Shunning beauty’s presentation as merely an eye-of-the-beholder event, the Baltimore Museum of Art, an internationally acclaimed conservator of the largest Matisse collection in the world, wants its 90,000 holdings to be experienced and transformative.
“The BMA is a community museum that collects and interprets 19th century and contemporary art,” said Director Doreen Bolger. “We want to create excellent and exciting artistic programs that are accessible to a broad public audience.”
“When I say we’re a community museum,” Bolger added, “I mean we’re very aware and responsive to the community around us. This museum is not an ivory tower, though we have these incredible masterpieces, a wonderful facility and sculpture gardens that one can stroll through.”
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Founded in 1914 and established at its current site in 1929, the BMA, with its 600 Matisse and 114 Picasso pieces — mostly from its cornerstone Claribel and Etta Cone Collection — strives to be more than just a free stroll-and-stare arts venue.
Its Franz West exhibition of Viennese sculptors and artists, for example, which runs through January 4, “is an incredible tour de force of huge sculptures that can be touched, walked through, sat upon and variously held,” Bolger said.
The hands-on event even offers actual friends of Franz West as interpreters on weekends and enlists the commentary of local artists, critics and university lecturers at other times.
“The Baltimore Museum of Art is an extraordinary anchor institution,” said Peter Bruun, director of Art on Purpose. “It not only is interested in being a good citizen, but in reaching out to smaller institutions and to the non-cultural sector for [input] into their programming.”
Custodian of North American, African, Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American artwork — including textiles, jewelry, ivories and bronzes, prints and rugs — as well as its modern art masterpieces, the $13 million-a-year, 140-employee nonprofit, which attracts 270,000 visitors a year, will launch an audio tour offering on January 16.
The free taped commentary will be enriched with the contributions of local writers, curators, art historians, artists, critics and Bolger herself.
As a result, Bolger said, “visitors will not just be looking at the great works of art, but a mood will be evoked É and they will see that art has some meaning for their lives.”
According to BMA’s website, the museum’s next major event is an exhibition of the circus-related works of Picasso, Matisse, Fernand Leger, Paul Klee and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It runs February 22 to May 17.
