Baltimore will step into Eden this summer with the theme for the third annual Baltimore Met Gala being “Adam and Eve: Enter the Garden,” organizers announced Thursday evening at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum.
The gala, which will take place this year on Sept. 14 at Maryland Live!, curates the best in the fashion, art, and culinary talents while recognizing the impact of leaders in business, entertainment, and community.
Executive producers LaRian Finney and Derrick Chase spoke with Baltimore Fishbowl about the Baltimore Met Gala’s inception, evolution, and the purpose they hope it serves for their hometown and its residents.
“The foundation of the Met Gala is to have an intersection of fashion, art, culinary, focus on community impact via philanthropy,” Finney said. “Each year we select a nonprofit that we stand up, promote, and then celebrate as part of the Met Gala. So that’s been the foundation since 2022: to locate a nonprofit to champion the work that they’re doing and wrap that around an ecosystem of high fashion, art, culinary, in the best of Baltimore.”
The first year’s gala benefitted JOY Baltimore, whose goal is to end youth homelessness within Baltimore. In the second year, Park Heights Renaissance (PHR) was the nonprofit that benefitted. PHR is dedicated to enriching the 12 neighborhoods that make up the Park Heights area, which is where Chase grew up.
This year’s nonprofit has not yet been chosen but will be announced in the next 30 days.
“We know the rich pool of talent is here, and that’s through all genres,” Chase said. “But in particular, the arts, fashion, and culinary scene. The people who we have the opportunity to highlight are not only excellent and phenomenal at their crafts, but Baltimore has a rich, but a burgeoning arts community.”
Chase spoke about Baltimore-based artists like Ernest Shaw, Ainsley Burrows, and Jody Davis. He and Finney asked themselves how they could use their platform, talent, and skill to elevate what people around them are doing and came up with the idea of the gala format.
“This is to announce to the world that Baltimore is ready for industry, you guys got to look further,” Chase said.
“We don’t just look at this as a fashion show, we look at this as the point of a burgeoning and developing industry,” he added. “As we begin to look at this relationship between corporate America and local America, what is the symmetry? What is the alignment? How can the local guy compete with the international guy? Well, the first thing is that people have to know that they exist. And then spaces must be created around the idea of supporting and going local.”
Finney and Chase were both born and raised in Baltimore. Finney grew up in Cherry Hill, and Chase in Park Heights.
Finney has a degree in chemistry, transitioned to marketing, worked on the 1996 Olympics with Eastman Kodak, then Johnson and Johnson in NBA. His vast experience led to him starting his own marketing firm in 2000, which evolved into The Finn Group.
“We’ve [The Finn Group] been running major activations around the country, marketing campaigns, and where I’m more focused now is to provide strategy and consulting services to entities that have a mission for inclusion and economic impact by being culturally sensitive and relevant, and tie that to the vitality of the community,” Finney said. “How do we really bridge the gap from corporate to community. Make sure we have economic impact, cultural impact, and ethical change here in Baltimore, make sure we put the best eyes and optics on our city and highlight the talent that we have at our disposal.”
Talking about himself and Finney, Chase expanded, “We both can reflect on the good and the bad experiences of what it means to, in particular, be in the unique space of being young and Black and male in a place where we are losing 300 — for the most part — Black men under the age of 40 every year.”
“So to understand myself or to understand LaRian is to understand that that the doorway in which we walked through,” Chase continued. “And like LaRian, education was my passport. Before I can start talking about myself, I have to talk about the teachers that emptied into me.”
Chase mentioned his elementary school teacher, Mrs. Gross, who turned him on to poetry in the second grade.
“As a result of that, I became an artist in particular in the genre of spoken word. … I’m a graduate of Morgan State University. My schooling is by virtue of the School of Education. So, I am a former Dean of Student/Assistant Principal of Forest Park,” Chase said.
He was also a fourth grade teacher, teaching science, language arts, and reading. After the Freddie Gray uprising, Chase created Stand Up Baltimore, an organization to align relationships between over 160 small and large nonprofits in the city to improve the quality of life for its residents.
“I’ve spent all of my adult life as a community organizer, I spent a fortune as an artist, but I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit,” Chase said. “So, one of the ways, as we look at this window that Baltimore has, is we cannot look past economic opportunity as a passport to Baltimore’s future. So, whatever we get into, we always look at where is the opportunity, economically, and tying economics, social development, political development around that idea.”
The Baltimore Met Gala, however, is not a replica of New York City’s Met Gala on a smaller scale. (The star-studded New York City event benefits the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.) Chase and Finney have completely different goals and approaches than Baltimore’s neighbor north on I-95.
While both events highlight — at least in part — fashion based on an annual theme, Finney said the Baltimore Met Gala is more focused on local talent.
“We’re integrating the top local artists. And then we’re integrating the top local culinary talent. And we wrap that around a worthy cause,” Finney said. “So, where the Met Gala has the pomp and circumstance of the fashion, which we have here, we’re showcasing local talent. That is just as worthy, by the way, as the international talent that’s featured in New York City. I will put those designers in the last few years up against anyone, not only in the country, but around the globe.”
Chase said the Baltimore Met Gala strives to showcase Baltimore artists who aren’t getting the attention and recognition they deserve.
“We’re actively trying to find the talent that no one sees, right? We’re actively trying to find the talent that everybody sees, but doesn’t even recognize, put a face with the town,” Chase said.
It’s also about highlighting different Baltimore narratives than the ones that often surround the city.
“We have a whole lot more than just what ‘The Wire’ and ‘Homicide’ and these other stories that are being painted about Baltimore. We have depth,” Chase said. “There are true stories of struggle and triumph. And when we look at fashion — through fashion, through the boardroom — we’ve been telling that story. We tell that story from the person… in a metallic gown, with a 10-foot trail, to an individual who has boots and fatigues on. We’re telling the complete story.”
Chase described the New York City Met Gala as a story of extremes. He believes Baltimore’s gala tells the story of simplicity, as well, and the whole gamut in between. “We believe that the product that we’re putting forward is a complete fashion story, a complete arts story, a complete community story,” Chase said.
From a cultural standpoint, Finney wants to normalize greatness within the City of Baltimore. One of the duo’s proudest moments was during last year’s gala when they were able to recognize Darin Atwater with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
“Darin Atwater, the founder of Soulful Symphony, 25 years of really revolutionizing people of color in the symphonic space,” Finney said. “Now that you see everyone trying to play in front of symphonies… Darin Atwater has been championing that cause for the past 25 years, and he’s a local guy, and has just been appointed the creative director, artistic director for the Monterey Jazz Festival, which is the longest and oldest running jazz festival in the country…. So, that gentleman is in our backyard, and he’s really our Quincy Jones.”
Finney aspires to give the people in our community the flowers they deserve, so he and Chase are very intentional about providing a platform for that to happen.
“We’re very proud that we’ve been able to touch the community and really talented people and have them feel heard where it’s not in a silo,” Finney said. “Because if we really look at it, the fashion folks are in silos, the artists are in silos. But what Ernest [Shaw] and Ainsley [Burrows] continue to say to Chase and myself is that we have put them to the forefront where, regardless of their talent, they have never been put in the mainstream of cool stuff. And we’ve been able to create that ecosystem to make that happen.”
Chase is adamant in the depth of Baltimore’s bench when it comes to talent, whether its artistic, culinary, entrepreneurial, or anything else. “We have the power to birth our own stars,” he said.
Finney agrees. “We have a lot of style, but we also have a lot of substance.”
