Home & Design Awards 2024

Readers’ Choice for Best Overall Home

For our annual Home & Design Awards, a distinguished panel of nationally renowned professionals judged entries and determined winners in 31 categories.

But we know that our readers also have their own ideas about what makes our built environment special, so we created a Readers’ Choice Award.

Vote for Best Overall Home before February 13—then pick up our April issue on newsstands March 29 to see who won.

See our 2024 Home & Design Awards finalists, here.

Find more information about our Winners’ Presentation at Baltimore Center Stage on March 20, here.

Baltimore magazine proudly presents the finalists for its second-annual Home & Design Awards—a local competition for architects, interior designers, artisans, builders, and landscape designers. A distinguished panel of nationally renowned professionals judged the entries and have determined winners in 31 categories. Those winners will be announced at a cocktail party and awards reception on March 20 at Baltimore Center Stage and featured in the April 2024 issue of Baltimore magazine.

The finalists

Find more information about our Winners’ Presentation at Baltimore Center Stage on March 20, here.

When it comes to buying gifts this year, it’s good in the neighborhood. We offer areas with an abundance of great shops where you can buy local and stick around for some holiday merriment.

By Janelle Erlichman Diamond

with Jessi Rutherford and Leah Bayley-Hay

Photography by Christopher Myers

Illustrations by Charlotte Fu

As curator of American art at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Virginia Anderson is particularly focused on the last few words of its mission statement—to create “a museum welcoming to all,” with a goal of assembling exhibitions that center on the voices and experiences of historically marginalized groups.

One of the keys to that success? Her BMA colleagues.

“There are so many things you have to balance as a curator working with different departments to make the art and the narrative shine,” says Anderson, 51, formerly assistant curator at the Harvard Art Museums. “I’ve experienced collegiality at every museum I’ve worked in, but I think intellectual resourcing is having a moment.”

Comparing notes and research with colleagues across multiple departments allows Anderson to present exhibitions of American art that showcase a more inclusive art history, both in the selection of objects and in the display itself. Since arriving at the BMA, she has curated four exhibitions—two solo shows, with works by female contemporary artists, and two group shows, showcasing art movements, such as women modernists. And each has been created with the help of her first hire—curatorial assistant Sarah Cho, an art history major hired straight out of Princeton University.

The duo’s most recent collaboration is the first time that Cho has fully stepped into the role of co-curator. Three years in the making and up through October 2, Beatrice Glow: Once the Smoke Clears occupies three galleries in the museum’s Contemporary Wing, showcasing cross-disciplinary works by the bicoastal artist-researcher, including the first-ever virtual reality-sculpted and 3D-printed objects exhibited at the BMA. Glow examines histories of Indigenous, Chinese, and Black communities as they relate to the Chesapeake Bay tobacco trade, recasting the white depiction of the region’s history.

Anderson and Cho hope that people will attend the exhibit, read the accompanying wall text, and be inspired to continue learning more about the substance of Glow’s work.

“What Virginia and I wanted to do is spotlight aspects of Beatrice’s research,” says Cho, 26. “One of the major goals of Beatrice’s work is highlighting solidarities between Asia and the Americas.”

Both women are the exhibit’s co-curators—or “thought partners,” as Cho describes them—but they’re quick to point out that Glow’s exhibition would not have been possible without the entire museum staff.

“The museum can function as a kind of lab,” says Anderson. “Just as within the sciences, you have collaboration and research from a team of people that supports a particular project or angle of inquiry…This collaborative approach to research can only benefit our audiences.”

Maybe it’s because when the pandemic hit there was a rush to stock up on canned foods, or maybe it’s because people have gotten into pickling and preserving. Whatever the reason, at area restaurants, from Dylan’s Oyster Cellar to Annapolis’s Sailor Oyster Bar, tin is in.

So why is tin fish making a splash on local menus?

“I equate tin fish to a lot of other preservation methods that have become more a part of what people have learned to love,” says Ben Lefenfeld, chef-owner of La Cuchara, which has a section of its menu devoted to “conservas” (preserved food). “It’s one of those ubiquitous things that started out of necessity but has really grown into a culture all its own.”

