Five local artists have been selected to create portraits of five Baltimore mayors for permanent display in City Hall.
More than 180 artists sought the commissions after Mayor Brandon Scott announced the Faces of Leadership Mayor’s Portraits Competition earlier this year. The goal was to identify artists to create portraits of five mayors not currently represented in the Hyman Aaron Pressman Room on the second floor of City Hall. The Mayor’s Office issued a Request for Qualifications in January and set February 19 as the deadline for artists to express interest.
In addition to Scott, the mayors who will have their portraits painted are: Bernard “Jack” Young, who served from 2019 to 2020; Catherine Pugh (2016 to 2019); Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (2010 to 2016) and Sheila Dixon (2007 to 2010). The portraits will be displayed alongside other mayoral portraits in the Hyman Aaron Pressman Board Room on the second floor of City Hall, where the Board of Estimates meets.
The selected artists were announced on Friday on the Midday radio program hosted by Tom Hall on WYPR-FM. They are: Ernest Shaw for Scott; Karen Warshal for Young; Kennedy Ringgold for Pugh; Megan Lewis for Rawlings-Blake, and Andrew Pisacane, also known as Gaia, for Dixon.
The second floor of City Hall has portraits of 27 mayors in the Pressroom room and the anteroom leading to it, with space for more. The first mayor with a portrait is James Calhoun, who served three terms and part of a fourth, from 1794 to 1804. The last mayor with a portrait on display is Martin O’Malley, who was mayor from 1999 to 2007.
According to Tonya Miller Hall, Senior Advisor of Arts and Culture in the Mayor’s Office, the artists were selected after review by a panel of judges that included Cara Ober, founding editor and publisher of Bmore Art, Baltimore’s art and culture publication; artist and curator Jeffrey Kent; former Maryland Institute College of Art president Samuel “Sammy” Hoi; art consultant Jenenne Whitfield; Erika McClammy representing the Comptroller’s Office; and herself.
The list of candidates was narrowed from 180 to 17 finalists. From there, the mayors were asked to look at the finalists’ work and name the top three that they would prefer to have paint their portraits. This phase of the review was a ‘blind’ process, in which the artists’ names were redacted to ensure an impartial selection. In cases where multiple mayors chose the same artist as their top pick, the judges used a lottery system to make the final selection, guaranteeing that five different artists would be chosen.
The competition promised an award of $20,000 per portrait, a figure that’s intended to cover all artist fees, materials and associated costs. The Mayor’s Office is aiming for the five portraits to be completed in six to eight months.
In conjunction with the new portraits, the Mayor’s Office is working with The Peale museum to create a narrative history of the portraits that are currently on display in City Hall.
“The Mayor’s Portraits Competition marks a pivotal moment in Baltimore’s cultural history, heralding a new era of contemporary portraiture,” said Miller Hall. “By showcasing the talents of local artists and honoring the diverse voices and visions of our mayors, this competition not only enriches our cultural landscape but will serve as timeless reflections of leadership, inspiring future generations.”
It was “really thrilling to see what mayors picked what artists” and “how they see themselves in the work that the artists presented” and how they want to be remembered, Miler Hall told Hall. “This work will live in perpetuity, as long as City Hall is there.”
“What’s so significant about this opportunity is giving Baltimore-based artists a leading role in creating our own art history,” Ober said. “Not only is Baltimore investing directly in the careers of some of its most successful portrait artists, but our city is giving visual artists a leading role in a historic form of communication, working directly with the mayors to represent our collective legacy, both politically and culturally.”
The artists “are getting this opportunity to actually shape art history, to shape the way that we view these powerful individuals,” she told Hall.
“These Baltimore-based artists have shown their talent, passion, and dedication to our city by capturing the story of leadership in Baltimore,” Scott said, in a statement. “Their work will live on in City Hall, and help shape Baltimore’s vibrant culture and promising future for generations to come. It is an honor to recognize their contributions through this competition and ensure that their work lives on in our city’s history.”
Miller Hall and Ober said they’re pleased that all of the selected artists are from Baltimore, because the competition wasn’t limited to local artists. “It just really speaks to the talent that we have in Baltimore,” Miller Hall said.
And yet “each portrait will be stylistically distinct,” Ober said. “It’s not going to look like the same person painted all five…The selections that were made are going to give us a beautiful balance and reflection of the richness that we have in the city right now.”
