The Baltimore Museum of Art has announced new exhibitions and videos to the BMA Salon & BMA Screening Room.
The BMA Salon expands with new online exhibitions from seven more Baltimore-based galleries and artist collectives, providing financial support and visibility to ensure the longer-term success of Baltimore’s arts community. The presentations include images and details about the featured artworks available for purchase, background on the presenting organization, and contact details to access further information. Each gallery and collective will handle their own transactions and keep the proceeds in full. The BMA Salon was established with the vision to cultivate new audiences for participants and enhance their networks. The BMA has provided each participant with $2,500 as an organizing fee to support their work in creating the presentations.
The BMA Screening Room has expanded with 26 new videos by 14 Baltimore-based and Baltimore-born artists, bringing the total to 74 video works created by 35 artists on the website. All of these works will live as part of an evolving online repository, providing increased exposure for the artists during a moment when there are few exhibition opportunities and offering the museum’s audiences new dynamic content with which to engage. The BMA paid each participating artist a licensing fee, ranging from $500 to $750, to feature their work as part of the new platform. The BMA Screening Room is slated to feature 50 artists, adding artists and videos through time.
BMA Studio art-making kits distribution is being expanded to include the museum’s branch location at Lexington Market every Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. beginning July 31. The program has already distributed 800 kits to the Maryland Food Bank and World Central Kitchen with the assistance of the Greenmount West Community Center.
New BMA Salon participants are Black Arts District, Catalyst Contemporary, Connect + Collect, The Gallery About Nothing, MONO PRACTICE, The Parlour, and Waller Gallery. The BMA Salon is highlighting one presentation each week, while also including content from the other galleries and collectives. Artists newly added to the BMA Screening Room are Pierre Bennu, Kevin Blackistone, Sakinah Bowman, Shannon Leah Collis, Markele Cullins, Diamond Dixon, Dina Fasconaro, Zoe Friedman, Marnie Ellen Hertzler, Travis Levasseur, A Moon, Gillian Waldo, WAVEY, and Kyle Yearwood. Among the new works are Black Moses Barbie Episode I by Pierre Bennu, Place in Time by Zoe Friedman, and One Storey by A. Moon. More BMA Salon and Screening Room participants will be added in late August.
New BMA Salon exhibitions are live now. New videos added July 29, 2020 and ongoing. Art-making kits are at Lexington Market every Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. beginning July 31, 2020.
All of the content is available on the BMA’s The Necessity of Tomorrow(s) website at tomorrows.artbma.org.
ABOUT THE INITIATIVES:
On May 27, The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) announced that it was launching three new initiatives to provide direct support to Baltimore-based artists, galleries, and communities: BMA Salon, BMA Screening Room, and BMA Studio. The initiatives provide some immediate financial relief to local artists and businesses, develop new platforms of visibility to ensure the longer-term success of Baltimore’s arts ecology, and extend participatory opportunities to populations that do not have ready access to digital content. The development of these programs grows out of the BMA’s popular, ongoing speaker series, The Necessity of Tomorrow(s), which was established to imagine futures that embrace issues of social justice, equity, and creative practice. The BMA’s new initiatives actualize the series’ core principles and respond to the needs of the current moment through creative endeavor, furthering the museum’s role as a cultural collaborator and civic leader.