The Baltimore Museum of Art has added 250 artworks in the past year to its encyclopedic collection. The wide-ranging acquisitions—from all over the world and spanning centuries—“reflect the museum’s focus on expanding the range of global voices represented within its collection,” according to a statement released by the museum.
More than half of the new works—180 in total—are part of an anonymous gift of contemporary art by 63 different artists, among Gina Beavers, Lucas Blalock, Alex Da Corte, Juliana Huxtable, and Martine Syms.
In late 2020, the BMA faced widespread scrutiny when it announced that it would deaccession three blue-chip paintings in order to raise $65 million, which would be used, in large part, to acquire artworks by women and artists of color who were underrepresented in the collection. The museum ultimately called off the sale hours before it was to take place at Sotheby’s.
Despite this sudden pivot, the BMA has continued to diversity its collection in the intervening years. “We believe artistic innovation and compelling stories of the human spirit transcend historical and geographic boundaries,” BMA director Asma Naeem said in a statement.
Highlights from last year’s acquisitions include a cache of etchings and copper plates (10 of each), by Henri Matisse. The etchings (and six of the plates) are from an illustrated book from 1932 that featured mythological images based on poems by Stéphane Mallarmé. The other four plates depict Matisse’s eldest child, Marguerite. These works were a gift from Barbara Dauphin Duthuit, Matisse’s granddaughter-in-law (her late husband, Claude Duthuit, was Marguerite’s son). The 20 plates and etchings join 181 plates and three linoleum blocks Dauphin Duthuit gifted to the BMA in 2024.
Other notable works joining the collection include a painting by the underknown Surrealist artist Alice Rahon; Kiyan Williams’s aluminum sculpture of LGBTQ rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, which was first shows at the 2024 Whitney Biennial; colorful textiles designed by artists affiliated with the Manufacture Sénégalaises des Arts Décoratifs de Thiès; and a Delfware tobacco jar printed with a scene of a tobacco harvest in Baltimore made in a factory founded by Barbara Rotteveel, the earliest known independent woman Delftware maker.
Below are a dozen works acquired by the BMA in the past year.