This centuries-old way of preserving fish has been around for eons in Portugal, Spain, and South America, where it’s part of the daily diet. Now, it’s finally catching on in Baltimore.

“It’s an opportunity to try different types of seafood you might never have been exposed to,” says Lefenfeld, “and a great way to taste something that was prepared at the prime of the season.”

Enrique Pallares, co-owner of The Wine Collective, enjoys educating his guests about the specialty seafood he grew up eating in his native Ecuador.

“When people ask me about tin fish, I tell them to think of tin fish less in the context of Chicken of the Sea and more in the context of caviar—both are preserved and come in a tin or a jar,” he says of the wine bar’s fare, including calamari in ragout and sardines with lemon and olive oil. “In Europe and South America, it’s just part of the way of life to have an aperitivo and sit and have your glass of vermouth, while you accompany it with olives, tin fish, or charcuterie. In America, people are catching on to the idea of eating smaller bites over a longer period rather than eating giant entrees.”

For Dominique J. Allen, the decision to open her vegan raw juice bar business, Vegan Juiceology, in Baltimore’s Market Center-Bromo Arts District was the culmination of a long struggle.

“It was part of my personal journey of health and fitness,” says the Baltimore native, a former athlete. “When you get older, you can’t lose weight as fast as you used to. About seven years ago, I was 225 pounds—and I was miserable.” After a softball injury led to knee surgery in 2015, Allen got her wake-up call.

“My weight was a contributing factor,” she says. “I cut out meat, seafood, dairy. Anything that wasn’t good for my body, I took out.”

In addition, Allen added in an exercise regime that included Rev Cycle Studio and Spin. “I went hardcore with it, going from 225 to 160 something,” she says. “I lost the weight within 12 months.” Ever since, Allen has worked tirelessly to inspire others. “I wanted to help others on their journey—that’s how the juice business started,” she says.

Allen launched her juice and smoothie business with taste-testing sessions at area gyms and sold her wares at local farmers’ markets. Once she built up the brand, by July 2020, she started looking for a bricks-and-mortar space along the 400 block of Howard Street.

Having a storefront has allowed Allen to expand her mouthwatering options, from Tropical Green Smoothies (kale, pineapple, apple, mango, mint, lemon, lime) to plant-based soups, like sweet potato-coconut curry.

“I feel better putting healthy things in my body,” says Allen. “It’s about having positive energy and feel-good vibes, and food is a big part of that. I want to educate the community on the benefits of having a majority plant-based diet.”

The night before the biggest game of his life, Bruce Zimmermann walked on to a quiet, empty, mostly dark Camden Yards field to imagine how things might go the next day—and take in the setting.

In a scene from a baseball fairytale, a little after 9 p.m. on Sunday, with no one else around, the 27-year-old that grew up a 20-minute drive away near Ellicott City stepped on the pitcher’s mound at Oriole Park and gazed at the sights.

There was the Opening Day logo spray-painted in white in the grass behind home plate. The new deeper, and higher left field wall, reconstructed in the offseason, to help pitchers just like him. And, of course, his eyes drifted to the iconic brick warehouse in right field, gently lit in the black sky.

“It was storybook, in a way,” Zimmermann said.

So was what happened the next day.

In the 30th Opening Day in Camden Yards on Monday afternoon—and the first home opener in two years where most of the stadium’s seats were filled—Zimmermann’s performance compelled thousands of fans to chant his first name, as if he were the New Jersey-born lead singer of the E Street Band.

Bruuuce!

On a warm spring afternoon, the 6-foot-1, 220-pound leftie buttoned-up his No. 50 Orioles jersey and threw four scoreless innings. He tossed 66 pitches in all, and allowed only three hits to power the Orioles to their first win of the year, a 2-0 victory over the visiting Milwaukee Brewers. (If you’re a fan of symmetry, it was the exact same score the Orioles won their first-ever game at Camden Yards, 30 years ago.)

For a guy only beginning his second full big-league season, who grew up in the Baltimore suburbs, went to high school at Loyola-Blakefield, and then had a mostly unremarkable stint pitching at Towson University, it was as magical a day as they come.

