Baltimore Museum of Art acquires 118 works of art, more than half from collector Constance R. Caplan

The Baltimore Museum of Art announced on Friday that it has acquired approximately 118 works of art over the past six months, including 64 from collector and longtime supporter Constance R. Caplan.

The newly-acquired works deepen the museum’s holdings of both historical and contemporary objects from around the world and increase the number of works by artists from the Baltimore area.

Caplan is a former museum board chair who has been engaged with the BMA since 1955 and whose collection was the subject of a 2020 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her Baltimore County home, designed by her son Jonathan Caplan, is a veritable museum.

Caplan’s gift to the BMA includes works by Janine Antoni; Hilla and Bernd Becher; John Chiara; Fernanda Gomes; Robert Morris; Stephen Parrino; Nobuo Sekine; Richard Tuttle; Lee Ufan; Jack Whitten and Lisa Yuskavage.

Other acquisitions entered the museum’s collection either through purchases or as gifts or promised gifts. They include: paintings by Katharine Gilbert Riggs Elmore; Inoue Hakuyō; Titus Kaphar; K.S. Kulkarni; Stanton MacDonald-Wright; Rabin Mondal and Wosene Worke Kosrof, and sculptural and mixed media installation works by Rina Banerjee; Petah Coyne; Ali Eyal; Sanaa Gateja; Heidi Lau; Reverend Joyce McDonald; Julie Mehretu with Nairy Baghramian, and Siphiwe Nala.

Also, textiles and works of fashion and design by Robell Awake; Maison Jove by Germaine Bongard; Félix Bracquemond and Myrlande Constant, and works on paper by Tarsila do Amaral; Minol Araki; Margaret Burroughs; Virginia Chihota; Miguel Covarrubias; Guillaume du Mortier; Oumar Ka; Kikuji Kawada; Jean-Denis Nargeot; Ben Shahn and Yoshihiro Tatsuki.

Acquisitions that reflect the BMA’s efforts to invest in artists who are from or have meaningful ties to Baltimore include works by Amy Sherald; Louis Fratino; Helen Frederick; Curran Hatleberg; Jae Ko; Paul Rucker; Oswaldo Guayasamín and Arvie Smith.

The Amy Sherald acquisition is a 70-color screenprint of “For love, and for country,” her 2022 painting that plays off Alfred Eisenstaedt’s 1945 photograph, “V-J Day in Times Square,” by substituting a straight white couple kissing with two black males in uniform kissing in the same pose. The 2022 painting is part of her traveling retrospective, “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” which broke attendance records at the BMA earlier this year and is currently on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The screenprint dates from 2024 and is about half the size of the painting.

Together, museum leaders said in their announcement, the range of objects underscores the BMA’s vision to expand its commitment to diversifying its collection to embrace a wealth of global voices.

“Over the past several years, the BMA has invested strongly in several important strategies: to enhance the scope and meaning of collections diversification; to develop deep relationships with collaborators, private and public, who share our institutional ideals; and to uplift Baltimore’s vibrant and growing artistic community. The acquisitions announced today are a beautiful and exciting encapsulation of those priorities,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director, in a statement.

“We are incredibly grateful to our longstanding supporters, who continue to work with us to realize our vision for a collection and program that is truly global and reflective of the many people who have shaped the stories of art,” Naeem said. “We look forward to sharing these compelling works with our audiences.”

Here are some of the acquisition highlights, with artist biographies and descriptions provided by the museum:

Contagious Migrations, 1999-2023, by Rina Banerjee

Rina Banerjee (born in Kolkata, India 1963) is an acclaimed multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, installation, and drawing and often combines organic and synthetic materials to explore migration, diaspora, and the construction of identity across geographies. Contagious Migrations is a sprawling, wall-mounted installation that explores how the spread of disease becomes entangled with systems of power. First presented at the 2000 Whitney Biennial, it considers xenophobic responses to global pandemics, from flu outbreak to the AIDS crisis. Through the layering of materials, Banerjee evokes biological transmission against the backdrop of colonization and displacement. Contagious Migrations is the first work by Banerjee to enter the BMA’s collection and represents a historically-significant example of her practice.

Round Platter with Landscape, c. 1874–76, by Felix Bracquemond

Félix Bracquemond (French, 1833–1914) was a central figure in the Parisian avant-garde who led the Auteuil Studio, an experimental ceramic workshop funded by Haviland & Co. This porcelain platter is among his earliest large-scale ceramic works and a striking example of late 19th-century Japonisme. Bold contour lines and flattened color areas form a continuous landscape that dissolves the boundary between image and object. One of only three known porcelain examples, the work reflects a radical rethinking of surface and composition, defines a key moment in the intersection of fine and decorative arts, and expands the BMA’s presentation of Impressionism as a globally informed practice across media.

On the Beach, 1957, by Margaret Burroughs

Margaret Burroughs (American, 1917–2010) was an artist, educator, and activist whose work centered the everyday lives of Black Americans. Best known for her linocuts, Burroughs used printmaking to depict scenes of family, leisure and community with clarity and care. On the Beach presents women and children gathered along a shoreline, reflecting her commitment to documenting lived experience while affirming its beauty. Produced following her time in Mexico with the Taller de Gráfica Popular, the work also reveals transnational influences in its graphic rhythms. This acquisition brings a vital dimension of Burroughs’ practice into the collection, emphasizing daily life as a central subject.

