An influential design review board in Baltimore is getting new life after Mayor Brandon Scott this month swore in new members of the Public Art Commission, a civic panel that oversees the city’s vast inventory of public art but hasn’t met since December.
In all, seven first-time members are joining two members who served last year and have been reappointed. Several other members of the previous panel, including former chair Aaron Bryant and artists Alma Roberts and Sam Christian Holmes, are not returning after their terms expired.
The panel members are: Jaz Erenberg; Evan Richardson; Mary Ann Mears; Rashida Bumbray; Makeda Drake; Amy Eva Raehse; Shanek Kumi; Stanley Mazaroff and City Council member Ryan Dorsey. Erenberg, a returning member, is the interim chair. Richardson is the other returning member.
The new panel is a diverse group of individuals with expertise in various fields related to art and culture, including the visual arts, art history, law, preservation, civil engineering, landscape design, community planning and politics. Each commissioner will serve until Dec. 5, 2028 – the last day of Scott’s term in office.
Sweeping overhaul
The influx of new members represents the first sweeping overhaul of the Public Art Commission in years. It’s one of several steps that Scott has taken this year to show strong interest in and support for Baltimore’s arts community.
Other recent steps include creating a Mayor’s Office of Art, Culture and Entertainment (MOACE) and forging a new agreement for the city to work on arts-related programs and projects with an independent agency, Create Baltimore, formerly known as the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA).
In 2023, after a highly-publicized dust-up with BOPA, the mayor created a cabinet-level position, Senior Advisor of Arts and Culture, and hired Tonya Miller Hall from BOPA to fill it and to run MOACE’s predecessor, the Office of Arts and Culture.
Miller Hall has been behind many of the Scott administration’s arts initiatives and heads a 23-member Arts & Culture Advisory Committee, formed “to provide guidance, recommendations and support” to the mayor and City Council on matters involving the city’s cultural landscape.
Monumental City
The Public Art Commission is one of several city-sanctioned review panels that oversee changes to Baltimore’s urban landscape. Others include the Planning Commission; Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals; Urban Design and Architecture Advisory Panel (UDAAP), Site Plan Review Committee; Sustainability Commission and Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP).
Baltimore, known as The Monumental City, has the greatest number of monuments per capita of any city in the U.S. Its inventory ranges from bronze statues to contemporary sculptures to paintings and statuary in city schools and other municipal buildings.
The Public Art Commission is responsible for reviewing proposals for newly-created works of art and memorials that will be placed permanently on city-owned property as well as gifts to the city of existing art works. It considers both the design and placement of the art works and plans for maintenance. Murals and temporary art installations such as the Inviting Light pieces in Station North are not currently within its purview.
The panel also considers requests to relocate, restore or de-accession works in the city’s inventory. One recent case of de-accessioning city-owned art involved several pieces commissioned for Lake Clifton High School, which closed in 2005, has been sold to Morgan State University and is slated for demolition.
Over the years, commissioner members have made decisions about some of the most high-profile and valuable works of art in the city. When William Donald Schaefer was mayor and Diana Jacquot was his public art czar, the panel was active in reviewing plans for prominent works such as Mark di Suvero’s Under Sky/One Family sculpture next to the World Trade Center Baltimore on Pratt Street.
Schaefer statue, 9/11 Memorial
After a dormant period, the commission was reconstituted by then-BOPA director William Gilmore to review Rodney Carroll’s design of the eight-foot-tall Schaefer statue on the Inner Harbor’s West Shore and the 9/11 Memorial of Maryland on Pratt Street, among other prominent projects.
Under former Mayor Catherine Pugh, the panel was involved in discussions about taking down statues and monuments related to the Confederacy. It considered several options for moving Jonathan Borofsky’s Male/Female sculpture in front of Pennsylvania Station, as part of a private development team’s potential redesign of the train station’s entrance plaza, but never authorized a change of location.
Some of the artwork that the commission reviewed hasn’t materialized, including a proposed statue of former Baltimore Colt Leonard Edward “Lenny” Moore and a Mount Vernon memorial by David Hess and Sebastian Martorana that would have honored the late actor Harris Glenn Milstead, also known as Divine.
Unlike UDAAP, whose members serve in an advisory capacity to the city planning department, the Public Art Commission has the final say on the design of projects it reviews. That makes it comparable to CHAP and the zoning board in terms of the clout its members have.
In addition to Bryant, Roberts and Holmes, previous PAC members who aren’t returning include Jacqueline Bershad, Lady Brion and Danielle Brock. Other previous members have included Elissa Blount Moorhead; Elford Jackson; Steve Ziger, Kuo Pao Lian and Jann Rosen-Queralt.