“This one will always be up there for sure,” Zimmermann said afterward, standing near his locker. “I have to put it right there with my debut, maybe a little bit more, with everything and the environment. The first time seeing Oriole Park like that, as a player, was incredibly special.”

It was for those of us in the crowd, too. For one thing, the noise was back, along with the sense of a freewheeling, communal experience that, even with limited crowds last year, has been largely missing from Camden Yards since 2019 because of the pandemic.

On Monday, when Orioles outfielder Cedric Mullins smacked a go-ahead, two-run single in the second inning, scoring lightning-fast shortstop Jorge Mateo all the way from second base, the cathartic sound of celebration was reminiscent of a big playoff moment.

“Oh yeah,” Mullins said. “That was awesome. It was an exciting moment. And we’re going to have a lot more.”

Frankly, Opening Day 2022 felt almost normal, as if we had we not lived through the past two years.

I was one of the rare few to attend the last two home openers. In 2020, I sat with a few dozen onlookers in the press box for an eerie July game against the Yankees played in front of no fans and in near silence with hand sanitizer use strongly encouraged.

Last year, a limited capacity of roughly 10,000 fans took in the O’s more traditional early April opener against the Boston Red Sox. We wrote then that it was a step toward life as we used to know it.

This year’s Opening Day marked another, and perhaps the biggest—in a baseball context. It was a crisply played game in which health protocols and COVID-19 worries finally seemed secondary to what happened on the field.

Before Zimmermann’s first pitch, fans strolled down Eutaw Street in orange-and-black gear, without masks, some in pursuit of a fresh Boog’s Barbecue sandwich, others in search of a table at Dempsey’s Brew Pub on the first level of the warehouse.

Yet a few other architecturally-inclined minds—and some kids in search of baseballs from the Brewers warming up on the field—headed straight to something new: the remade left-field stands.

In the offseason, the O’s removed roughly 1,000 seats from the short porch in left, making the field larger and home run wall a little higher, a design intended to reduce the number of home runs that fly out of the park, some that would be routine flyouts in other pro stadiums.

If it looks like someone—or specifically, construction workers—carved a slice out of what used to be there, that’s exactly what happened. There’s also now an awkward sharp corner in deep left field that we hope no one runs into full speed.

One game into the season: So far, so good.

Eventually, everyone (the crowd was announced as a sellout of 44,461 but there were obvious empties to the contrary) found their seats, and the lower bowl filled beneath a clear blue sky and gentle sun, as the orange carpet was rolled out in center field to cap off orchestrated pregame ceremonies.

As part of the festivities, Mullins received a giant Silver Slugger trophy—marking his peers voting him the best hitter in all of baseball at his position in 2021, following a breakout season in which he became the first Oriole ever to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in a season.

Fan favorite, cancer-beater and longest-tenured O Trey Mancini, who started at designated hitter, received the loudest ovation. First baseman Ryan Mountcastle, who set a team record for home runs by a rookie last year, beating a mark previously held by Cal Ripken Jr., enjoyed a loud welcome back too.

After the game, Orioles manager Brandon Hyde, who, like the rest of us, didn’t sign up for the circumstances of the past two years, said, “It was fun to hear Orioles fans cheering, and a lot of them. Our guys fed off the energy.”

Also during pregame, on the scoreboard in center field, Baltimore-based poet and author Kondwani Fidel delivered a video tribute to Camden Yards’ 30-year anniversary that gave us chills.

The Morgan State University choir, which performed the national anthem at Oriole Park on April 6, 1992, did the same this year (more symmetry!), while a giant flag from Fort McHenry was draped behind the green facade.

And, for the ceremonial first pitch, Kortez Baker, the son of slain Baltimore City police officer Keona Holley, as well as relatives of the three city firefighters who died in action in January, and the one who survived, John McMaster, took positions near the mound.

Then there was Zimmermann, who became the first Maryland-born pitcher to start a home opener for the Orioles since 1990, and first to ever do it at Camden Yards. And it happened nearly four years after he first joined the Orioles organization as a minor-leaguer via a trade that sent pitchers Kevin Gausman and Darren O’Day to the Atlanta Braves.

