Collect the art of your place and time

Connect+Collect is a BmoreArt initiative designed to engage new and established collectors and to build relationships with Baltimore based artists and galleries through talks, gallery tours, and studio visits. We help you collect the work of artists on the verge of global success while catalyzing a collective momentum around placing works by Baltimore based artists in institutional, corporate, and private collections.

Connect+Collect offers studio tours, a collaborative speaker series, professional development for artists and collectors, and an exhibition space attached to BmoreArt’s headquarters at 2519 N. Charles Street.

***

Current Exhibition | Liberty and Injustice: Works by Kim Rice and Paul Rucker
August 10 – November 30

Email Gallery Coordinator Inés Sanchez de Lozada to make an appointment to visit: Ines@bmoreart.com

Kim Rice and Paul Rucker are both prolific makers of labor-intensive, colorful, immersive works of art that captivate and inform. Both repurpose unusual and historic materials with an ability to harvest the hidden stories that animate these objects and challenge common assumptions about our collective history as Americans. Beyond this, both artists are fearlessly, passionately socially engaged and their work is informed by injustice in America. Research is primary to their process and historical documents, events, and statistical data is interpreted in surprising ways through new translations of familiar forms. In an America where our collective history is being actively redacted, purged, and politicized, Rice and Rucker’s multimedia sculptures, metaphor-laden images, and conceptual pieces take on additional urgency.

***

Past Exhibition | Arcadia Futura: Works by Alyssa Dennis and TLaloC
April 20th – July 13th, 2023

In Arcadia Futura, Baltimore based artists Alyssa Dennis and TLaloC (Eduardo Corral) engage in storytelling and worldbuilding, imagining rich and incongruous places that successfully combine elements of our shared collective past with futuristic principles. Both artists employ illustrative and architectural strategies to imagine plausible environments based upon cultural and ecological ethos and whole new ecosystems full of space for living and dreaming. Although Dennis relies heavily on her training as a herbalist and TLaloC emphasizes sci-fi and literary tropes, both artists are able to generate futuristic visions which are architectural, ideal, holistic, and gleamingly magical.

Learn about the limited-edition Arcadia Futura book created for this show special for collectors and those specializing in unique art publications.

***

Past Exhibition | Post-Consumption Benediction: Works by Adam Stab and Jordan Tierney
November 1, 2022 – March 22, 2023

This exhibit presents two artists whose practices embody collection and accumulation as an active form of searching, selecting, sharing, and repurposing found objects. Both artists pull their materials entirely from their surroundings. For Jordan Tierney, Baltimore’s parks, streams, woods, and waterways provide a rich site from which to harvest that which is transformed into art. For Adam Stab, Baltimore City’s urban landscape, full of printed materials and detritus informs his aesthetic and adds a layer of narrative to his mixed media collages and assemblages. For both artists, accumulation and transformation is a hopeful, spiritual act. Creative reuse of discarded objects, each offering past lives and a specific material culture, marries our industrial past and present consumerist reality with a future that will certainly require significant change. Read more about the exhibit through our discussion with the artists and the Ecological Design Collective.

Learn about the limited-edition Post-Consumption Benediction book created for this show special for collectors and those specializing in unique art publications.

***

Past Exhibition | Dynamic Range: Eight Baltimore-based Photographers
June 15, 2022 – October 1, 2023

This was the first show at C+C that explicitly included BmoreArt’s contributors. Our goal was to present each as a skilled and multifaceted artist, distinct from their ongoing work with the publication but also revealing overlapping concerns. For any photographer, the “maximum dynamic range” is the widest variety of light a digital camera sensor or strip of film can capture, measured in F-stops. Although we cannot offer a quantitative measure for the various selection of images offered within this exhibit, it was curated in the same way that we produce BmoreArt publications: collaboratively and in conversation with each individual artist.

To view the exhibition in a 3D Digital Scan, Click here.

The gallery is opening back up to small groups by appointment to view our summer small works show, and we are continuing to host our C+C speaker series through Zoom and to project video art and animation on our Charles Street-facing windows.

Contact C+C Director Jeffrey Kent for more information.

Connect+Collect makes it easy to engage with the art of your place and time, connecting artists poised for national careers with those who want to invest in the success of Baltimore, one artist at a time.

