BmoreArt’s Picks: July 26 – August 1
This Week: Hosey Corona at the Conrad Hotel, the Evergreen Museum hosts the African Diaspora Alliance, Megan Koeppel, James Williams II, and Maren Henson at the 2022 Sondheim Opening Reception and Awards Ceremony at the Walters, Quincy Goldsmith hosts Plant & Sip at Stem & Vine, Station North Arts Walk, Baltimore Met Gala at the BMA Sculpture Garden, and Fluid Movement’s Yacht Rocket — PLUS Free Fall Baltimore Grant Opportunity and more featured opportunities.
BmoreArt’s Picks presents the best weekly art openings, events, and performances happening in Baltimore and surrounding areas. For a more comprehensive perspective, check the BmoreArt Calendar page, which includes ongoing exhibits and performances, and is updated on a daily basis.
To submit your calendar event, email us at events@bmoreart.com!
In Bloom
ongoing through September 30
@ Conrad Hotel | Washington DC
In Bloom is a site-specific installation by artist Hoesy Corona, curated by Latela Curatorial for the Conrad Washington DC. This installation inaugurates the hotel’s lobby exhibition series in partnership with Latela Curatorial. This diverse program of quarterly installations has been established to center and support artists of our own community.
Corona creates work across a variety of media spanning installation, performance, and video. His process involves creating ritual objects within folkloric narratives that compassionately center issues of climate change and social othering.
In Bloom highlights Corona’s interest in creating mythological characters and features recurring suspects in Corona’s body of work: Plant People and Mother Scapegoat.
Plant People are charming environmental stewards that reference both ceremonial totems and the modern archetype of the influencer. You might consider them as plants in human drag, or ambassadors from the world of nature asking for attention and protection.
Mother Scapegoat is an earth deity that welcomes individuals to meditate with her to access deeper compassion. Mother Scapegoat is a part of a larger series of variations that personify social and environmental safety, connection, acceptance, and sanctuary.
Returns and Remembrance Diaspora Homecoming
Tuesday, July 26 • 6-8pm
@ Evergreen Museum + Library
What’s your vision of Black liberation?
Join us in collaboration with the African Diaspora Alliance for a celebration of Black liberation! Featuring theatrical performance “200 Years of Returns”- a dramatic, musical, and dance performance which focuses on the manumission, repatriation, and freedom dreams of Black people living in the DMV and those who received them in the land now called Liberia, we will also have special guest African diaspora artists! Held on Liberian Independence Day, July 26th, this performance draws out the tensions embedded in the bicentennial of the (re)settlement of Black people from the US in West Africa. What does it mean to return to the place of your ancestors? How do we understand the making of the African diaspora? How can artists challenge the myths of the shared history between the US and Liberia? What are some of the freedom dreams of African and African diaspora performing artists? Enjoy performances by actors from B4 Youth Theatre Liberia in collaboration with several Black museum theater actor interpreters from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and Baltimore-based dancers in this historical and anthropological account of the circles, cycles, interactions and encounters of Black people on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 19th century.
Join us!
DIRECTIONS: Bloomberg Hall can be found off of San Martin Drive, just past the Space Telescope Science Institute, with the Muller Deck being the nearest parking garage. San Martin parking garage or the Hopkins Club lot are also decent options.
2022 Sondheim Art Prize Opening Reception & Awards Ceremony
Thursday, July 28 • 6-8pm
@ The Walters Art Museum
The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA) announces the finalists’ exhibition for for the 17th annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize, presented by M&T Bank with the generous support of the Maryland State Arts Council. The work of Maren Henson, Megan Koeppel, and James Williams II will be on view at the Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles Street, from July 21–September 18, 2022.
The panel of jurors — Catherine Morris, Jean Shin, and Kambui Olujimi — will conduct a final interview with each artist in their exhibition space before determining the $30,000 prize winner. The winner of the 2022 Sondheim Art Prize will be announced at the awards ceremony and opening reception on Thursday, July 28, 2022.
Please join us from 6:00–8:00 p.m. to celebrate these brilliant Baltimore artists and find out the winner of the 2022 Sondheim Art Prize.
To RSVP, go to: https://thewalters.org/event/sondheim-awards-2022/
Meet The Finalists
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Megan Koeppel is a fiber artist currently living in Baltimore. She earned her BFA from MICA in 2018, where she studied fine art and curatorial practices. Recently, her work has been exhibited locally as well as in her home state, in spaces such as Var Gallery (Milwaukee), The Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts (Cedarburg, Wisconsin), Material Gallery + Studio (Milwaukee), VisArts (Rockville, Maryland), Monochrome Art Fair (Washington, DC), and at Creative Alliance (Baltimore). Koeppel currently works as the Exhibition Programming Coordinator at VisArts in Rockville.
As the concealed artifacts behind historical conspiracies become public information, Maren Henson reexamines the role of conspiracy and how it has shaped American culture. Her videos, drawings, and sound installations examine how cultural narratives are manipulated and controlled. She received her MFA degree in the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2017. She has exhibited work in New York, Boston, LA, Puerto Rico, Maryland, and Texas. Henson currently resides in Baltimore.
James Williams II is a curator and interdisciplinary artist whose work centers on topics of social and cultural identity in the United States. His most recent project was curating the show, “Future Planets,” at Longwood Center for the Visual Arts — an exhibition featuring the creativity of young artists ages 3–15 years alongside their creative and established parents. Williams is the recipient of the MFA Joan Mitchell Foundation award, the Bromo Seltzer Fellowship, and served as artist-in-residence at School 33 in Baltimore. Williams, originally from Upstate New York, received his master’s degree from the Mount Royal School of Art program at MICA, where he currently teaches.