Until its latest hiatus, the Public Art Commission has traditionally met once a month. Under former BOPA CEO Donna Drew Sawyer, it took the summer off. Dates for the panel’s first meeting and subsequent meetings have not been announced or posted on the city’s website. New panel members have talked about meeting informally to get to know each other, but they can’t take any official actions unless they have a quorum and meet in a public session.
As part of its newly-approved agreement with the Mayor’s Office, BOPA/Create Baltimore will provide staff to support the commission’s work and technical assistance for its meetings. The person who ran the meetings last year is no longer with the agency. Louis Joseph, the director of the Baltimore City Art Council, which is part of BOPA/Create Baltimore, said he wasn’t sure who would run the meetings but it might be him.
Impressive credentials
Following is information about the backgrounds of the Public Art Commission members for 2025 to 2028, based on biographies submitted to the City Council and other information online and from the panelists themselves. Between them, the group members have impressive credentials and a wide range of experience that prepares them for their roles on the commission.
The new members are:
Mary Ann Mears: Mears is a sculptor who has been commissioned to create art for public sites in Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Illinois, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
In Maryland, Mears has been commissioned to complete works in Bethesda; Rockville; Cheverly; Belair; Glen Burnie; Silver Spring; Columbia and several locations in Baltimore. A copy of her “Red Buoyant” sculpture in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor was given to Baltimore’s sister city, Kawasaki, Japan. Her clients have included state arts councils, private entities, and, in some cases, partnerships between private developers and public agencies.
Mears is also an arts leader and advocate. She is a founder of Maryland Art Place and helped to craft and successfully lobby for Maryland’s Public Art Bill. She was a trustee and member of the Executive Committee of Maryland Citizens for the Arts (MCA) for 30 years.
Mears is the founder and is Trustee Emeritus of Arts Education in Maryland Schools (AEMS) Alliance and Co-chaired the Governor’s P-20 Leadership Council’s Task Force on Arts Education in Maryland Schools. She served on the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC). With arts advocates Cindy Kelly and Linda DePalma, she formed a group called Friends of Public Art to urge city officials to improve the way local government supports the arts community and protects the city’s public art inventory.
Mears grew up in Chatham, New Jersey and is married to Abell Foundation president Robert C. Embry Jr. She was educated at Mount Holyoke College, receiving a bachelor’s degree with Distinction and Honors, and New York University, where she focused on sculpture and was awarded a master’s degree.
Mears received an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from University of Maryland, Baltimore County. In 2009, she received the Distinguished Service to the Arts Award from the National Governors Association. In 2010, The Daily Record included her on its list of Maryland’s Top 100 Women.
A common thread in Mears’ work as an artist, advocate and arts leader is her passion for the role of the arts in fostering a shared vision and values in diverse communities. She is committed to bringing arts instruction to all students so that they thrive academically and become creative and critical thinkers who enhance the civic life of their communities.
“Each site’s unique qualities whether physical or human are the source of new ideas that meld with my memories, reflections and imaginings and lead me in new directions,” she once said of her sculptures. “My best work surprises me and paradoxically has an inevitability at the same time.”
Amy Eva Raehse: Raehse is the Executive Director, Vice President and Partner at Goya Contemporary Gallery and Goya-Girl Press in Baltimore as well as a writer, educator and independent curator.
Located in the Mill Centre at 3000 Chestnut Avenue in Hampden, Goya Contemporary Gallery was founded in 1996 as Goya-Girl Press and changed its name to Goya Contemporary Gallery in 2005. It exhibits, represents and manages the careers of emerging and mid-career artists in a program focused on contemporary art in both primary and secondary markets. Besides maintaining an active exhibition schedule, it has a large archive of print publications.
In a career spanning more than 25 years, Raehse has worked in the museum, gallery, not-for-profit, commercial, and academic sectors of the arts. She is a specialist on the work of MacArthur Fellow Joyce J. Scott, and Goya is Scott’s primary worldwide representative.
Raehse is a co-founding member of the activist group Artists For Truth. She has curated more than 150 exhibitions, written catalog essays and scholarly articles for a variety of publications, and served as a national juror for numerous open-call and prize-driven exhibitions and competitions.
Raehse has taught at numerous colleges and universities, and she lectures regularly on professional practices, ethics, artists rights, collection management and legacy planning practices for artists. A consultant and advisor to many arts organizations in Baltimore, Raehse has served on the board of directors at The Creative Alliance of Baltimore for 15 years, the Art Advisory Board at University of Maryland Global Campus, and the Programming Advisory at Maryland Art Place. She is also on the board of directors of the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA).
