Community Calendar

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.

Baltimore, MD – Make Studio is excited to announce the highlight of our fall programming season, the 8th installment of Cordially Invited! Cordially Invited is our annual invitational exhibition featuring artworks created in innovative U.S. and international studios serving disabled artists.

On view from October 10 – November 15, Make Studio’s CordialIy Invited VIII highlights the phenomenal and thought-provoking art produced in progressive art studios internationally as a way to better understand and appreciate our neurodiverse world. Each year it is our honor to put together this showcase to celebrate how these studios foster and promote exceptional art, advance full inclusion, and ensure the advancement of disabled artists so that their distinctive work can be experienced by all. This year's installment features 28 participating groups, hailing from as near as Rockville, MD and Washington, DC, and as far as Spain and Japan. Over 100 selected artworks will be featured in our gallery and even more will appear in the digital exhibition online. Visitors are encouraged to drop into the gallery during our weekly hours, or visit during special extended hours that will be announced on social media.

A reception will be held on November 7 from 5:00-8:00 PM during Art Around Hampden and First Fridays in Hampden. Details about exhibiting artists and studios, as well as special programming including a virtual artist talk with participating studios, will be shared on Make Studio’s website and social media. A companion display of Make Studio artists’ work will also be on view at University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Campus Center for Disability Employment Awareness Month throughout October.

About Make Studio
Make Studio is a 501(c)3 community-based arts organization located in Baltimore, MD. Founded in 2010 with the aim to put art and abilities to work, Make Studio’s mission is to empower artists with disabilities to grow as professionals with visibility and voice in their communities. We create opportunities for everyone to connect through art.

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

On View: October 24 - December 6 (closed November 25 - 29)
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Reception October 23 following 6:30 p.m. lecture.
Artist talk October 29 at 12 noon in the Holtzman MFA Gallery

Enjoy the works of Alexis Ibry and Zachary Diaz.
Alexis Irby collects physical evidence of places and moments, bringing them together into a constellation of disparate memories. Her sculptures encourage a sense of absurdity by documenting aspects of reality in ambiguous combinations. She highlights the interconnectedness of the physical world and the encompassing layers we cannot fully perceive in her exhibit Manifesting the Unheard Layers of Reality.
Zachary Diaz presents MOTUS an interplay of color, movement, and texture through large-scale oil paintings, drawings, and monotypes by blending intuition and intention. The artworks emerge as intuitive puzzles, balancing spontaneous marks with deliberate layering to evoke emotional responses. With a classical training foundation and heavy influence of abstract expressionist techniques, Diaz’s work uncovers hidden narratives with seemingly simple marks.

Harford County Public Library invites families to Halloween Hullabaloo on October 30 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Edgewood Library, 629 Edgewood Road. Participants will enjoy spooky-themed crafts, games and dancing. Costumes are encouraged. For more information, visit https://programs.hcplonline.org/event/14136986.

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “An Encounter with Early Vampires,” a scholarly look at what folklore, grave sites, and various records tell us about centuries-old Slavic beliefs concerning the undead, with Stanley Joseph Stepanic, who teaches a course on Dracula and vampire folklore as an assistant professor of Slavic languages and literature at the University of Virginia.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating.]

Modern popular culture tends to treat vampires as irresistibly sexy. But the folklore that gave rise to Dracula, Nosferatu, Twilight, and an assortment of skimpy Halloween costumes actually depicted vampires as gruesome rather than attractive, the stuff of nightmares rather than fantasies.

Join a fascinating excavation of early vampire belief with Stanley Stepanic, who has given several excellent Profs and Pints talks and whose course on Dracula is exceptionally popular among University of Virginia students.

He’ll take you on a scholarly journey to Eastern Europe and back in time several centuries, beginning with the first written evidence of vampires in a Russian text from 1047 A.D. You’ll learn about references to vampire burials in Slavic legal codes from the fourteenth century and about the vampire hysteria that swept Eastern and Central Europe in the mid-eighteenth century.

You’ll learn how the vampires of those times were depicted as rotting, reanimated corpses that returned from the grave to attack their victims and inflict diseases such as rabies and tuberculosis upon them. Many of the earliest were undead men whose first targets were their families. Women reported being sexually assaulted by the vampiric forms of their husbands, and those who subsequently gave birth would regard their offspring as human-vampire hybrids destined to become vampire hunters.

We’ll peer into the graves of people whose bodies were chopped into pieces to prevent their rise from the dead. Professor Stepanic will explain how writers of the eighteenth century resurrected the vampire in the much more appealing form we envision today, but echoes of original version continue to thrive in popular culture in the form of zombies.

You’ll come away seeing vampires in a new light that renders them far more terrifying. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image by Canva.

Art is often a way to commemorate the end of life and to imagine what happens beyond the world of the living. Join us for an exploration of artworks that contend with what it means to transition from this life into the next.

The Express and Explore Tour is a 30-minute, staff-led art experience for adults that centers creativity and connection. These tours feature a different theme every month and encourage participants to unplug and unwind in our galleries through playful activities and group discussion.