This week’s news includes: Remembering Timothy App, American Visionary Art Museum Day announced, MICA students win big at AXA Art Prize competition, Picturing Mobility at UMBC, Daniel H. Weiss departs JHU, Maryland Lynching Memorial Project and BSO announce partnership, BMA Ball cashes in, poet Dara Laine wins award, Marc Andre Robinson’s Fred Head, Ivy Bookshop pop-up, Academy Art Museum adds on, Baltimore’s hardcore scene, Portrait of a Nation: 2025 Honorees at NPG, BSO’s holiday lineup, and disaster prep at museums.
Header Image: Timothy App, Bacchanal, 2005. Acrylic on canvas. 60 x 66 in. (152.4 x 167.6 cm) Collection of Akron Art Museum
Timothy App, award-winning abstract painter and former MICA professor, dies
by Wesley Case
Published November 20 in The Baltimore Banner
Timothy App, a celebrated abstract painter and former Maryland Institute College of Art professor, died Wednesday at 78, confirmed Amy Eva Raehse, director of Goya Contemporary Gallery, the Baltimore gallery that represented the artist.
Over five decades, App, an Akron, Ohio, native who began teaching at MICA in 1990, became a standout figure in American abstract art thanks to more than 25 solo exhibits, including a career retrospective in 2013 at the American University Museum in Washington, D.C.
App’s distinctive geometric style forgoes people or places, and instead evokes emotion through structure, clean lines and open space. His large-scale works — which also display App’s talent for creating moods and tones through color — are owned by the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Akron Art Museum, The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and other art institutions.
image: Baltimore painter Timothy App works in a studio. The former Maryland Institute College of Art professor died Wednesday. (Joe Rubino)
Gov. Wes Moore declares Nov. 22 American Visionary Art Museum Day to celebrate AVAM’s 30 years in Maryland
by Ed Gunts
Published November 21 in Baltimore Fishbowl
Gov. Wes Moore has proclaimed Nov. 22, 2025, “American Visionary Art Museum Day” in Maryland, in honor of its 30th anniversary this month.
The museum opened to the public on Nov. 24, 1995, at 800 Key Highway in Baltimore as an artistic and educational center for self-taught, intuitive artistry and was designated by the U.S. Congress as America’s National Museum for Visionary Art. Its grand opening took place over the Thanksgiving weekend in 1995, and the museum is marking the occasion this year with a day of activities on Nov. 22.
In this prestigious arts competition, MICA students stand alone
by Wesley Case
Published December 2 in The Baltimore Banner
The AXA Art Prize, with more than 600 submissions from 150-plus colleges all over the country, is as competitive as it gets for student artists.
That’s working out just fine for the Maryland Institute College of Art.
The Baltimore art and design school completed a clean sweep last month at the competition’s New York ceremony, as students Hazel Paik and Nicole Estelle Brown won first and second prizes, respectively, for their striking paintings. Paik took home $10,000, and Brown earned $5,000.
image: Maryland Institute College of Art senior Hazel Paik, second from right, stands next to her painting “Green Sun” after winning the AXA Art Prize in New York. (Nolan Conway)
UMBC exhibit puts focus on Black leisure during the Jim Crow era
by Rona Kobell
Published November 28 in The Baltimore Banner
The idea for Elizabeth Patton’s stunning exhibit at UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Gallery came from sorting her late grandmother’s boxes.
Patton’s mother had been too overwhelmed to look through them after her own mother’s death, so she asked her daughter, who is chair of media and communications studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, to help.
What Patton found were snapshots — dozens of them, loose and largely unlabeled — of aunts and uncles at the beach. A closer look revealed multiple generations of family at the same beaches, year after year — particularly Chicken Bone Beach in Atlantic City, New Jersey. A racially segregated stretch of sand only for Black patrons, Chicken Bone was named for the leftovers of the picnic lunches that bathers brought because local restaurants would not serve them.
image: Picnic Group, Highland Beach, c. 1931. (Addison Scurlock/The Photography Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
Art historian Daniel Weiss to depart Johns Hopkins to lead Philadelphia Art Museum
by Hub Staff
Published November 21 in JHU Hub
Art historian Daniel H. Weiss, Homewood Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University and a driving force behind a major, ongoing initiative designed to elevate the arts across the university, has been named the next director and chief executive officer of the Philadelphia Art Museum.
Weiss, formerly the dean of JHU’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences who returned to Hopkins in 2023 following eight years as president and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, will begin this new role on a part-time basis next month. He will also continue full-time at Johns Hopkins through May—leading the university’s Office for the Arts, advancing the recommendation of the Taskforce on the Arts that he chairs, and teaching in the Kreiger School.
