Baltimore Museum of Art Adds More Than Seventy Works to Its Collection
The Baltimore Museum of Art announced today that it has acquired more than seventy historic and contemporary artworks by a range of national and international artists. Seventeen of the new acquisitions were purchased with proceeds from the auction of recently deaccessioned works.
These include mixed-media works by Charles Gaines, Ebony G. Patterson, and Wilmer Wilson IV; prints by Emma Amos, Geta Brătescu, and Faith Ringgold; drawings by David Driskell and Clio Newton; a film by Ana Mendieta; photography by Elle Pérez; and a painting by Mary Lovelace O’Neal.
In 2018, the museum decided to auction seven pieces by white male artists—including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Franz Kline—in order to diversify its collection. This is the third group of works to enter its holdings since the deaccession. Among the artists whose works were previously acquired with the revenue from the sale are Melvin Edwards, Louise Lawler, Meleko Mokgosi, Amy Sherald, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Carrie Mae Weems.
A number of historic works—such as a rare eighteenth-century miniature by Anna Maria Werner; nineteenth-century prints by Manuel Orazi; a twentieth-century painting by André Derain; and a drawing by Édouard Vuillard—were also added to the museum’s collection through a combination of a gift and a purchase.
“This newest group of acquisitions highlights the incredible vision of the BMA’s new curatorial team to establish important connections across artists and movements within the museum’s collection,” said BMA director Christopher Bedford. “These historic and contemporary works create new opportunities to tell important and relevant narratives about the development of art and culture, and represent our collective goal to capture the innovations of a broad spectrum of artists with a continued and particular emphasis on those that have previously been under-represented in institutional collections.”