Before the game, Hyde said he hoped Zimmermann could handle the obvious butterflies in anticipation of the moment. He started 13 games last year after being called up late in 2020, but had never started Opening Day in his hometown ballpark. (Thus the night-before walkthrough, perhaps.)

After the game, Hyde said, “Zim pitched extremely well,” and highlighted his effective mix of fastballs, changeups and curveballs.

So how was Bruuuce’s anxiety level? “Pretty manageable,” Zimmermann told us. “It was high, but I knew it was going to be high. It was another start, with a lot of added adrenaline. I was more concerned about just getting through a clean first inning and setting up the rest of my outing.”

After a 1-2-3 first inning, we heard his first name being chanted a little bit in appreciation from O’s die-hards. And, after the second inning, when he struck out a batter with an off-speed pitch and a runner on second, it felt like we were at Springsteen concert. Same at the end of the third, when he got out of a bases-loaded jam following a brief mound visit from pitching coach Chris Holt.

“Walking off and hearing the Bruuuce chant and everything,” Zimmermann said, “that really hit and fired me up a little bit more.”

So did the knowledge that a large crew of longtime supporters, including his parents, aunts and uncles, and former college coaches were in attendance behind home plate.

Admittedly, though, Zimmermann tried not to look at them. He feared even a momentary distraction in the loud, jumpy environment could veer him from the vision of success he’d had on the mound in the quiet moments at Camden Yards the night before.

“Internally, there was a lot going on,” he said. “Usually, I do try to peek up, but [with] the magnitude of the day today, it was just kind of, ‘Stay focused as long as possible.’”

That was about four innings. On the surface, a performance of that length might not seem like something worth much glory, but it was the most that was expected of him. Given an abbreviated spring training stemming from labor negotiations between Major League Baseball owners and players that delayed the start of preseason and Opening Day, Zimmermann’s pitch count on Monday was predetermined to be 70.

He finished four just shy of his maximum, and he looked sharp, striking out four and allowing two walks. Two-thirds of his pitches were strikes, a very good sign of things to come.

“It’s a long season ahead,” Zimmermann said, “but getting this win and everything about today was the perfect way to set off a hopefully long, healthy, successful season.”

In 1982, Baltimore became home to a pocket of rock-and-roll paradise when the South Charles Street dive bar, Hammerjacks, established new roots in Federal Hill.

What had started five years prior in a rowhome as a rough-and-tumble watering hole would soon serve as a revolving door on South Howard Street for headlining acts like Guns N’ Roses, The Ramones, and Iggy Pop. Even before the move, Hammerjacks had become an impromptu destination for music royalty, with former Rockville resident Joan Jett filming her “I Love Rock ’N Roll” music video there in the early days of MTV.

Admittedly, Andy Hotchkiss wasn’t old enough to visit Hammerjacks during its fabled, metal-tinged heyday. But in 2018, the Rockville native, real estate broker, and lifelong music lover (pictured,) joined business partner Mark Dinerstein to bring the concert venue back to life, this time in the former home of another iconic Baltimore club, The Paradox.

The industrial building, housed on the 1300 block of Russell Street, has been in Hotchkiss’ family since the mid-1980s, “So it made a lot of sense,” he says. It’s also just about two-and-a-half blocks from Hammerjacks’ Howard Street location, which closed up shop in 1997 to make room for M&T Bank Stadium.

Much like its original iterations (a third, now-shuttered Hammerjacks also opened in Charles Village in 2000 with a starkly different dance-club vibe), this new space intends to put entertainment at the forefront.

“Hammerjacks is known for good times,” says Dinerstein, a veteran L.A.-based agent, who had heard about the venue through the music industry. “We want to keep the good times going.”

And since opening last year in the pandemic-friendly form of an outdoor venue, the newest brand of Hammerjacks has honored that tradition with prime tailgate space adjacent to sports stadiums, a stage to hold live music, and lawn games (think novelties like oversized beer pong).

