Community Calendar

This focus exhibition of 10 works explores the relationship between burning fossil fuels—namely, coal—and the emergence of European modernism. Drawing on research conducted by climate scientists and art historians, the exhibition presents a range of paintings and works on paper by Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, James McNeill Whistler, and others to explore the ways that their artistic practices and style emerged, in part, in response to widespread pollution in London and Paris.
Presented as part of the Turn Again to the Earth environmental initiative.

More than 50 works on paper investigate how artists working in Europe and French-occupied northern Africa watched and participated as nature became a resource for people to hoard or share.

Drawn from the BMA’s George A. Lucas Collection, this exhibition of 19th-century art foregrounds the many ways that human relationships, including imperialism and capitalism, affect the environment. Deconstructing Nature is organized thematically, focusing on five environments and the ways artists explored them in their work: The Desert, The Forest, The Field, The City, and The Studio.

Born and raised in Baltimore, George A. Lucas (1824–1909) spent most of his adult life immersed in the Parisian art world and amassed a personal collection of nearly 20,000 works of art. In 1996, the BMA, with funds from the State of Maryland and the generosity of numerous individuals in the community, purchased the George A. Lucas Collection, which had been on extended loan to the Museum for more than 60 years.

In this focus exhibition of approximately 20 photographs, prints, drawings, and textiles, the natural environment is a source of creative inspiration worth celebrating and protecting.

Works by artists such as Winslow Homer, Richard Misrach, Charles Sheeler, and Kiki Smith, among many others, depict the elements of air, water, earth, and fire and address broader themes of ecological awareness and preservation. These themes range from how artists have used visual language to convey the act of locating oneself in nature; works that depict natural forms through the physical integration of environmental components; and artists’ commentary on sites of environmental disaster, the sociopolitical ramifications of human impact, and the potential of symbiotic healing for this planet and its occupants.

For thousands of years, East Asia’s cultures have viewed human life as part of a much larger system that encompasses the natural world. Drawn from the BMA’s collection, this exhibition boasts more than 40 objects—from magnificent ink drawings to beautifully crafted stoneware and poignant contemporary photographs and prints. They bring into the galleries the mountains and seas, wild and supernatural animals, and plant life that are extensive across East Asian imagery and often carry symbolic meaning.

Works on view include robust 13th-century ceramic vessels, delicate porcelain, carved jade, intricately sewn textiles, and large-scale photography; collectively, these artworks represent the impulse to fully understand the natural world as foundational to our existence, as shaped by human life, and as an enduring metaphor of survival.

The Elk Creeks Preservation Society invites you to its Apple Butter Festival, which will be held from 10:00 am until 4:00 pm on Saturday, October 11. You will see old-fashioned apple butter making, and enjoy traditional Scottish food, working artisans, craft sales, bagpipes, local honey, cider, and hayrides. The proceeds from this non-profit event help fund restoration of colonial buildings on the property and the preservation of the history of the Scottish settlers in the region. Come out to enjoy a day in the country and take a few jars of apple butter home!

Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress
by Juliany Taveras
Based on the book by Christine Baldacchino and Isabelle Malenfant

Directed by Julie Herber

Run time: Around one hour with no intermission
This show is appropriate for all ages.

About: Morris loves space adventures, painting, and especially the bright tangerine dress in his classroom's dress-up center. But when others question his choices, Morris must find the courage to stand tall in who he is. With the help of his vivid imagination – and the roar of space tigers – he shows everyone that bravery means being true to yourself.

On View: September 12 - October 11
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.

In her work, Yaniv draws on patterns from nature and images from daily life, altogether forming landscapes which blur the line between the real and the imagined, the organic and the artificial, the chaotic and the orderly. For this exhibition, she takes her inspiration from Patrick Svensson’s "The Book of Eels," a mix of natural history, memoir, and metaphysical musings, fusing scientific mysteries with lived experience. The eel is born in the Sargasso Sea, a place of legend but also a fundamental part of the ocean, encompassing two million square miles in the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean. A sea within a sea, it is enclosed only by several large rotating ocean currents. This large installation is a collaboration with the Department of Dance, and considers, in multi-modal ways, life and loss, journey, metamorphosis, complexity, and culture-nature (endangered).

Reception September 11 following the 6:30 p.m. lecture and dance performance.

On September 11, 12 and 13 experience dance and sculpture in dynamic interplay just before the Inertia dance performance.
For parking information visit towson.edu/parking/visitors

On View: September 12 - December 6 (closed Oct. 17 & Nov. 25 - 29)
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.

The work in this exhibition compresses and expands expectations of depth as moderated by a post-image visual culture. The artists adhere to neither medium nor dimensional restrictions, but manipulate the viewer’s relationship to the image as a temporal document, compressed and fractured, through the singular eye of the lens. This expectation, no longer warranted in the age of computer generated images, becomes a fallacy of both the eye and of the language used to comprehend it. The image is untethered from representation and logical spatial association. Spatial continuity and discontinuity run amok in playful fracture--the work pushes and prods the amorphous opening left in the wake of this rupture; what was flat is unmoored of grounding, what was solid is now compressed.

Reception September 11 following the 6:30 p.m. lecture.
For parking information visit towson.edu/parking/visitors

September 10 - December 6 (closed October 17 & November 26 -29)
Gallery Hours: Monday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Opening reception Wednesday, September 10, 7:30 p.m.

How have recent upheavals—from the pandemic to global conflicts, amplified by media—reshaped our private lives? How do personal memories become collective history? In a world forever changed, how do we find our way forward? Elaine Qiu’s awe-inspiring installation of painting, video, and sound invites visitors into a multi-sensory exploration of communal consciousness, connection, and healing in a fragmented, post-pandemic world.
For parking information visit towson.edu/parking/visitors

Please note that the first day of the festival begins at 5pm on Friday.

Now in its 59th year, the Fell’s Point Fun Festival is Baltimore’s largest and longest-running street festival, drawing tens of thousands to the historic waterfront each fall. The festival celebrates the neighborhood’s vibrant culture with a weekend of live music, local vendors, regional food and drink, and family-friendly activities—stretching across the Belgian block streets of Fell’s Point.
Founded in 1967 as a grassroots effort to preserve the neighborhood from highway development, the festival has become a beloved tradition rooted in community, creativity, and Baltimore pride. This year’s highlights include multiple live music stages, over 150 artisans and small businesses, a restored ghost sign tribute, a new craft beer park curated by Checkerspot Brewing, the always-iconic Pet Parade, and a brand-new scavenger hunt event, FestQuest.
Admission is free.