This week’s news includes: Elizabeth J. Himelfarb Hurwitz announced as BMA Board Chair, an exhibition of Black women quilters comes to NMWA this fall, NGA announces two new exhibitions, more on the GBCA’s dissolution, artist Akio Evans, student filmmakers from Maryland School for the Blind, the 10th Annual Love Grove Festival returns, the 8×10 officially has new owners, Ian Shelley’s book about the Maryland Zoo, Trump orders content warning labels installed at Smithsonian, renovation plans at Rawlings Conservatory put on hold, and Creative Alliance’s Art to Dine For 2026 season.
Press Release July 30, 2026 BMA Board of Trustees Elect Elizabeth J. Himelfarb Hurwitz as Board Chair
Press Release :: July 30
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) Board of Trustees has elected Elizabeth J. Himelfarb Hurwitz as its next Board Chair. She succeeds James D. Thornton, who served as Chair since 2022. A Baltimore native, interior designer, and dedicated arts supporter, Hurwitz has served in several leadership and volunteer roles at the BMA for more than a decade, helping to shape the institution’s strategic vision, strengthen audience engagement, and advance its commitment to building meaningful connections through art.
Since joining the BMA Board of Trustees in 2020, Hurwitz has taken on key leadership roles across the institution. Most recently, she led the museum’s 2026 strategic planning initiative that encapsulates the vision for the BMA’s future. She is also a past chair of the Board’s Marketing and Audience Development Committee and has been a longstanding member of the Accessions Committee for the Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Pacific Islands (AAAPI).
120 Years of Black Women Quilters; A Uniquely American Story of Art and Resilience at NMWA
Press Release :: July 21
This fall, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) presents an exhibition of more than 80 quilted objects that traces how Black women leaving the Jim Crow South stitched a legacy of survival, connection, and resilience across generations. On view from September 18, 2026, through January 17, 2027, Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California features works by more than 70 artists spanning 120 years. Exhibited on the East Coast for the first time, this must-see exhibition tells a uniquely American story through quilts from the Second Great Migration to today.
Organized by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), where it debuted to strong acclaim in 2025, Routed West traces the flow and flourishing of quilts in the context of the Second Great Migration, a mass movement of approximately five million African Americans from the rural South to cities in the North and West between 1940 and 1970 in search of a more equitable life. Many of the hundreds of thousands who migrated to California carried quilts—not only for warmth and protection, but also as emblems of ancestral memory and cultural survival.
Tinker Tinker: Printmakers at Work at the National Gallery of Art
Press Release :: July 31
Printmaking is an iterative medium, one that empowers artists to experiment, manipulate, and revise their work as it evolves from idea to finished product. A printmaking design made in a wood block, copper plate, or lithographic stone can be repeatedly modified over time. Each new version is tested by inking the block, plate, or stone and passing it through a printing press with a sheet of paper to create “states” that capture the transformation of the design. Tinker Tinker: Printmakers at Work illuminates the printmaker’s creative process by presenting over 150 prints from the National Gallery of Art’s exceptional holdings of preparatory drawings, states, progressive color proofs, and final prints.
Organized chronologically from the 17th century to the present, Tinker Tinker spotlights a wide range of etchings, woodcuts, lithographs, and other works that show how artists have embraced and explored the possibilities offered by the distinctive nature of printmaking. Featured artists include Rembrandt van Rijn, a groundbreaking printmaker whose 1656 etched copper plate is shown alongside two versions of the final print; Mary Cassatt, who drew inspiration from Japanese woodcuts to create an innovative series of color prints depicting the public and private lives of modern women in Paris; and Pablo Picasso, who expertly engaged with both representation and abstraction in his set of progressive proofs of The Bull (1945–1946) to demonstrate the medium’s potential for experimentation through the addition and subtraction of visual elements.
Women and the Index of American Design at the National Gallery of Art
Press Release :: July 31 (updated)
Between 1935 and 1942, the US government commissioned over 18,000 watercolors from roughly 1,000 artists to create a comprehensive visual resource of American folk, decorative, and industrial art. Known as the Index of American Design, the initiative was one of many Federal Art Projects undertaken during the Great Depression. The project sought to document and preserve an ancestral aesthetic for the United States, and to provide a foundation for building a truly American modern art tradition. The National Gallery of Art became the steward of this important collection in 1943. The first exhibition to focus on women’s contributions to the project, Women and the Index of American Design showcases some 60 watercolors made by some 50 of the women who played a pivotal role in this patriotic effort. In addition, the exhibition will feature archival material, photographs, and technical studies from the project.
The focused installation highlights watercolors by Hal Blakeley, Rose Campbell-Gerke, Lucille Chabot, Suzanne Chapman, Dorothy Hay, Elizabeth Moutal, Selma Sandler, and Carmel Wilson, among others. The watercolors capture household objects selected as emblems of American design history—including embroideries, quilt designs, toys, and weather vanes. Carefully rendered and richly colored, these works reflect the objects’ original purpose and serve as a lasting visual record of the evolution of American design.
Influential Arts Nonprofit Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance is shutting down
by Wesley Case
Published July 30 in The Baltimore Banner
At a difficult time for nonprofit fundraising, one influential arts group is choosing to shut down. After 25 years, the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance is ceasing operations, effective immediately, Executive Director Jeannie Howe and Executive Committee President Randi Benesch told The Banner this week.
They blamed the “difficult” decision on dwindling cash for operations and a “challenging” fundraising environment for arts organizations. The shutdown comes at a time when arts groups around the country are facing funding issues, many of them still reeling from the Trump administration’s widespread cuts to National Endowment for the Arts grants in 2025.
