Although the Walters Art Museum was open for most of last year following the COVID-19 related lockdowns of 2020, an important part of its Mount Vernon campus has remained off limits.
That will change this weekend, when the restored mansion and exhibit space known as Hackerman House finally opens to the public for the first time in more than two years.
From March 13 to Aug. 7, the former Thomas-Jencks-Gladding residence at 1 West Mount Vernon Place will be the setting for “Majolica Mania,” an exhibit that highlights the ceramic art form known as majolica.
Majolica is a type of clay pottery that is coated with enamel, ornamented with paint and glazed. The Walters’ exhibit will feature 350 examples that show the many ways it has been used over the years, and the ties it has to Baltimore.
The Walters has scheduled a preview of the “Majolica Mania” exhibit for museum supporters on Saturday, March 12, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibit officially opens to the public on March 13, when hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
On March 26, the museum has scheduled a lecture entitled “Majolica in Baltimore and Beyond,” from 2 to 3 p.m.
With the opening of the “Majolica Mania” exhibit and Hackerman House, the entire Walters campus will be accessible to the public for the first time since before city and state officials closed public buildings and curtailed public gatherings to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Julia Marciari-Alexander, the Andrea B. and John H. Laporte Director of the Walters, noted during a press preview this week that the museum closed due to COVID on March 13, 2020 – a Friday the 13th – and Hackerman House is reopening to the public on March 13, 2022.
“It’s been two years since we originally planned to have it here,” she said of the majolica exhibit. “It’s a joyous, joyous day.”
Marciari-Alexander and Jo Briggs, the Jennie Walters Delano Curator of 18th and 19th Century Art at the Walters, said Hackerman House was closed even before March 13, 2020, because curators were getting ready to install the majolica exhibit and had already shut down the previous exhibits and cleared out the mansion.
Co-organized by the Walters and the Bard Graduate Center in New York, the majolica show had been scheduled to open in Baltimore in April 2020 and then move to New York.
After the original opening date was nixed, the Walters tentatively moved the “Majolica Mania” opening in Baltimore to July 2021, but that date was cancelled too. Ultimately, the exhibit opened first at Bard, in the fall of 2021, with plans to come to Baltimore afterwards rather than the other way around.
Now that it’s finally installed and opening this weekend, curators say, visitors will finally be able to benefit from the years that went into planning the exhibit.
Marciari-Alexander said Hackerman House is an ideal setting for the majolica exhibit because it was built just as the art form was gaining attention in the United States.
“The grandeur of the Hackerman House is complemented by the breathtaking scale of the exhibition, and the immersive design creates unique visitor experiences as we look back at Victorian society,” she said in a statement.
Included in the exhibition are works by the Chesapeake Pottery and the Edwin Bennett Pottery, two American majolica makers founded in Baltimore. The Edwin Bennett Pottery created a nearly three-foot-tall planter, supported by griffins and glazed in pale blue, that was displayed at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and will be on view in “Majolica Mania.”
Although majolica was wildly popular in the 19th century, production dropped after the lead glazes needed to make it shiny were outlawed for being potentially poisonous to artisans.
Curated by Briggs and Susan Weber, founder and director of Bard Graduate Center, the exhibition explores the vibrant colors of the ceramic’s lead-based glazes and the variety of shapes the pottery took, from plates to planters to larger works of art. Other themes of the show include majolica and the natural world; foods and fashions; class; labor; immigration, and the human cost of producing majolica.
As part of telling the story of the human cost of producing majolica, the exhibit also honors the women and children who became ill or died as a result of working with the toxic glazes needed to make it. The exhibit includes a ceramic memorial called “A Requiem in White,” by contemporary artist Walter McConnell, that was commissioned by the Walters and Bard Graduate Center. It also includes stories of the workers, with pictures of the factories and towns where majolica was made.
Besides highlighting local potteries, Majolica Mania features works from major British manufacturers and designers such as Minton, Wedgwood, and George Jones, as well as leading American potteries including Griffen, Smith and Hill Company of Pennsylvania, and the Arsenal Pottery of Trenton, New Jersey.
Loans from museums in Great Britain, including the Royal Collection, and Victoria & Albert Museum, as well as the Maryland Center for History and Culture and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will be on view along with works from private collections, many of which have never before been publicly displayed.
Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated, three-volume catalogue published by Bard Graduate Center and the Walters, with essays examining the design, production, and dissemination of majolica worldwide.
Admission to the Walters is free. More information about the Walters and Majolica Mania is available at thewalters.org.
