My spouse and I visited the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) on
a Saturday afternoon in early June 2018. The museum is open from 10:00 am until
5:00 pm on Wednesday through Sunday (closed Monday and Tuesday). General admission
is free because of a grant given by several foundations in conjunction with
Baltimore city and county. (The Walters Art Museum also offers free admission
from the same grant.) You may have to pay a fee to view rotating special
exhibitions, however.
The museum is
located just outside of downtown Baltimore, adjacent to the Homewood campus of
Johns Hopkins University (between the Charles Village, Remington, Hampden, and
Roland Park neighborhoods). A small (paid) parking lot is onsite, with
additional public lots and street parking available. A coat/bag/umbrella check
room is available, as is a gift shop and a full-service restaurant (called Gertrude’s).
The museum opened in its present location in 1929. Prior to
that, beginning in 1876, it occupied a downtown location and then another
temporary location. Currently, it
occupies a 3-story, 10,000-square foot building of the classic revival style. Its architect also
designed the National Archives Building in DC, the American Museum of Natural
History in NYC, and the Tate Gallery Sculpture Hall in London.
The BMA’s 95,000 work collection includes pieces from the
ancient world (like the Antioch mosaics displayed in a sort of enclosed cloister)
to contemporary modern art. The BMA
collection includes sculptures (both indoors and outdoors in its landscaped
2.7-acre garden), decorative arts, drawings, prints, photos, and paintings. The highlight of the
museum is the Cone Collection, donated by two local sisters who amassed a
collection by painters including Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne, Manet, Degas,
Gauguin, van Gogh, and Renoir. In fact, the BMA owns the largest public
collection of works by Matisse. It also displays several rooms that were reconstructed/replicated
from six local Maryland historic houses.
We enjoyed our
brief visit to the Baltimore Museum of Art; we only spent about an hour there,
but we could have easily spent the entire day!