Dinerstein recalls that in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, he and Hotchkiss made a choice to “flip the plan” and open Hammerjacks outdoors first, with an indoor space to follow. Still, they wager that the outdoor space will continue on as Hammerjacks expands its programming.

Hotchkiss shares that concerts, movie nights, and cornhole tournaments will fill the venue’s calendar, adding that he’s proud to resurrect a space with so much local history behind it.

“Obviously, [Hammerjacks] is never going to be what it used to be—the world is a vastly different place,” says Hotchkiss. “We hope the city puts their arms around us. People love good music and people love good times, and that’s what we’re hoping to provide.”

Pickleball is having a moment right now. If you’ve recently passed by a public park, country-club tennis court, or suburban driveway, you might have spotted people swinging what look like oversized Ping-Pong paddles at yellow wiffleballs and wondered what the heck they’re playing. The answer is pickleball—considered one of the fastest-growing sports in America.

“Pickleball is booming,” says Lynne Coburn, pickleball director at Coppermine, which offers the sport at its Roland Park and Pikesville fitness centers. “It’s awesome to see the growth here in Baltimore, and also around the country and around the world.”

While participation exploded during the pandemic—growing more than 21 percent in 2020, according to the U.S.A. Pickleball Association—the sport is not new. Just ask Coburn. A retired physical education teacher, she was drawing chalk lines on tennis courts 30 years ago to teach her middle-school students how to play the game, which is said to have been invented in 1965 by Seattle dads to entertain their bored kids. (Legend also has it that one had a dog named Pickles who kept running off with the balls.)

Today, Coburn runs Coppermine’s pickleball programs, teaches clinics at multiple Baltimore country clubs, and lobbies the local recreation departments for more courts. There are some 70 lined pickleball courts in Baltimore County—four pickleball courts can fit on one tennis court—while in the city, examples exist from Riverside Park to Druid Hill Park. Buy a portable net on Amazon and you can play on any hard surface.

The rules are unique. Players serve underhand and points can only be scored by the serving team. Using a variety of shots, the first person (or team, as you can also play doubles) to 11 points wins. There are rules about when the ball must bounce and where you can step, generally outside of “the kitchen,” a non-volley zone on either side of the net. What’s the appeal of this fast-paced sport that some still dismiss as a leisure pursuit for retired people? Coburn chalks it up to word-of-mouth: “People hear about how fun and social pickleball is,” she says. “It’s a game for everyone.”

Indoors and outdoors year-round, skill level can vary widely from casual to professional, with Major League Pickleball launching last year. At Coppermine, open-play times are divided into competitive and non-competitive. But be forewarned: Pickleball is addictive, says Coburn.

“You don’t even know that you’re exercising because you’re having so much fun.”

he last time the Baltimore Museum of Art was in the headlines (excluding director Christopher Bedford’s resignation announcement in February,) it was for the deaccessioning scandal that rocked the art community. So it must’ve been a happy surprise—maybe even a bit of a relief—when, last July, the museum announced its new “Guarding the Art” exhibit, and there was so much enthusiasm, it crashed the museum’s website.

It’s not so much the content of the new exhibit that makes it remarkable, though the works do come from the 108-year-old Charles Village institution’s world-class collection of over 95,000 objects, some of which have never been shown before—but rather those who have chosen it.

The exhibit, to be on display in two large galleries adjacent to the museum’s famed Cone Collection starting on March 27, is being curated by 17 of the museum’s security guards.

Ranging from a grandmother of nine to a Towson University senior majoring in classical voice performance, the participating museum guards bring a diversity of backgrounds and life experiences to this innovative exhibit. One guard is a former healthcare worker, another a bartender, another an adjunct instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, who teaches courses on horror movies. It’s these unique perspectives that the museum aims to put on display, along with the actual artworks.

“Being a guard is so much more than telling people to turn off their flash, to take a step back,” says Elise Tensley, who has been a security guard at the BMA since 2017. “This isn’t just a show about the BMA’s collection, it’s a show based on what we have to offer.”

After all, the security guards might be more familiar with the museum’s collection than most people who walk its halls.

