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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS  

Professor Ernst Borinski teaching in the Social Science Lab, Tougaloo College, MS, ca. 1960.
Courtesy of Mississippi Department of Archives and History

Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges
On View April 23 – September 26, 2010

This exhibition explores a unique bond that grew between two groups—Jewish professors who fled Nazi Germany and African American students at historically black colleges where the refugee professors taught. Viewers are invited to learn the stories of two disenfranchised groups with a history of persecution, some of whom came together in search of freedom and opportunity and shared the early years of struggle in the Civil Rights movement.

Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges was created and is circulated by the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.  The exhibition is made possible through major funding from the Leon Levy Foundation. Additional support provided by the Helen Bader Foundation; the Lupin Foundation; the Blanch and Irving Laurie Foundation; public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; the Alpern Family Foundation; and the Charles and Mildred Schnurmacher Foundation.

Click here for our special exhibition lineup of events, programs and film series.

Beautiful Ordeal by Ayinde Green

Transcending History: Moving Beyond the Legacy of Slavery and the Holocaust
April 23 to September 26, 2010

This exhibition explores the history and common experiences shared by the Black and Jewish communities and will feature the work of artists from around the country. Works shown reflect upon slavery and the Holocaust, and both the negative & transformative effects that these horrific episodes have had on the collective psyches of the two communities.

Transcending History: Moving Beyond the Legacy of Slavery and the Holocaust was organized by the Idea Coalition.

Harry Evans
Hamilton Street
Gouache on paper
Circa 1950s
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Walter C. Badders, Jr.

Fifth Anniversary Arts Wall Retrospective
Until November 28, 2010

Over the past five years, the museum has collected and exhibited works of Maryland artists. This special retrospective exhibition features artists whose work has been on view in the past, especially those featured in previous art exhibitions such as Joseph Holston, Harry Evans and Maya Freelon Asante. Visitors will also be introduced to recent acquisitions by Tom Miller and other artists, who form the
museum’s growing collection.







Courtesy of Enoch Pratt Free Library, Central Library/State Library Resource Center, Baltimore, Maryland


Druid Hill Park: A Community’s Pride
July 24 - December 5, 2010

The museum’s Maryland Community Space exhibition examines the significance of Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park for generations of African Americans. During the era of racial segregation, recreational opportunities for black citizens of Baltimore were limited. Druid Hill Park: A Community’s Pride examines how the athleticism and activism of young people during the 1940s and 1950s shifted the playing field towards equal opportunity and access.

 

 

 
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS  

Ella Baker at the Women’s Day Rally, September 9, 1975.  Photo by Charmian Reading.

 


Freedom’s Sisters
October 23, 2010 - January 17, 2011

Freedom’s Sisters, a collaboration between SITES and Cincinnati Museum Center, brings to life the stories of 20 African American women, from key 19th-century historical figures to contemporary leaders, who have fought for equality for all Americans. Organized around the themes of “Dare to Dream,” “Inspire Lives,” “Serve the Public,” and “Look to the Future,” interactive stations and images tell the stories of Harriet Tubman, Mary McLeod Bethune, Septima Poinsette Clark, Fannie Lou Hamer, Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, and 14 other women civil rights leaders. Freedom’s Sisters is made possible by Ford Motor Company Fund.

 
Peace-Is (2009), Maya Freelon Asante

Material Girls: Contemporary Black Women Artists
Feb. 10, 2011 to July 17, 2011

Curated by Dr. Michelle Joan Wilkinson, the museum’s director of collections and exhibitions, the Material Girls exhibition features accomplished female artists who produce three-dimensional sculptures, site-specific installations, mixed-media assemblages, and mechanized objects.  Using a variety of materials including human hair, beads, tissue, paper, and plastic, the artists’ creations range from natural to man-made, spirit-filled to soulless, ritualistic to robotic.
 