Granary, 2023, by Sanaa Gateja

Sanaa Gateja (born in Kisoro, Uganda, 1950) is renowned for creating exquisite, large-scale tapestries of hand-rolled beads from recycled paper. His experience coming of age during the Ugandan independence movement has inspired his vision of communal artmaking as an act of ecological and spiritual repair. Granary exemplifies Gateja’s intricate assemblages comprised of thousands of paper beads sewn onto handmade barkcloth following the artist’s drawing. Each bead is also handmade by artisans in Gateja’s community out of paper salvaged from magazines, textbooks, and political campaign flyers. For Gateja, each bead is “a complete sculpture” in its own right, carrying connection to East African cultural lineages and global print media. This is the first work by Gateja to enter the BMA’s collection and continues the museum’s focus on the Independence and post-Independence periods in Southern and Eastern African art.

Atahualpa, 1946, by Oswaldo Guayasamin

The painting Atahualpa represents a rare and compelling early work by Oswaldo Guayasamín (Ecuadorian, 1919-1999), one of the most significant Latin American artists of the 20th century. Born in Quito to a Quechua father and mestiza mother, Guayasamín built his career creating unflinching meditations on Indigenous life, social injustice, and the enduring legacies of colonial violence. He is best known for his powerful portrayals of contemporary Indigenous and working-class subjects, making Atahualpa, which depicts the last Inca emperor, an exceptional work in his oeuvre and a historically interesting anomaly. Although Guayasamín achieved significant recognition during his lifetime, including in the U.S. (concluding his career in Baltimore), his work remains under-represented in American museum collections. It is the first work by the artist in the BMA’s collection.

Heroic Revision – Mars, 2025, by Titus Kaphar

Titus Kaphar (born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1976) is celebrated for his illusionistic paintings that explore issues of absence and remembrance in American history. In Heroic Revision – Mars, Kaphar expands his frame of reference to the Greco-Roman inspired world of the Italian Renaissance. Dressed in armor and against a backdrop recalling the naval portraits of Venetian painters, Kaphar appends a portrait of his adoptive father, a Haitian immigrant who took him in at the age of 15. A gilt frame separates his unadorned head from the exquisitely rendered textures and finery in the rest of the painting. With his typical wit, Kaphar appropriates markers of masculinity and wealth to convey tenderness and abiding love. This is the first work by the artist in the BMA’s collection.

Self-Portrait at Home and Reclining Woman, 1959 to 1968 (printed 2024), by Oumar Ka

Photographer Oumar Ka (Senegalese, 1930–2020) developed a distinctive approach to portraiture during his itinerant practice across rural Senegal in the 1960s. Often working outdoors, Ka incorporated landscape and texture into his compositions, expanding the conventions of studio photography. Self-Portrait at Home presents the artist within a carefully staged domestic setting, articulating identity through environment and self-fashioning. In Reclining Woman, a familiar pose is reimagined in an open-air composition, allowing “décor” to enter the frame. These are the first works by Ka to enter the BMA’s collection, broadening its representation of modern photography in West Africa.

Untitled, 1960, by K. S. Kulkarni

K. S. (Krishna Shamrao) Kulkarni (Indian, 1916-1994) was a key figure in post-Independence Indian art and a formative presence in Delhi’s mid-century cultural institutions. This untitled painting stages a charged encounter between a standing figure and a bull, a symbol resonant across South Asian and European traditions. Balancing tension and stillness, the composition reflects Kulkarni’s engagement with global art histories, from Indian mural traditions to modernist experimentation. His work resists fixed stylistic identity, instead synthesizing diverse influences into a dynamic visual language. The first by the artist to enter the BMA’s collection, this painting anchors future efforts to represent the complexities of South Asian modernism.

Rose Celadon, 2025, by Heidi Lau

Heidi Lau (Macau-born, based in New York) creates ceramic works that explore colonialism, cultural hybridity, and healing through imagined environments informed by her experience growing up amidst Portuguese colonial structures in Macau. Rose Celadon is a compelling example of her hand-sculpted practice that combines organic forms and decorative elements associated with the Daoist tradition and architectural references to Portuguese colonial arcades. A mountainous landscape emerges from the vessel’s lid. The work reflects themes of cyclicality, emergence, grief, and postcolonial renewal while highlighting cultural exchange. As a rising figure in contemporary ceramics, Lau expands the museum’s commitment to craft, women artists, and global narratives.

Portrait of Antonio Emanuel, Marquis of Ne Vunda, 1608, by Guillaume du Mortier

Guillaume du Mortier (French, 1590–1634), working with papal publisher Giovanni Antonio de Paoli, created this exceptionally rare engraving of Antonio Emanuel, Kongo ambassador to the Vatican. Produced posthumously after his 1608 death in Rome, the print commemorates his diplomatic mission to establish a Catholic diocese in the Kongo Kingdom. Unlike more Europeanized depictions, Du Mortier presents Emanuel in Kongo regalia, including a netted nkutu cloak, asserting his identity and authority as an African leader. One of only a few known impressions, the work highlights early modern global diplomacy and strengthens the BMA’s representation of cross-cultural exchange and African presence in Renaissance Europe.

Drinking Vessel, c. 2014, by Siphiwe Nala

Siphiwe Nala is the matriarch of one of South Africa’s most celebrated ceramic families, renowned for elevating traditional Zulu beer pots from household objects to works recognized as fine art. This hand-built drinking vessel exemplifies her technical mastery, featuring a balanced form, a rich black surface achieved through reduction firing, and incised patterns that are both decorative and functional. Historically used for brewing, storing, and serving beer at important social gatherings, the vessel retains signs of use that underscore its lived history. The work reflects the enduring significance of South African ceramic traditions and the Nala family’s vital role in preserving and expanding the artistic possibilities of the medium.