Connect + Collect Offers:

• Studio tours for collectors, curators, trustee, and museum groups
• A speaker series where collectors and artists discuss best practices for collecting
• An inaugural artist cohort of 12 Baltimore-based artists who have achieved national recognition in the form of museum acquisitions and exhibits, national press, grants, and residencies but are not being actively collected in Baltimore-yet
• A new gallery space at 2519 N. Charles Street

Connect + Collect is a collecting initiative designed by BmoreArt’s Cara Ober and Jeffrey Kent, designed to create awareness and momentum among new and experienced collectors, and to promote a culture of collecting in Baltimore.

We welcome artists to this conversation who want to strengthen relationships with collectors, as well as those who want to build private and public collections, including curators, collectors, gallerists, and art professionals. For more information check the Connect+Collect website.

The Connect + Collect Speaker series included four in person lectures in 2019 and has resumed in 2021 on Zoom.

Archived images, text, and audio from each discussion is included from BmoreArt’s Vimeo page.

Artists Devin Allen and Bill Gaskins with BmoreArt’s Jeffrey Kent and Cara Ober, June, 2022

Artist Ernest Shaw Jr., Curator Kirk Shannon-Butts, BmoreArt’s Jeffrey Kent, and Cara Ober, March 2, 2022

Artist Christopher Bathgate, Collector Juan Sanchez, BmoreArt’s Suzy Kopf and Cara Ober, December 15, 2021

Artist Webster Phillips, Curator Rassaan Hammond, I. Henry Photo Project with BmoreArt’s Teri Henderson and Jeffrey Kent, November 4, 2021

Artist Kumasi Barnett, Gallerists Lowell Ryan Projects (Los Angeles), with BmoreArt’s Teri Henderson and Jeffrey Kent, July 1, 2021

Artist Phaan Howng, Latela Curatorial’s Marta Staudinger, with BmoreArt’s Cara Ober and Jeffrey Kent, June 3, 2021

Artist Jackie Milad, Gallerists Erin Cluley (Dallas, TX), with BmoreArt’s Cara Ober and Teri Henderson

American Craft Council Baltimore with Tracey Beale (jewelry), Nikki Stokes (crochet, fibers), and Jorgelina Lopez (lighting design) and BmoreArt’s Cara Ober

Artist Jerrell Gibbs and Collector Keith Timmons with BmoreArt’s Jeffrey Kent and Cara Ober

Artist Larry Cook and Galerie Myrtis with BmoreArt’s Jeffrey Kent and Cara Ober

Artist Kim Rice, Krista Green from the Peale Center, with BmoreArt’s Cara Ober and Jeffrey Kent

Artist Carol Brown Goldberg and the C. Grimaldis Gallery’s Guilia Livi with BmoreArt’s Cara Ober and Jeffrey Kent

Artist Clifford Owens, Vlad Smolkin of CPM Gallery (Baltimore), with BmoreArt’s Cara Ober and Jeffrey Kent

From our 2019 Lecture Series at Motor House:

Connect + Collect IV: Philippa Hughes and Zoë Charlton from Wednesday, June 12, 2019 

Our fourth panel featured Philippa Hughes, a DC-based art collector, arts advocate, curator, and cultural leader with Zoë Charlton, a Baltimore-based artist, professor, and curator. Our conversation focused around relationship-building, preparing for a studio visit, live-work-art balance, and all the speakers, including moderator Cara Ober, shared anecdotes and lessons learned through trial and error. Our fourth event was hosted at The Motor House on North Avenue, and included a drink in the Showroom Bar after the talk. Check out audio and photos here.

Connect + Collect III: Relational Strategies for Artists and Collectors
Thursday, April 18, 2019, 7 PM – 9:00 PM at Motor House (doors open 6:30)
Our third panel featured Doreen Bolger, former director of The Baltimore Museum of Art and a serious collector of Baltimore-based art, with Taha Heydari, an Iranian-born painter and MICA graduate living in Baltimore. Topics include ethical relationships between artists, collectors, and galleries; strategies for exhibiting across the country and internationally; collecting at Baltimore-based art auctions and municipal galleries; and the great importance of showing up. Listen and check out photos here.

Connect + Collect II: Relational Strategies for Artists and Collectors
Thursday, February 28, 2019, 7 PM – 9:00 PM at Motor House (doors open 6:30)

Our second panel was with DC-based Art Collector, Patron, and Collaborator Darryl Atwell and NY-based Entrepreneur and Independent Curator Dexter Wimberly. Topics discussed included how to begin and then build your collection, to conduct a studio visit, and best practices for building ethical, respectful, productive relationships between artists and patrons.