PAST EXHIBITIONS  

Lady with Flower (After Lady Sings the Blues from the Projection Series)

Bearing Witness: Work by Bradley McCallum & Jacqueline Tarry
Sacred to the Memory of…

May 6 - June 27

In conjunction with the Contemporary Museum and the Maryland Institute College of Art’s 2009-2010 Exhibition Development Seminar, the museum hosts Sacred to the Memory of... as part of the citywide exhibition Bearing Witness: Work by Bradley McCallum & Jacqueline Tarry. This installation about Baltimore-bred singer Billie Holiday incorporates paintings, music and an original piano attributed to Holiday, which is now part of the museum’s permanent collection.


Photo: NAACP voter registration drive, Pennsylvania Avenue, Baltimore, 1964.

NAACP Baltimore City Branch: 97 Years and Counting
April 2 - April 18

This commemorative exhibit features historic photographs, posters, documents, newspaper clippings and memorabilia from the archives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Baltimore City Branch. Curated by Professor Larry S. Gibson.


The exhibition was organized by The Romare Bearden Foundation, New York, NY. Exhibition Tour Organization and Management by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA

From Process to Print: Graphic Works by Romare Bearden
January 16, 2010 - March 28, 2010

This exhibition presents a major survey of the extensive graphic works created by Romare Bearden over more than 30 years. The works in the exhibition show Bearden’s extraordinary facility for weaving into every art form a rich tapestry of literary, biblical, mythological, popular culture and western and non-western themes that were informed by his African American cultural experiences. Included are prints based on collages like the Odysseus Series and Piano Lesson that he reworked in several media through changes in technique, scale and color and through the use of photographic processes. Also included are two important photoengraving series, The Train and The Family and the extraordinary limited edition 12 Trains. John Loring writing in Arts Magazine in 1973 proclaimed The Family as one of the most important prints of the time.


 

2010 High School Juried Art Exhibition
January 17 - February 28, 2010

Maryland high school students selected through a juried process are featured in this exhibition.  The 2010 theme of art and social issues is inspired by the exhibition of Romare Bearden’s works and his activism as part of the Spiral black artist’s group in the 1960s.  In partnership with the Maryland State Education Association (MSEA).

War and Its Effects, Sunmisire Adefioye, 1st Place Honoree
 
Canvasing the Movement
September 5, 2009- January 31, 2010


This arts wall exhibition shares the contributions of artists who have captured and seek to remember the walking, marching, and boycotting that carried the movement forward.

Featured Artists:
Charles Alston
Norman Lewis
Charly Palmer
Alma Woodsey Thomas
 
381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story
September 5, 2009 - January 3, 2010

This exhibition offers a gripping account of the men and women whose non-violent approach to political and social change matured into a weapon of equality for all. The exhibition is an overview of the history and significance of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, told through reproductions of photographs, political cartoons, fine art, illustrations, text, and an 8-minute audiovisual program.

381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story was developed and organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in collaboration with the Troy University Rosa Parks Library and Museum. This exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of AARP.


Spc. Toccarra Green
Photograph of Spc. Toccarra Green. Courtesy
of the Green Family.
Sisters, Soldiers: Black Women and the Modern Military
February 20, 2009 – July 5, 2009

African American women have played a role in every war effort in United States history. Sisters, Soldiers examines the past and present military service of black women, from the Civil War to the War on Terror. After placing black women as soldiers within a broad historical context, the thematic panels of the exhibition highlight the impact of race and gender issues on military service as well as the “breakthrough” moments in the history of that service. Over the last forty years, the roles available to black women in the military have shifted dramatically. This exhibition offers perspective on today’s African American women within the present conflicts in which the nation is engaged and the sacrifices that some have made in the line of duty.