“They probably spend more time than anyone at the museum thinking about and connected with the art,” says Amy Elias, a BMA trustee who conceived the exhibition with chief curator Asma Naeem. The two also enlisted the help of noted art historian and curator Dr. Lowery Stokes Sims, currently the Kress-Beinecke Professor at the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, who also provided mentorship to the guards.

“I WAS IMMEDIATELY STRUCK BY THE
FRESH EYES THAT THEY CAST ON WORKS FROM
THE MUSEUM’S COLLECTION.”

“I was immediately struck by the fresh eyes that they cast on works from the museum’s collection,” says Sims. “Hearing their intensely personal rationales for their choices of objects revived my initial feelings of love and awe in museums, and reminded me why I got involved in art and curatorial work in the first place.”

The guards were given access to the BMA’s full collection, including its massive digital database of material, only a very small percentage of which is ever on display. Each guard could pick up to three objects of their choosing—an individualized, intimate alternative to the typically academic process.

But from the outset, the idea was to have the guards do more than just pick the art. They’d be involved in designing the installation, developing the accompanying catalog, working with the conservation team, and planning the relevant programming. For all that extra work, they’d also be paid, in addition to their salaries. Fundraising for the exhibit, which was ultimately financed by a lead grant from the local Pearlstone Family Foundation, included imbursement to the guards for their involvement.

Tensley, a painter herself who has sold commissioned work, chose “Winter’s End,” a 1958 painting by the late Abstract Expressionist and Park School graduate Jane Frank that has only been exhibited twice. “I wanted to give Jane Frank her moment again, as a female artist with Baltimore ties. I’m 37, and in my entire lifetime, this painting hasn’t been displayed.”

While some guards purposely sought out art from the depths of the museum’s archives, others chose works that were deeply familiar. Dereck Mangus, who has had his own artwork exhibited locally in group shows and whose writing has been published in art journals, selected Thomas Ruckle’s “House of Frederick Crey,” a painting he’d come to know over the course of the six years he’s worked at the BMA, because it depicted the Mount Vernon neighborhood where he lives.

“Every museum I’ve ever worked in has had some sort of staff art show,” says Mangus, who has worked as a guard at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Harvard Art Museums, as well as the Walters Art Museum, but had never been asked to participate in the curatorial process before. “We’re putting on different hats.”

For Ricardo Castro, a guard since 2019, the familiarity was cultural. Being from a large Puerto Rican family in Delaware, he chose works by artists from Columbia, Equador, and Costa Rica, as a way to honor his heritage.

“It’s a job made of waiting, but it’s also a job of contemplation—we’re seeing everything,” says Rob Kempton, a Maryland native with a master’s in museum studies from Johns Hopkins University who has been a guard since 2016. “It’s a lot of, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ But you can create experiences, just by getting into a conversation.” He selected works by two renowned local painters, Washington, D.C.’s Alma Thomas and Baltimore’s Grace Hartigan.

This on-the-floor ability to interact—with both the museum-goers and the art itself—was another key element driving the exhibit. Security guards may often blend into the background of a museum, as quiet and stationary as the artifacts they oversee, but they can also participate in the experience—answering questions, offering guidance, becoming part of the discussion.

“There are times when people have questions and there isn’t anyone else to ask besides the security officers,” says Kellen Johnson, the Towson senior who, between his shifts at the BMA, is also a member of the Towson University Chorale and Men’s Chorus groups, and has held solo recitals at the museum.

Johnson chose paintings by the 20th-century German painter Max Beckmann and American painter-muralist Hale Woodruff to reflect his interest in music. Beckmann’s wife, Mathilde, who is featured in the 1939 “Still Life with Large Shell” painting that Johnson picked, was a violinist and singer. Woodruff’s 1928 “Normandy Landscape,” demonstrated his interest in showcasing work by Black artists.

Johnson now cites interacting with museum-goers among his favorite aspects of the job, but when he first started working at the museum in 2013, he initially kept his distance.