Raehse has placed thousands of artworks in top public and private collections worldwide. The list includes the Museum of Modern Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Smithsonian Institution; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Chrysler Museum; Toledo Museum; National Museum of African American History and Culture; National Museum of American Art; Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Arts and Design; Montclair Art Museum; San Francisco Museum; Mint Museum; Philbrook Museum; Seattle Museum; Harvard University Museum; Yale University Museum; Rhode Island School of Design Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Fine Art Boston and many others.
Besides working to produce the largest one-person museum retrospective to date on Scott, Raehse’s projects include: a Jo Smail retrospective at The Baltimore Museum of Art; 45-year survey of works by American Abstract Geometric painter Timothy App at the Katzen Museum in DC; Sonya Clark’s exhibition on Madam C. J. Walker with performances and programming involving scholar and Walker descendant A’lelia Bundles, and Sonya Clark exhibitions at The Fabric Workshop, Wadsworth Atheneum, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Other notable exhibitions presented work by Soledad Salamé; Sanford Biggers; Louise Fishman; Fanny Sanin; Sergio Sister; Sam Gilliam; Kyle Hackett; Liliana Porter; Ana Tiscornia; Elizabeth Talford Scott; Wilhelm Mundt; Charles Mason III; Ann Hamilton; Lynda Benglis; Louise Bourgeois; William Kentridge and Louisa Chase.
Goya-Girl Press publications have featured the work of Sam Gilliam; Ellen Gallagher; Christian Marclay; Joyce J. Scott; Liliana Porter; Sanford Biggers; Soledad Salamé; Jo Smail; Robin Rose; Jae Ko; Louisa Chase; Lynn Silverman; Sonya Clark; Mark Strand and others.
Raehse has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a degree in Arts Management from Amherst College. She has a particular passion for material culture, methods & meanings in materials, ethics, copyright security, artist estate management, and the protection and interpretation of culturally significant objects. She calls herself “a New Yorker by birth but a Baltimorean by choice.”
Stanley Mazaroff: Mazaroff, a Bolton Hill resident, is a retired lawyer, art historian, writer, art collector and philanthropist. A Baltimore native, he served in the Peace Corps, the U. S. Army and as a U. S. Senate staff member. From 1971 to 2001, he was a partner in the law firm of Venable, Baetjer & Howard, now Venable LLP. He also taught at the University of Maryland Law School and served as an arbitrator/judge under the auspices of the American Arbitration Association.
After retiring from Venable in 2001, Mazaroff enrolled full time as a special student in the art history department at Johns Hopkins University. Besides being an authority on the Frick Museum in New York, he is the author of two art history books published by Johns Hopkins University Press: Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson, Collector and Connoisseur, published in 2010, and A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure: The Remarkable Lives of George A. Lucas and His Art Collection, published in 2018.
In 2020, Mazaroff and his late wife Nancy Dorman donated $5 million to the Baltimore Museum of Art to establish a center dedicated to the presentation, study and preservation of its 65,000-object collection of prints, drawings, and photographs. The 7,000 square-foot Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs is now open on the museum’s first floor, next to the Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies.
The following year, Mazaroff and Dorman promised to donate 90 works of art by nearly 70 artists to the BMA. The collection has since been conveyed to the museum and includes works by artists who are based in or have strong ties to Baltimore, including Larry Cook; Roland Freeman; Connie Imboden; Soledad Salame; Elizabeth Talford Scott and Stephen Towns.
Mazaroff, whose wife died of cancer in January of 2024, is a former member of the board of trustees of the Walters Art Museum. He is also unique among the Public Art Commission members because he has also worked with the panel as a donor of art works to the City of Baltimore.
In addition to gifts they made to the BMA and the University of Baltimore, Mazaroff and Dorman disclosed plans before Dorman’s death to donate half a dozen works of outdoor sculpture to be installed in areas of Bolton Hill where they will be visible to the general public in perpetuity. Of the six works donated to the Bolton Hill Community Association, four will be on city-owned land and two will be on land owned by the Maryland Institute College of Art. The works are by John Ferguson; Jon Isherwood; Jon Ruppert; Leonard Streckfus; Kristen Campbell and David Hess.
To facilitate the couple’s donation, the community association agreed to receive the gifts and transfer them to the city’s parks department, housing department and MICA, with Bolton Hill’s Greening Committee and park stewards overseeing the project. That’s where the Public Art Commission became involved.