To book this exhibition, call 443-263-1821


Rejoice
The Beauty of Now: Maya Freelon Asante
May 13, 2009 - August 16, 2009

Maya Freelon Asante is a dynamic young artist working in an unusual medium: tissue paper. Her vibrant monoprints are created by saturating colored tissue paper with water and using the released ink to form a new work on paper. Sometimes embedding old photographs into her prints, Freelon Asante introduces family stories into a collective history of African American resilience. For the current exhibition, the artist will also create a site-specific installation in the museum. Arts Wall Exhibition in the Permanent Galleries

Maya Freelon Asante - Exhibition Brochure
East Side Stories
April 25, 2009 - August 16, 2009

This exhibition of more than 100 photographs offers both a historic view of Baltimore’s East Side, and a modern focus on “Middle East” Baltimore, Belair-Edison in the northeast, and Latino communities in the city's southeast. Through audio and visual portraits, residents’ stories of family, home, neighbors, and belonging provide a mirror to East Baltimore’s past and a tour through its most recent history. The featured photographers are Ken Royster, Elizabeth Barbush of Art on Purpose, Ellis L. Marsalis, III, and Michela Caudill.

East Side Baltimore: Portraits of a Baltimore Neighborhood, Then and Now is made possible through the generous support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and PNC Bank.

Links
___________________________________________________
East Side Stories - Exhibition Brochure
East Side Images: Photographs by Ken Royster
East Side Stories Resources



Photograph of Ethel Ennis by Russ Moss.
Lift Every Voice: Photographs of African American Musicians by Russ Moss
Through March 8, 2009


The exhibition features a selection of black and white photographs originally created by Moss for Sounds and Stories: The Musical Life of Maryland's African American Communities, an oral history project developed by the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Moss’s photographs capture the musicians with the trappings of their lives in music, and often with instruments they have cradled for a lifetime. Moss commented that his subjects “opened their lives for the camera as passionately as they have done for their audiences.” His touching and vibrant images spotlight singers Ethel Ennis and Ruby Glover, bassist Charles Harris, jazz pianist Reppard Stone, and a community of other performers, music instructors, and band leaders.

 

 

COURAGE: The Vision to End Segregation, the Guts to Fight for It
Through March 1, 2009

Created by Levine Museum of the New South, Charlotte, North Carolina and made possible by a generous grant from
Bank of America.


Half a century ago Carolina families launched a lawsuit that changed America. This lawsuit was the first of five across the country that would lead to the 1954 landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown decision ruled racially segregated schools unconstitutional and set in motion a series of events that continue to shape our lives today.

Few Americans realize that what’s known as the case of the century, started in the Carolinas. The final chapters of Brown played out in the Supreme Court, but the story began when a country preacher named Rev. J. A. De Laine and his neighbors in Clarendon County, SC filed a lawsuit demanding the end of separate, unequal schools for their children.

This groundbreaking new exhibit tells the story of ordinary people – people outside the traditional power structure, without wealth and often with little classroom education – and how they worked together to begin the process that ended legal segregation of the races in America’s schools.




One Night in ’64: African American Voices and Television in the Civil Rights Era
Through January 20, 2009

African American voices in early television media were sparse, mediated, and filtered through mainstream interpretations and sensibilities. But, unique event occurred in Baltimore, Maryland, during February 1964, courtesy of WBAL-TV. After viewing a program on crime in the city, a 75-year old retired truck driver named James Emory Bond took his opinion on how the crime problem could be solved to the Television Hill studio of WBAL. Bond found himself and his voice broadcast to all of Baltimore, bringing an authentic African American perspective to current issues. Speaking powerfully for over an hour, Bond’s comments would be re-broadcast nationally and remembered for years to come. One Night in ’64 features a video presentation of the 60-minute interview with Bond, and contextualizes the broadcast within the history of African American representations on television.


To book this exhibition, call 443-263-1821

 

High School Juried Art Exhibition
(2nd Floor, Community Gallery).

January 24 – February 8, 2009

The Reginald F. Lewis Museum is pleased to announce its 1st Annual High School Regional Art Exhibition.  Winners of this art exhibition will have their work showcased in the Museum’s Community Gallery and its quarterly publication, Journeys.

The art exhibition is inspired by the exhibit Courage: The Vision to End Segregation,
the Guts to Fight for It.  
Artists are invited to create a piece of artwork that reflects what courage means to them in their community.
 
Three winners will be awarded monetary prizes and will be honored at the opening reception on Saturday, January 24, 2009.

 

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