BmoreArt’s Picks: September 1-7
This Week: Concentric Circles + Michael J. Iampieri opening receptions at Goucher’s Silber and Rosenberg Galleries, Built Objects at Library Nineteen, Making America Again public reception at MICA, Ben Egerman discusses “A Gay Little History of Maryland” at The Ivy Bookshop, Somewhere Over the Rainbow of Row Homes, We Fly opening reception + artist panel at UMBC, Aquí Seguimos opening reception at Making Space Bmore, Baltimore Honky Tonk’s Dolly Parton tribute at Mobtown Ballroom, STATEMENT: Mahogany opening reception at Quid Nunc, Highlandtown First Friday Art Walk, and an opening reception for Ronald Jackson at Galerie Myrtis — PLUS apply for a Guggenheim Fellowship 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!
image: William S. Dutterer, Mind Meld, Oil on canvas, 1986, 79 x 60.5 inches
Concentric Circles | Opening Reception
Thursday, September 3 :: 4-8pm
@ Goucher College, Silber Gallery
September 3 – October 23, 2026
Concentric Circles is a group painting exhibition that places William S. Dutterer (1943–2007) at the center of an intergenerational story of painting, mentorship, and artistic influence. Bringing together works by Dutterer, his mentor Grace Hartigan, and artists Julia Stoops and Tom Kenyon, the exhibition examines how ideas, methods, and values move between artists and across generations.
A painter, draftsman, and influential educator, Dutterer developed a distinctive visual language that moved between abstraction and figuration. His work is characterized by bold forms, rigorous drawing, psychologically charged imagery, and an ongoing investigation of gesture, surface, symbol, and repetition. Resisting easy categorization, Dutterer absorbed the lessons of postwar abstraction while developing an increasingly personal and idiosyncratic approach to image-making.
Dutterer studied under Grace Hartigan, a major figure in postwar American painting and longtime director of the Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He later became an influential educator himself at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., where his teaching emphasized discipline, experimentation, observation, and fearlessness in the studio.
Rather than presenting influence as a straight line from teacher to student, Concentric Circles considers Dutterer as the center of an expanding network. The exhibition asks what artists truly inherit from one another: a style, a gesture, a way of seeing, a commitment to the work—or simply the permission to take risks.
Through these relationships, Concentric Circles offers an opportunity to reconsider Dutterer’s legacy as extending beyond the remarkable objects he created. Like circles expanding outward from a single point, an artist’s influence can travel through teachers, peers, students, and communities—and continue long after the artist is gone.
Curated by Caitlin Tucker-Melvin (Guest Curator) and Liz Faust. In partnership with the William S Dutterer Trust and Catalyst Contemporary.
Exhibitions Details:
- Opening Reception: September 3, 4–8 PM – Silber Gallery
- Lecture: Painting Process: Gesture, Surface, and Meaning, September 9, 5–6 PM – Hyman Forum
- Lecture: By Curator Caitlin-Tucker Melvin, October 10, 3–5 PM – Hyman Forum
- Closing Reception: October 23, 4–6 PM – Silber Gallery
Artists: William S. Dutterer, Grace Hartigan, Tom Kenyon, and Julia Stoops
Built Objects | Opening Reception
Thursday, September 3 :: 5-8 pm
@ Library Nineteen
BUILT OBJECTS marks the first public presentation of REFERENCE: a collected view of material, form, utility, and experimentation across studios working in Baltimore and beyond. Join us for the opening of the showroom space within Library Nineteen.
Brought to you by @piklstudio@goodneighborshop and @cohere_co with curation by @koba.furniture / Poster design by @its.pronounced.astle and @navs.err
Michael J. Iampieri, Hoping to catch sight of what has never been seen
Michael J. Iampieri: Line into Form | Opening Reception
Thursday, September 3 :: 4-8pm
@ Goucher College, Rosenberg Gallery
September 3 – October 23, 2026
Michael J. Iampieri: Line into Form marks the first exhibition dedicated to Baltimore artist and educator Michael J. Iampieri (1941–2024) since his passing. Spanning early works through drawings created near the end of his life, the exhibition traces more than five decades of sustained experimentation with the expressive possibilities of line.
For Iampieri, drawing was not simply preparation for something else—it was a complete and rigorous form of artistic thought. Lines merge, gather, and accumulate into shapes that hover between abstraction and suggestion. Some feel architectural or atmospheric; others carry an understated humor and playfulness. Throughout the work, Iampieri balances control with improvisation, allowing form to emerge through the act of drawing rather than imposing it in advance.
That immediacy also defined Iampieri’s remarkable engagement with Baltimore’s performing arts community. For more than three decades, he served as visual historian for the Baltimore Theatre Project, sketching thousands of performers while seated in the darkened theater (not included in the exhibition). He also drew performances at Center Stage, the Peabody Institute, Left Bank Jazz Society, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, using quick, intuitive marks to capture movement, gesture, and the fleeting experience of live performance.
Equally significant was Iampieri’s extraordinary legacy as an educator. After earning his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Catholic University of America and studying filmmaking at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Iampieri joined Loyola Blakefield, where he founded the school’s Visual Art Department in 1966. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he introduced generations of students to drawing, photography, printmaking, filmmaking, and other forms of creative expression. His teaching emphasized observation, patience, curiosity, and the development of each student’s individual artistic voice.
Line into Form brings these interconnected aspects of Iampieri’s life together: artist, observer, teacher, and participant in Baltimore’s cultural community. Seen across decades, the drawings reveal a remarkable consistency of purpose. His marks are economical but never empty, capable of carrying movement, humor, restraint, and emotion with remarkably little.
The exhibition ultimately presents drawing as Iampieri understood it: a way of seeing, thinking, and being present. Individual marks gather into forms; moments accumulate into a practice; and a lifetime of looking becomes the portrait of an artist deeply attuned to the quiet power of creation.
Exhibitions Details:
- Opening Recepetion: September 3, 4–8 PM
Artists: Michael J. Iampieri
Read more of this week’s picks at BmoreArt.