Music heals: Maryland Lynching Memorial Project and BSO announce partnership on lynching memorial
by Aliza Worthington
Published November 21 in Baltimore Fishbowl
The Maryland Lynching Memorial Project (MLMP) and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) announced an artistic collaboration on Maryland’s first permanent memorial to victims of racial terror lynching. The memorial is slated to be unveiled in 2027.
The collaboration is the next phase of a multi-year partnership that began in 2022, when the Reginald F. Lewis Museum and MLMP announced a federally funded initiative to create a permanent exhibit and a memorial honoring Maryland’s known and unknown lynching victims. The exhibit, “Lynching in Maryland,” opened in October 2024.
Federal funding for the memorial is no longer available, but MLMP is still committed to the project. An ad hoc committee of Maryland artists, scholars, and arts administrators is helping plan an open competition for the memorial’s design.
image: Photos via Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s and Maryland Lynching Memorial Project’s Facebook pages.
BMA Raises Over $1.1 Million from BMA Ball
Press Release :: November 25
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) raised over $1.1 million during the spectacular BMA Ball and After Party held on Saturday, November 22. The proceeds raised from the record-setting event will help the BMA continue to elevate artists, connect local and global narratives, expand its educational programs, and provide more meaningful art experiences for students, families, and adults throughout the state of Maryland.
More than 400 guests attended the BMA Ball and another 200 attended the After Party. The highlights of the evening included the presentation of the Changemaker Who Inspires Award to The Sherman Family Foundation, in honor of George Sherman and their decades-long history of supporting children and families, education, and the arts in Baltimore and beyond. The global Artist Who Inspires Award was presented to Wangechi Mutu, a Kenyan-born, New York- and Nairobi-based artist renowned for her boundary-breaking, visionary collages, sculpture, videos, and performances.
Baltimore Poet Dara Laine Wins National Poetry Prize from Bellevue Literary Review
Press Release :: November 19
Baltimore-based poet Dara Laine has been awarded the 2026 John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry by Bellevue Literary Review for her prose poem “Telling the Bees.” The national award is given annually to recognize exceptional writing connected to health, grief, the mind, and the body.
Prize judge Patricia S. Jones called the poem emotionally intense and resonant within mythic frameworks, writing:
“Poets often return to sayings, proverbs, myths as frames for important topics: love, rage, and in this emotionally intense prose poem, grief, where the bees serve as witness and as chorus to the poet’s sorrow. The poet has done the hard work of telling their story.”
The poet grew up on a small hay farm in Central New Jersey Her poetry often navigates grief, memory, ritual, and the sacred ordinary, grounded in both rural New Jersey and her life in Baltimore. Laine has lived in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore since 2010.
Laine, then Dara Goldberg, is a two-time alum of Public Allies Maryland and earned her Master of Public Policy (MPP) from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she worked as a Graduate-Level Teaching Assistant (TA) in the Department of Health Policy and Management and as a Research and Program Assistant at SOURCE. While serving as a TA, she was the winner of the 2013-2014 school year’s outstanding TA award in the Department of Health Policy and Management.
“Telling the Bees” will appear in BLR’s Spring 2026 issue.
“Monumental Shift” Hard History Hanging on a Museum Wall
by Martha S. Jones
Published November 26
If — especially as a Baltimorean — you know artist Marc Andre Robinson, it’s likely for his piece “Fred Head.” That larger-than-life sculpture of Frederick Douglass – a six-foot-tall bronze of Douglass’s head — graces the Douglass-Myers Maritime Park and Museum in Fells Point. Installed in 2006, the Living Classrooms Foundation partnered with Robinson to mark the place where Douglass himself labored as an enslaved man and caulker in the 1830s and where Isaac Myers was among the men who established the city’s first Black-owned shipyard, Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company, in 1866.[1]
The Douglass-Myers park is a reminder of what slavery and racism cost Black Baltimoreans – and how they took part in making a way out of no way, as it is put in a Black American proverb.[2] Still, Robinson’s tribute to Douglass goes further, containing a commitment to the future. His insights were rooted in his years as a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. As Robinson explained: “The permanence of the bronze will function for the Living Classroom Foundation (and the Douglass-Myers Museum) as a monument to the seriousness of the indelible commitment to Baltimore youth.
image: Marc Andre Robinson, “Fred Head,” Bronze. 2005. Image courtesy of Marc Andre Robinson.
The Ivy Bookshop is opening a pop-up holiday shop inside Mount Vernon Place Church
by Ed Gunts
Published December 1
The Ivy Bookshop, a popular retailer on Falls Road, is opening a satellite for the holidays in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood.