Starting in May of 2024, the Public Art Commission had three public meetings about the sculptures targeted for installation on city property. Members asked questions about the siting of each piece, how they will be supported structurally, and plans for maintenance and insurance, among other subjects, before officially accepting the works that will be on city-owned land. The sculpture by Campbell was installed on MICA-owned property last fall. Others are being installed this year.
Throughout their lives, Mazaroff and Dorman were strong supporters of the arts in Baltimore and the idea of sharing art with others. “We are committed to the BMA’s mission to make art more accessible for a broad array of audiences and excited that our support will help the museum realize that goal,” they said when announcing their $5 million gift.
“For over 50 years, the philanthropists Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff built their lives around Baltimore – and around art,” the BMA posted on its website last year. “From their home in Bolton Hill, they dedicated themselves to this city, to the artists who call it home, and to its institutions that work to make art accessible to all.” Mazaroff’s decision to serve on the Public Art Commission is another example of that support for the arts in Baltimore.
Rashida Bumbray: Bumbray is a curator, director, choreographer, author and visual and performing arts critic who has worked for more than two decades with rising and established artists and institutions.
Bumbray’s professional experience includes serving as a curator for the “Loophole of Retreat: Venice” symposium, part of Simone Leigh’s Sovereignty exhibit for the U. S. Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice, and directing the Open Society Foundation’s “Culture and Art Program” in New York from 2019 to 2022.
While leading the OSF’s Culture and Art Program, Bumbray oversaw and committed more than $70 million in support to artists, institutions and projects related to social justice and human rights. She launched and developed the foundation’s Global Initiative on the Restitution of African Cultural Heritage, launched and seeded its Caribbean Cultural Fund, and developed its Memorial Justice Initiative in response to the global racial justice movement to support the creation of alternative monuments by Black, Indigenous and “people of color” artists around the U. S.
Bumbray was a senior program manager at the Open Society Foundation from 2015 to 2019; Artist-in-Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City from 2017 to 2021; Director of Artistic Affairs (Dean of Arts) for the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D. C., from 2014 to 2015; Associate Curator and Education Curator at The Kitchen in New York from 2006 to 2012, and Exhibition Coordinator and Curatorial Assistant at The Studio Museum in Harlem from 2001 to 2006.
Bumbray has worked as a consultant with the Artists at Risk Connection; Apple Values; the Creative Capital Foundation and the Surdna Foundation, all in New York. She has served on numerous prestigious juries and committees, including ones associated with the Joan Mitchell Foundation; the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Bumbray’s choreographic work, Run Mary Run, was included in the New York Times list of the Best Concerts in 2012. In 2014, she was nominated for the distinguished Bessie Award for “Outstanding Emerging Choreographer.”
Bumbray has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College, where she majored in African American Studies and minored in Theater and Dance. She has a Master of Arts degree from New York University, where she focused on Contemporary Art, Performance Studies and Comparative Literature. She lives in Bolton Hill.
Ryan Dorsey: Ryan Dorsey has been a member of Baltimore’s City Council since 2016. He represents the city’s 3rd District, where he is a lifelong resident. Raised in the Belair-Edison and Mayfield neighborhoods, he attended St. Francis of Assisi and graduated from the Baltimore School for the Arts and the Peabody Conservatory of Music.
Before running for office, Councilman Dorsey worked as a project manager in a small business that was founded in Baltimore in 1930 and has been in his family for three generations. In 2012 he thru-hiked the 2200-mile Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine, after which he worked various other jobs, mostly in and around construction.
Since joining the council, Dorsey has championed a landmark Complete Streets ordinance that codifies strong equity provisions, banned source of income discrimination in Baltimore City housing, and passed legislation on ethics reform, consumer protections and government accountability. He put a question on the ballot in 2018 to create an independent Office of the Inspector for Baltimore City, a measure that passed with more than 80 percent of the vote.
Also in 2018, Dorsey was awarded the National Complete Streets Coalition’s annual Complete Streets Champion Award, in recognition of his Complete Streets ordinance and the organizing effort undertaken to pass it into law. In 2019, the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition (now Economic Action Maryland) named him consumer Advocate of the Year, in recognition of his advocacy and the introduction and passage of legislation to create Baltimore’s Office of the Inspector General.
Dorsey is married to Erin Fostel, an artist, and they often attend local arts events and openings. As a council member, he has been a strong advocate for the local arts community and has pushed for BOPA to work more closely with elected officials and add a council representative to its governing board. He said in a 2021 interview with Bmore Art that he knows that Baltimore’s has a diverse mix of artists and that they don’t all think alike.