Listen to audio from our second C+C here.

Connect + Collect: Relational Strategies for Artists and Collectors
Thursday, January 24, 2019, 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM at Motor House

If you missed it: Listen to a Podcast and check out photos from First C+C here.

Our first panel was with Art Collector, Consultant, and DC-based Lawyer Schwanda Rountree and Baltimore-based artist Mequitta Ahuja, a Guggenheim recipient whose work is in Rountree’s collection. Topics discussed included how and why to start collecting art, how to conduct a studio visit, and best practices for building ethical, respectful, productive relationships between artists and patrons.

PREVIOUS SPEAKER SERIES FROM BMOREART:

The Re-Model: Strategic Career Thinking from Art World Insiders  

A Speaker Series from BmoreArt

The Re-Model is a new speaker series designed to bring nationally recognized artists and arts professionals to Baltimore to challenge existing structures of success and to build awareness and diversity within current models for best professional practices. From insider tips to creating productive relationships with galleries to funding models for ambitious projects, Re-Model speakers will candidly discuss their art careers in conjunction with the projects and publications they have created.

Lectures will be free and hosted quarterly at The Motor House, located at 120 W. North Avenue in the Station North Arts & Entertainment District. Each talk will be followed by an informal reception for speakers and guests to network and purchase books and publications.

Last Event: Ethics and the Art Gallery featuring Amy Eva Raehse and Heather Darcy Bhandari

Tickets are free, but spaces are limited. RSVP available here.

Join us for a discussion on art galleries and ethics with Goya Contemporary Executive Director Amy Eva Raehse (Baltimore, MD) and Heather Darcy Bhandari (NY, NY), an Independent Curator and co-founder of The Remix, author of ART/WORK, and former director at Mixed Greens, a commercial gallery in NY.

Thursay, March 29 / Doors open at 6:30 / Lecture at 7
Motor House Theater

Free to the public with an RSVP! Seating is limited.
Join us for a drink before or after in The Showroom, Motor House’s new cafe and bar.

Previous Events: ARTS.BLACK at Motor House June 24 – with editors Jessica Lynne and Taylor Renee Aldridge.

ARTS.BLACK is a journal of art criticism from Black perspectives predicated on the belief that art criticism should be an accessible dialogue – a tool through which we question, celebrate, and talk back to the global world of contemporary art. The journal is edited by Taylor Renee and Jessica Lynne.

Join BmoreArt for a lively discussion with Arts.Black founding editors Jessica Lynne and Taylor Renee Aldridge at The Motor House on Saturday, June 24.

Doors open at 5 pm for a 5:30 lecture followed by Q&A.

Tickets are free but limited so please reserve yours here.

Taylor Renee Aldridge is a Detroit based writer and curator. Taylor is the 2016 recipient of The Andy Warhol Foundation Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant for Short Form Writing. She received her M.L.A from Harvard University with a concentration in Museum Studies and a B.A from Howard University with a concentration in Art History. Taylor has worked at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art (Harvard University), and has been awarded the Goldman Sachs Junior Fellowship at The National Museum of American History (Smithsonian Institutions). She has written for the Detroit MetroTimes, ARTNews, ContemporaryAnd, SFMoMA’s Open Space and Hyperallergic.

Jessica Lynne is a Brooklyn-based arts administrator and critic. She received her BA in Africana Studies from NYU and has been awarded residencies and fellowships from Art21 and The Cue Foundation, Callaloo, and The Center for Book Arts. Jessica contributes to publications such as Art in America, The Art Newspaper, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Pelican Bomb. She’s co-editor of ARTS.BLACK, a journal of art criticism from Black perspectives, and a founding editor of the now defunctZora Magazine. Currently, Jessica serves as the Manager of Development and Communication at Recess.

FORMER RE-MODEL SPEAKER SERIES:

BmoreArt’s The Re-Model is designed to bring artists together to discuss the vital issues that really matter to them, like sustainability, best practices, funding models, and community. For this reason, the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions of the guests and linger afterwards during the reception. Although tickets are free, the audience is limited to 150 seats per event to ensure an intimate and comfortable environment in the Motor House Black Box Theater.

These speaker series are generously supported by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.

We look forward to resuming small, in person events in the gallery in summer of 2021.