“It was just: stand still, don’t interact, and be this invisible presence, except to say, ‘Please don’t touch that,’” he says. “That got very boring,” so he attended lectures, signed up for docent trainings, and read up on the artists, the art, and even the collectors—all so he could bring that knowledge to work. Visitors would ask if he was a docent, says Johnson. “No,” he’d tell them, “I’m just a guard.”

Christopher Bedford, the BMA’s director, would like to give the guards the option to be more than just guards.

“I’m keenly interested in the show because it empowers and foregrounds the authorship of a group of people not traditionally given that role,” says Bedford, now in his sixth year at the museum. “There are [guards] who are interested in ascending the ranks of a museum and exploring the world of art history and curatorial work. This is a way of doing that.”

Bedford sees the informal mentorship of “Guarding the Arts” as one of its most crucial elements—a means to explore, and perhaps ultimately change, how the museum has historically worked.

“There are aspects of the way that we function that just need to be completely turned on their heads,” he says, referring to addressing larger themes of equity, representation, and shared authorship. “This is a way of doing that.” (According to the Association of Art Museum Directors, in 2018, only four percent of curator roles in U.S. art museums were held by African Americans.)

“[Mentoring] is the engine that’s propelling this forward,” Naeem says about the exhibit, “to perhaps create new futures and new careers for some of the guards.” Those guards, she says, “are a true mirror to the public.”

Baltimore native Sara Ruark, who came to the BMA in 2018 and studied film at Towson University, agrees, seeing the guards as a sort of bridge.

“WE SEE NOT JUST WHAT’S GOING
ON IN THE MUSEUM, BUT WHAT’S
GOING ON IN THE COMMUNITY.”

“We’re both outsiders and insiders,” says Ruark, who selected Dutch painter and sculptor Karel Appel’s 1962 painting “A World in Darkness,” as well as a mid-20th century miniature totem pole by an unidentified Haida artist, neither of which she had seen before. “We see not just what’s going on in the museum, but what’s going on in the community.”

This gives the exhibit a sense of accessibility, she says, one that’s particularly relevant to Baltimore’s multifaceted artistic community.

“I think people who don’t realize how rich the art world is here give Baltimore a lot of flack,” says Ruark. Beyond the big-name institutions and exhibitions, “[There are] local artists who sell stuff under a bridge that’s simply stunning, craft shows in decrepit churches—I love that about this city.”

Though this isn’t the first time a museum has put on an exhibit with participation from its own security guards—New York’s Museum of Modern Art staged a show called “Beyond the Uniform” in 2020 that included a playlist from its guards—Bedford says the BMA show wasn’t patterned after anything else.

“It was modeled around the idea that shared curatorial authorship around our hierarchy would yield really unexpected results,” he says. “[Baltimore] is a place that is willing to embrace unorthodox ideas. It’s bold, a little quirky…I’m really hopeful that this will be the first of many exhibitions that will be unconventionally authored, by guards or others. I think it can become a hallmark of the museum.”

“This was a chance to have a real tangible project, with real feedback and results,” says Kempton, who is looking forward to seeing Hartigan’s 1957 abstract painting “Interior, The Creeks” and Thomas’ 1972 work “Evening Glow” on display. “Dr. Sims has said that this show privileges and deprivileges at the same time. It’s demystifying the entire museum process. To see that and to play a meaningful role in that is significant.”

On display through July 10, the exhibition will feature as many as 26 objects. As of press time, an opening reception was still in the planning stages.

Traci Archable-Frederick, a Baltimore native who served in the U.S. Army and Maryland National Guard before coming to the BMA in 2006, chose Mickalene Thomas’s 2021 “Resist #2,” as she wanted a piece that reflected the times, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and in relation to the demonstrations that swept the country in the wake of the George Floyd’s murder.

Thomas’ piece, a collage that combines protest images with acrylic paint, rhinestones, and glitter, was recently acquired by the BMA and joins the Brooklyn-based artist’s installation, “A Moment’s Pleasure,” that has transformed the museum’s East Lobby.

“This was it right here,” says Archable-Frederick. “It was speaking to everything that was happening.”

By choosing art works that speak not only to the contemporary world but to themselves, these 17 guards will be giving a very personal perspective. And yes, they’ll be watching.