The Ivy Bookshop at Mt. Vernon is the name of a pop-up holiday bookshop that will open at noon on Dec. 4 – the same day as the 54th annual lighting of the Washington Monument – and continue until Dec. 24.
The location is the vestibule and sanctuary of Mount Vernon Place Church, the 1872 landmark at 2 E. Mount Vernon Place that was acquired this summer by UNITE Mount Vernon Inc., a local non-profit group that is working to preserve it as a key feature of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon historic district.
Academy Art Museum Breaks Ground On Henny and James Freeman Annex and Hormel Research Center at Historic Property on Talbot Lane
Press Release :: December 2
The Academy Art Museum (AAM) is set to break ground on the Henny and James Freeman Annex and Hormel Research Center, a custom-built, state-of-the-art facility designed to preserve and expand access to the Museum’s permanent collection of over 1,700 works of art. The new complex, located at 106, 108, and 110 Talbot Lane, is made possible through the a generous donation by AAM Trustee Elizabeth Hormel.
At its heart, this project advances AAM’s commitment to responsible stewardship and public access. The new facility will feature climate-controlled vaults, conservation-grade storage, and a research center—providing a secure and sustainable environment for the museum’s expanding collection while creating opportunities for scholarship and community engagement.
Baltimore’s evolving hardcore music scene through the eyes of frontman Paris Roberts
by Dylan Segelbaum
Published December 1 in The Baltimore Banner
Paris Roberts started seeing punk and hardcore bands at the now-closed DIY venue Charm City Art Space in Station North as a sophomore at Catonsville High School.
“There was something just pure and awesome about being there in this space of, like, all this organized chaos,” Roberts said. “It just made me keep going again and made me want to be a part of it.”
Baltimore has always been a hotbed for punk and hardcore, which features frenetic, aggressive guitars and drums and raw, guttural vocals. The scene is now bigger than ever, and bands including Turnstile have rocketed into the mainstream.
image: Paris Roberts performs with No Idols at the Ottobar in Baltimore in 2024. (Courtesy of Atiba Jefferson)
National Portrait Gallery Announces “Portrait of a Nation: 2025 Honorees”
Press Release :: December 2
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will present “Portrait of a Nation: 2025 Honorees” Dec. 12, featuring the four recipients of the museum’s 2025 Portrait of a Nation Awards. Established in 2015, the Portrait of a Nation Awards honor extraordinary individuals who have made transformative contributions to the United States and its people across all fields of endeavor. The honorees were presented with their awards at the 10th anniversary of the Portrait of a Nation Gala on Nov. 15, a ticketed fundraiser that supports the museum’s operations and endowment. Their portraits will be on view on the museum’s first floor Dec. 12 through Nov. 8, 2026. Admission is free.
The honorees are:
Jamie Dimon, business leader, by photographer Jason Alden
Temple Grandin, distinguished professor, inventor and groundbreaking researcher of animal science, by artist David Lenz
Joy Harjo, internationally renowned poet, performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and 23rd U.S. poet laureate, by artist Joel Daniel Phillips
Steven Spielberg, Academy Award-winning director, producer and writer, by artist Kate Capshaw
Holiday Programming Returns to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra with Blockbuster Films, Cirque Magic, Classical Christmas, and Time-Honored Pops Traditions
Press Release :: December 2
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) announces its holiday lineup, inviting audiences across Maryland to make the BSO a holiday destination at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and The Music Center at Strathmore from December 5, 2025, through January 3, 2026.
From the cinematic charm of Elf in Concert to the high-flying wonder of Cirque Nutcracker, the 2025 season transforms the BSO’s concert halls into spaces filled with warmth, imagination, and holiday magic.
“The holidays at the BSO are a celebration of connection, creativity, and community,” said Mark C. Hanson, President and CEO of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. “Whether families join us for a favorite holiday film or adults seek an elegant night out with Handel and Mozart, the BSO is proud to be a home for Maryland’s most memorable seasonal traditions.”
(Image provided courtesy of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra)
The grab list: how museums decide what to save in a disaster
by Lou Stoppard
Published November 21 in The Economist
Mural” is the largest artwork that Jackson Pollock ever produced: a colossus, 8 feet high and 19 feet across (2.4 metres by 5.8 metres). It was commissioned in 1943 by the collector Peggy Guggenheim for the entrance hall of her New York apartment. “Mural” is an abstract work, but if you stare at it for long enough, figures seem to emerge within the mêlée of yellow, pink and deep, angry black. Bodies, both human and animal, rush from one end of the canvas to the other, and burst out, as if hurtling towards the viewer. Pollock described the work to a friend as a “stampede”.
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