The Baltimore Museum of Art will reopen with limited capacity on Sunday, March 28, ending a four-month hiatus to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Directors announced today that the museum will be open Wednesdays through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and that timed entry passes will be available to the general public beginning March 22 on the museum’s website.
The BMA will reopen 11 days after the Walters Art Museum’s reopening, scheduled for March 17. The two institutions have been mostly shut down, with some exceptions, since November 25.
The BMA plans to welcome up to eight people for each 30-minute time slot for a maximum of 112 people per day, a figure that is below Baltimore City’s 25 percent capacity guidelines.
Coinciding with its reopening, the BMA will debut three new 2020 Vision exhibitions originally scheduled to open in fall 2020:
Sharon Lockhart: Perilous Life features film, photography, and sculpture that bookend Lockhart’s 10-year engagement with a group of children in Łódź, Poland.
Tschabalala Self: By My Self features 15 new and recent paintings and sculptures that capture the intricacy and singularity of Self’s formal techniques, which include stenciling and tracing, printing, casting, and mechanically stitching lines of thread as a means of exploring the Black female form.
Lisa Yuskavage: Wilderness brings together more than 15 paintings that show the artist’s expansive treatment of landscape through lush and dexterously crafted compositions that tantalize the eye and beguile the mind. These exhibitions, along with Katharina Grosse’s fabric artwork Is It You?, will remain on view through September 19, 2021.
Other exhibitions currently on view are Stephanie Syjuco: Vanishing Point (Overlay), a three-part installation that examines how image-making is implicated in the construction of racialized, exclusionary narratives of history and citizenship; She Knew Where She Was Going: Gee’s Bend Quilts and Civil Rights, which showcases five recently acquired quilts by the famed Black textile artists from Alabama; and Adelyn Breeskin: Curating a Legacy, which honors the achievements made by the museum’s director from 1942 to 1962.
The March 28 opening follows a trial run of sorts, in which the museum staff let in a limited number of visitors by appointment, and only to certain areas within the building at 10 Art Museum Drive.
“When we launched our small group reservation system in February, we could not have imagined the overwhelming response and clear desire by the public to return to the BMA,” said director Christopher Bedford, in a statement.
“The enthusiasm from our audiences was both heartening and further indicative of the importance of art to our lives. I am delighted that we have now begun the slow and thoughtful process of making the museum even more available to visitors. We are also reopening our doors with an outstanding array of exhibitions that capture the richness and depth of contemporary creation and honor the important contributions of female-identifying artists and an important leader of this museum.”
As part of the reopening, all visitors will be required to answer two questions about COVID-19 exposure on the day of their appointment and to wear face masks and follow social distancing guidelines in each gallery. Directors note that the museum is prepared to alter its plans should further precautions be needed to show the spread of COVID-19 and protect its staff and visitors.