“There was not a financially sustainable model for GBCA going forward. So we needed to make the responsible decision to vote to wind it down,” Benesch said.
How Akio Evans Went from Hustling T-Shirts to Designing Highly Sought-After Shoes
by Ron Cassie
Published August 5 in Baltimore Magazine
Akio Evans always made things. Not always legal things. In his late teens he made fake checks, drivers’ licenses, fake MTA bus passes, and Department of Motor Vehicles registration stickers. He was already dealing with a state investigation by the time federal agents raided his house and took his computer in 2004. They believed he wanted to print phony money. A false assumption in this instance. The dollar bill images he had downloaded? Only intended to be part of his fashion designs, which he’d iron onto jackets or jeans.
“It was no different than that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, Catch Me If You Can,” the irrepressible, now-42-year-old multidisciplinary artist says. “When you’re a young man raised by a single parent, you don’t always have guidance. People that you’re around, they know that you make things, they’re like, ‘Oh, I wonder what else you can do?’ By the time the feds caught up with me, I’d been able to catch on with my clothes, and I only wanted to make clothes.”
These blind student filmmakers make magic on both sides of the camera
by Maya Lora
Published August 2 in The Baltimore Banner
The students wanted to make a film about pizza. They ended up making one about themselves.
The 21-minute documentary “We Are Not Limited: Our Journey Through Pie” is ostensibly about a chef. But the six blind and low-vision young people who shot and produced it are the story within the story as they navigate a visual medium with limited sight.
They ask questions behind the camera and sit in front of it for interviews. Scenes show the students, some of whom can only see up close or under bright lights, framing shots and conducting sound checks. Most people are confused by the concept, said their instructor, Charles Cohen. Why would blind kids want to make a film?
10th Annual Love Groove Festival celebrates a decade of joy, healing, and cultural connection
by Aliza Worthington
Published July 30 in Baltimore Fishbowl
The 10th Annual Love Groove Festival will make history this summer as the first-ever festival to take place at Point Park in Harbor East.
Taking place on Saturday, Aug. 29 from 12–8 p.m., this mission-driven festival will be at its new location with music, art, and a family petting zoo.
This milestone celebration features a lineup headlined by five-time Grammy-award winning jazz/R&B visionary Robert Glasper and world-renowned hip-hop artist Saba, along with many other performers.
Sale of Baltimore’s 8 x 10 music venue settled
by Marcus Dieterle
Published August 4 in Baltimore Fishbowl
Baltimore’s 8 x 10 music venue has new owners.
The property’s owner Dave Rather and club operators Brian Shupe and Abigail Janssens sold the property and business to Pennsylvania-based live music entertainment group Rising Sun Presents, headed by Chris Perella.
Rather will remain in the deal along with Rising Sun Presents and Baltimore singer-songwriter Cris Jacobs.
Maryland Zoo Releases New Book by Ian Shelley Detailing the Zoo’s Storied, 150-Year History
Press Release :: August 4
As it celebrates its 150th anniversary, Maryland Zoo has released This is Your Zoo, a book of non-fiction detailing the institution’s colorful history – from a rag-tag start as a menagerie of abandoned animals into a world-leading animal care and conservation institution.
Written and meticulously researched by the Zoo’s Registrar, Ian Shelley, with a forward by President and CEO, Kirby Fowler, This is Your Zoo is a tale about the resiliency of people and animals, and the generations of Marylanders who never stopped rallying behind their beloved zoo.
The book title refers to a weekly tv show of the same name featuring the Zoo that aired on Baltimore television in the 1950’s.
“The Maryland Zoo turned 150 years old earlier this year and the facility we have now bears almost no resemblance to what was here in 1876,” Shelley said. “The Zoo has evolved and grown in ways that would have been unimaginable back then.”
Trump Orders Installation of Warning Signs Outside Smithsonian Museum
by Isa Farfan
Published July 27 in Hyperallergic
President Trump has ordered federal officials to install content warning labels outside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH) after his administration accused the institution of “anti-white” practices.
The order, issued on Friday, July 24, compels the Department of the Interior (DOI) to place “temporary signage along the NPS-maintained sidewalks and walkways used by the public to access the Museum.” The new signage would display the findings from the administration’s recent 162-page report blasting the NMAH for its alleged “extreme political activism.”
A spokesperson for the White House declined to provide information on when those signs would go up. The Smithsonian also declined to respond to Hyperallergic’s request for comment.
City postpones project to restore the historic Rawlings Conservatory Palm House in Druid Hill Park
by Ed Gunts
Published July 31 in Baltimore Fishbowl
A project to restore the historic Rawlings Conservatory Palm House in Druid Hill Park has been postponed after city officials decided to seek new bids for a general contractor.
Alex Silverman, a public relations officer for Baltimore’s Department of Recreation and Parks, said in a series of emails on Thursday that a request to hire a contractor will not come before the Board of Estimates as stated on its Aug. 5 agenda because the restoration project is being readvertised.
Announcing the 2026 Art To Dine For Season!
Creative Alliance’s beloved Art To Dine For series is returning for its 27th season! This year features 23 incredible soirees that blend culinary delights with captivating artistic experiences.
This year’s series includes a murder mystery, farm-to-table dining, collaborative zine making, an exploration of prohibition, live sculpture, and so much more!
Every ticket purchased directly supports Creative Alliance’s stellar free arts education and community programs, bringing access and encouraging creativity for Baltimore students and their families.
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Artist Memberships Include 2 Tickets to Each Magazine Release Party!
