major exhibition reexamining the work and legacy of Roy Crosse, a multidisciplinary artist whose practice engaged African diasporic symbolism, cultural memory, and the spiritual dimensions of Black identity.
This exhibition marks a significant effort to more fully situate Crosse’s work within both Baltimore’s cultural history and the broader field of African American art.
The title Contrast Between Dreams and Reality reflects Crosse’s sustained exploration of the relationship between spiritual imagination and lived experience, a theme that shaped his work across multiple decades and artistic forms.
Working across painting, drawing, sculpture, masks, and mixed media, Crosse developed a visual language rooted in African diasporic traditions and shaped by Baltimore’s cultural life. Over more than four decades, he maintained an active exhibition history across national and international institutions while remaining deeply engaged in artist networks and community-based cultural exchange, including his deliberate establishment of a home and studio in the early Station North area, made possible in part through a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant.
Featured Opportunities
New Beginnings Women’s Caucus for Art of Greater DC
deadline April 11
posted by Women’s Caucus for Art of Greater Washington, DC (WCADC)
WCADC invites women and non-binary artists based in DC. MD. or VA to submit artwork focused on concepts of rebirth and abundance for “New Beginnings”. This exhibition explores the energy of creating space for growth opportunity, reinvention, and reflection- reminding viewers of the human urge to strive for a renaissance. We welcome artwork utilizing upcycled materials or found objects to represent renewal, rejuvenation, metamorphosis, regeneration, etc.
Monastery Arts Residency
deadline April 12
posted by Orien Arts
Our time at the monastery residency is a unique blend of aloneness with oneself and intimacy with the group. We hope to find deeper beauty, creativity, and contemplation by sharing gifts and resources within communal rhythms of work, prayer, nature, and silence. Here the simplicity and single-heartedness of the monastic spiritual life meets the creative, seeking energy of the artistic life. It is the only arts residency in the world that takes place at an active Catholic monastery (as far as we know!)
Residencies – Sheepscot Arts Preserve
deadline April 15
We host resident artists at the art center Spring, Summer and Fall. Our center offers Group Residencies that host multiple artists at a time as a way to cultivate community, and provide a setting that inspires people in unexpected ways. In between group sessions, we have a limited amount of space for individual artists to come and use the facilities. Sometimes on their own, and sometimes with other artists on the property. Please read about Group Residencies or Individual Residencies to understand the types of opportunities we have on offer and see which is right for you.
St. Elmo Arts Residency
deadline April 20
posted by University of Texas at Austin
One recent Studio Art MFA graduate will receive a $40,000 stipend, a private studio, and a house in South Austin. The artist will be expected to teach and lead workshops during the academic year, and will present a solo exhibition at the Visual Arts Center.
The JJC Artist in Residence at MICA
deadline April 22
posted by Baltimore Museum of Art
The Joshua Johnson Council (JJC) Artist in Residence program is now accepting applications for its 2026 summer residency.
One of the nation’s oldest African American museum groups, the JJC partners with the BMA and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) to support Baltimore‑based artists through studio space, access to MICA facilities, a $2,500 materials stipend, and opportunities for critique and community engagement.
Artists of color are strongly encouraged to apply. Eligible artists must not be current students and must be at least three years beyond any degree program. The residency runs June 1 to July 27, 2026.
Folk and Traditional Arts Community Projects Grants
deadline April 30
posted by Mid Atlantic Arts
Folk and Traditional Arts Community Projects grants fund projects that support the vitality of traditional arts and cultures in the mid-Atlantic region. Non-profit organizations in DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA, VA, USVI, PR, or WV may apply.
Eligible project activities may include performances, public art collaborations, workshops/trainings, exhibitions, fieldwork/documentation, and creation of new traditional work. Mid Atlantic Arts encourages projects that support or engage underserved or underrepresented artists, practitioners, traditions, or constituents.
Grit Fund Grant
deadline May 1
The Grit Fund supports all kinds of visual-arts-based projects at any stage of development that add to the vibrancy and development of Baltimore’s arts and culture.. The fund awards up to $10,000 to collaborative, artist-led projects.