“Like Baltimore City itself, there is not an arts community, there are many arts communities,” he told writer Nora Belblidia.
Baltimore’s art scene is also racially segregated and that can keep artists from coming together and collaborating, Dorsey noted.
“As much as so many people really espouse to care about Black Lives Matter, you go to an exhibition of a group show with 20 artists at Eubie Blake, and they’re all Black artists, and there are two white people in the room,” he said. “The white arts community is not showing up to the Black arts community, and that doesn’t go two ways. The Black arts community shows up to white arts events.”
Dorsey has been outspoken about many issues, including racism and accountability for corporations, police and public officials. In 2017 Baltimore City Paper readers voted him Baltimore’s Best Troublemaker.
Makeda Drake: Drake is a project manager with RK&K, a multi-disciplinary engineering firm in Baltimore. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from Morgan State University and a Master of Science degree in civil engineering project management from the University of Maryland College Park. She fills the position on the Public Art Commission reserved for experts in engineering and site planning.
Shanek Kumi: Kumi, the youngest commissioner, has been a design planner with Baltimore’s Department of Recreation and Parks since February of 2024. Before working for the city, she was an architectural designer with Fowlkes Studio in Washington, D. C. and a design consultant with EnviroCollab in Baltimore.
Kumi has Bachelor and Master degrees from the University of Maryland. Her Bachelor of Art degree is in fine and studio arts. Her Master’s degree is in architecture. Her experience spans all phases of the design and construction process.
The two returning members are:
Jaz Erenberg: Erenberg, the commission’s interim chair, is an Afro-Latina muralist and community organizer who heads Jaz Erenberg ART LLC, painting “community engaged” murals for public schools, neighborhood associations and others. She’s a Bottom of Form
2017 graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art and former Designer-in-Residence for the Neighborhood Design Center.
Erenberg’s work can be found in Belair-Edison; Sandtown-Winchester; East Baltimore Midway; Cherry Hill; Highlandtown; Ednor Gardens, Pikesville and at the Lillie May Carroll Jackson Charter School on Sinclair Lane, among other locations. For Artscape 2023, she transformed the K & J Auto Service property at Charles and 20th streets with a multi-plane mural entitled “Portals and Passageways.” She turned her own house on South Durham Street in Upper Fells Point into a work of art with a mural entitled “For the Love of Tropics.”
With artists Saba Hamidi and Jess Langley, Erenberg co-founded BRUSH Mural Fest, an annual event in Baltimore that celebrates public murals and the artists who create them, and she’s now its co-executive director. Last year, Erenberg and Hamidi curated a series of murals on the Pratt Street side of the Baltimore Convention Center. Erenberg’s website is www.jazerenberg.com and her Instagram is @jaz_erenberg.
“I strive to create public spaces that are a reflection of the people that build, maintain and uphold our city,” Erenberg says in her resume. “Valuing community engagement during the design and installation phases helps to reignite a sense of ownership and pride within those neighborhoods. It also ensures that, together, we are telling the unique story of each community.”
Erenberg says she loves working in public.
“My favorite thing to do is pull people off the street and put a brush in their hand,” she said in her resume. “Some are hesitant, but once that mural is finished, there is such a sense of pride and renewed ownership within that community. People who walk past it every day get to say, I did that!”
Evan Richardson: Richardson, a native of Newark, New Jersey, is the Assistant Dean for the School of Architecture & Planning at Morgan State University.
Before coming to Morgan State, Richardson worked in Baltimore’s Mayor’s Office of Neighborhoods as a Neighborhood Liaison, where he assisted community groups in the implementation of neighborhood action plans and programs. Before joining the Mayor’s Office, Richardson was employed as a Program Coordinator with the Neighborhood Design Center (NDC). In this role, Richardson recruited volunteers for various community design projects in Baltimore City and Baltimore County.
A long-time resident of Baltimore City, Richardson earned his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Technology from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, N. C., and his master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from MSU.
Richardson’s interests include community design and volunteerism. In 2008, he ended a four-year tenure as a member of the Board of Directors for the Herring Run Watershed Association in Baltimore. The following year, he was appointed by Governor Martin O’Malley to serve as a member of the Maryland Commission for African American History and Culture.
In 2013, Richardson joined the Board of Directors for the NDC, where he served as Board President from 2016 to 2018. He has been on Baltimore’s Public Art Commission since 2023.
