Community Calendar

Back for its second year, Abbott and the Big Ten Conference are hosting the We Give Blood Drive competition to entice students, alumni, fans, and community members to rally around their Big Ten school to donate blood, save lives, and address the country's ongoing critical blood shortage.

From August 27 to December 5, anyone eligible to donate blood can do so anywhere, anytime in the U.S. to count for their school. The school with the most donations at the end of the competition will receive $1 million to advance student or community health.

New this year, everyone who donates or attempts to donate blood throughout the competition will receive an exclusive, limited-edition, Homefield-designed T-shirt specific to their school. To receive the shirt:

1. Show up to donate
2. Submit your donation (or attempt to donate) at BigTen.Org/Abbott or by texting DONATE to 222688 (ABBOTT).
3. Click the link sent to your email
4. Use your redemption code
5. Your shirt will be shipped to the address of your choice. 

Last year, the University of Nebraska won, and is using the funds to advance student health on campus. The University of Maryland is competing this year and will host several blood drives on campus and in the surrounding area throughout the competition. To find a blood drive near you, please visit: https://bigten.org/abbott/maryland

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.

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

Ain’t No Mo’ by Jordan E. Cooper, directed by Mari-Andrea Travis is presented as part of the Theatre Morgan LOL! Laugh to Keep from Crying Fall Season, which explores the rich, complex tradition of Black humor as a tool of survival, resistance, and truth-telling. LOL! invites audiences to laugh out loud while thinking deeply. It’s a celebration of the brilliance, resilience, and sheer audacity of finding joy in the face of adversity—because sometimes, you really do have to laugh to keep from crying.
Ain’t No Mo’ catapults you into a no-holds-barred rollercoaster ride where satire meets raw truth. The premise? The U.S. government has offered Black Americans one-way tickets out—and the clock is ticking. In a rapid-fire storm of outrageous, surreal, and laugh-out-loud scenes, the play rips open what it really means to be Black in America after the soaring promises—and sobering aftermath—of a Black presidency. Hilarious, fearless, and unflinchingly bold, Ain’t No Mo’ is more than a show—it’s an electrifying reckoning with the value this country places on Black lives. Buckle up.
16+ for mature content and themes including race, sex, stereotypes, and violence

Thursday, October 23, 2025—11:00am (talkback following) (Senior Citizen & Student Matinee)*
Friday, October 24—7:30pm
Saturday, October 25—7:30pm
Sunday, October 26—3:00pm

DIY PD @City Neighbors is an emergent professional development opportunity, driven by the community of practitioners in attendance. At our DIY PD Sessions, we gather and connect - and have four short breakout sessions for you to choose from, with participants sharing a great strategy, a great question, or a problem of practice.

Come together, build community, share practice, get a new idea, share a problem of practice, or just keep innovating, broadening, and thinking.

60 powerful and efficient minutes of learning, connecting, and collaborating, followed by free dinner!

Join us for a discussion with the composer to learn about the works programmed for the concert later that evening. Bring questions of your own to participate in the Q&A.
Sonia Morales-Matos was the 2016 recipient of the Dr. Herman Hudson Alumnus Award presented by the African American Arts Institute of Indiana University for her excellence as an educator, performer, and composer. She is the June 2019 recipient of recognitions from the City of Santa Ana, the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, and the Mexican Consulate in Santa Ana, CA, for her participation in the “Latino Masters Concert” as a composer, performer, and educator.