AIWA Exhibition Submission (Spring/Summer 2027)
deadline May 1
posted by The Alper Initiative for Washington Art (AIWA)
The Alper Initiative for Washington Art (AIWA) invites you to help shape our upcoming Spring and Summer 2027 exhibition cycles at the American University Museum!
As an artist-centered space within the Museum, AIWA’s mission is to showcase and amplify the diverse artistic voices of the Washington DC metropolitan area. Following a review of our submission process, we are pleased to introduce a new, streamlined application system through the online Submittable platform. We are now accepting submissions.
We are seeking applications for our Spring and Summer 2027 exhibition cycles. Whether you are an emerging artist or an established curator, don’t miss this opportunity to bring your work into conversation with the broader currents of contemporary art!
Vox Populi xxi Annual Juried Exhibition
deadline May 2
For Vox’s 21st annual Juried exhibition, “here where the body knows it can hurt”, we invite artwork in conversation with labor histories/ ritual gathering/ agriculture/ gastronomy/ sensory heritage/ beekeepers/ hospitality trades/ industry/ Reinvigoration/ the shape of stamina/ Open to the Book of Genesis/ make some edits/ What does inheritance taste like?/ biological ceremony/ The absurdity (perhaps) of ordering a latte at a time such as this one.
In the labor spirit of this show Vox also urges submissions from unconventional applicants, individuals who may not identify as an artist in the traditional sense, but may have a unique perspective as result of experience in horticulture, food/drink service, hospitality, farm work, delivery, labor organizing, etc. Pick up a camera or a pen or a whisk or a drill and make something with teeth.
***personal artistry may include demonstrations, recipe design, tasting menus, brewing ceremonies, performance, satellite proposals, etc.
Please submit 1-3 creative works for consideration.
Fashion Remix: Art Inspiring Designers
deadline May 3
posted by The Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum is now accepting applications for Fashion Remix: Art Inspiring Designers, a creative initiative that invites local fashion designers to take inspiration from artworks in the Walters collection to create original, wearable designs. Finalists will have the opportunity to present their work in a public celebration at the museum as part of Baltimore Fashion Week!
Fashion Remix highlights how historic art continues to inspire new forms of expression, celebrating Baltimore’s vibrant creative community and connections between past and present. This year’s program connects fashion, history, and storytelling alongside Douriean Fletcher: Jewelry of the Afrofuture, an exhibition on view at the Walters April 18–August 9.
Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grants
deadline May 6
The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant supports emerging and established writers who write about contemporary visual art. Ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 in four categories—articles, books, short-form writing, and translation—the grants support projects addressing both general and specialized art audiences, from short reviews for magazines and newspapers to in-depth scholarly studies. The program also supports art writing that engages criticism through interdisciplinary methods and experiments with literary styles. As long as a writer meets the eligibility and publishing requirements, they can apply.
Tulsa Artist Fellowship
deadline May 7
Tulsa Artist Fellowship is a place-based, durational award supporting visionary artists and arts workers across disciplines.
Open to artists and arts workers with at least five years of field experience, the Fellowship selects ten awardees who will be announced live on November 6 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Each awardee receives $150,000 over three years, plus housing, health, studio assistant, and relocation stipends; fully subsidized studio space; and access to shared art-making facilities.
Awardees commit to developing ambitious, community-engaged work that contributes to Tulsa’s cultural life and advances the Fellowship’s mission to support independent arts practitioners.
The Patricia Massey Momentum Award
deadline May 22
posted by Creative Alliance
The Patricia Massey Momentum Award supports emerging immigrant visual artists living in Maryland whose work reflects their cultural heritage and lived experiences.
Open to artists working in visual arts disciplines, the award provides financial support, exhibition opportunities, and a platform for immigrant artists to share their work with the broader community while supporting the continued growth and visibility of their artistic practices.
Three artists will be selected through this process: two finalists and one Patricia Massey Momentum Award recipient. The award recipient will receive a $10,000 award and participate in public programming with Creative Alliance, and all three artists will present their work together in a group exhibition at Creative Alliance.
This award is made possible by the McNeely Massey family.
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