I've had such a life in so many ways, and certainly ART has been one of them. I have always had the ability to be creative. As a child I quickly distinguished myself as one of the class artists. Without a clue what to do with my life when I entered College I declared Art as my major. It was not a good fit at all. I ended up with a minor in Art, and that's fitting. I confused art with mimicry.
I thought if I could draw something, or paint it to look like what it was, then I was making art. Of course art is SO MUCH MORE. Thankfully my inclination combined with so many acts of fate until I developed my understanding. I've known real artists. I've seen and enjoyed so much art. I've learned about art as a continuum from cave paintings hidden beneath fields of lavender in southern France and hand outlines spat upon rock canyons in the outback of Australia to the most contemporary of artists.
The years after college gave me opportunities few have to experience Exhibition Openings for many years at the National Gallery of Art, The MET in NYC, and even the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. A pair of shelves in my living room are squeezed tightly with dozens and dozens of exhibition catalogs. They represent the shows whose openings I attended (they always give you a free copy) and those I have traveled to see on my own. I have been to many art museums so many times that I know my way around them as if they were part of my home. It's always an opportunity for succor when I am exploring, making new connections, visiting old friends and discovering new ones.
One of my favorite games is to enter a gallery with works from a certain period, but of which I am unfamiliar and then guess the artist! It always ends in one of two ways. I'm right!--who an ego boost. Or, I'm wrong, BUT I have something entirely new to consider. Let me give a couple examples from my visit to the Baltimore Museum of Art today. In one gallery of works by American artists 1900 to 1950, I encountered a large oil painting of picnickers enjoying a Sunday afternoon from the vantage of an overlook of a river with steep hills on the opposite side. The paints were rich, and on the darker side with a very strong presence of ultramarine blue. I based my guess on the blue, because the subject wasn't anything like I'd seen this artist do before. It was George Bellows, and I nailed it.
In another gallery an image of seafood piled on the sand of a beach below cliffs. Same time frame, and I thought Marsden Hartley--but it was Henri Matisse!! Holy French Master, Batman! And then I thought what are the connections between Hartley and Matisse? Hmmm.
I went to the BMA hoping to see the exhibition: "Amy Sherald: American Sublime"; however, I discovered at the front desk that it was sold out. That it is sold out for the next couple of weeks. How I wish the BMA would post this information on their Goddamned Website, but they don't. Fortunately, the BMA has more than enough to occupy and justify a visit any day of the week.
So plan B--enjoy what is there. Look for things you haven't spent time with before. Make some new friends. One of the things that the BMA does as well as any museum --they rotate their collections. There are a couple of notable exceptions like their amazing Antioch mosaics, the heart of the Cone sisters collection, and the works in their sculpture garden, but go back after a year and you'll see new and different works in almost every gallery.
The other thing that they also excel at is featuring artists from neglected demographics. Woman artists. Artists of Color. LGBTQIA+ artists. They take their mission as a cultural institution for all the people of Baltimore very seriously.
My visit began and ended with this spectacular chandelier by Mexican artist Raul de Nieves that presided over the main entrance. Titled "Beautiful Nightmare," juxtaposed against the whimsical monumental Stained Glass of the upper foyer, it was a sensory extravaganza.
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