Baltimanual :: The Arts Scene

The seemingly endless supply of great Baltimore music finally gained national attention in recent years, but the quantity and quality of Charm City's local visual and dramatic arts have also been exploding at a rapid pace. On any weekend, a wide variety of performances and artworks challenge and delight visitors, from the city's mainstream museums and theaters to the more lively and compelling underground gallery spaces and theatrical troupes that have sprouted up, creating a vibrant arts community.

Top: an untitled piece by Christian Benefiel, as installed at Area 405; Left: Artscape is the city's largest street festival and features dozens of exhibitions and installations.

Sadly, the recent national economic crisis severely impacted Baltimore's mainstream arts institutions, which cut into their ability to mount financially ambitious projects, but not their ability to produce creative programming. So while the Baltimore Museum of Art (10 Art Museum Drive, [443] 573-1700, artbma.org) won't be able to hold an exhibition as internationally acclaimed as 2008's Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008, upcoming exhibitions focusing on Edgar Allan Poe and Henri Matisse make creative use of the BMA's permanent collection. And while the Cone Collection of European modernists such as Matisse and Pablo Picasso remains the BMA's most renown attraction, its collection of American paintings and decorative art and contemporary works are often-overlooked treasures.

The Walters Art Museum (600 N. Charles St., [410] 547-9000, thewalters.org) was also forced to scale down some of its grander exhibition plans to focus more on its permanent collection and less on traveling shows. Fortunately, its permanent collection is impeccable, including fascinating collections of illuminated manuscripts and rare books and antiquities from around the world-its Islamic art and manuscripts are especially noteworthy-and an impressive array of Renaissance, 18th-, and 19th-century European works (don't miss Trophime Bigot's "Judith Cutting Off the Head of Holofernes"). Best of all, save special engagement exhibitions, both the BMA and the Walters offer free admission.

And those two institutions are merely Baltimore's big name museums. Some of the better museum experiences can be found in smaller institutions, such as the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture (830 E. Pratt St., [443] 263-1800, africanamericanculture.org), whose permanent collection and special exhibits explore the rich and captivating story of Maryland's African-American population. The Contemporary Museum (100 W. Centre St., [410] 783-5720, contemporary.org) doesn't own a permanent collection, which it makes up for with diverse, forward-looking, and frequently interactive programming that extends out from its Mount Vernon galleries and into the greater Baltimore community at large. And the American Visionary Art Museum (800 Key Highway, [410] 244-1900, avam.org) offers one of the more unique museum experiences in the country, presenting large-scale, big idea shows that cull works from outsider, non-traditional artists.

Also worth checking out are some of the city's private and university galleries and lively community-arts centers. Nonprofit galleries such as Maryland Art Place (8 Market Place, [410] 962-8565, mdartplace.org) and School 33 (1427 Light St., [410] 396-4641, school33.org) not only frequently showcase local artists, but also offer a variety of panels, artists' talks, workshops, and other events. Professional galleries such as C. Grimaldis Gallery (523 N. Charles St., [410] 539-1080, cgrimaldisgallery.com), Goya Contemporary (3000 Chestnut Ave., Studio 214, [410] 366-2001, goyacontemporary.com), and Gallery Imperato (921 E. Fort Ave., [443] 257-4166, galleryimperato.com) present a wide berth of regional and international contemporary artists, while the Maryland Institute College of Art (1300 Mount Royal Ave., [410] 669-9200, mica.edu) campus contains multiple gallery spaces showcasing the works of students, faculty, and international visiting artists and traveling exhibitions. For the best underground vibe, though, grassroots spaces such as the Creative Alliance at the Patterson (3134 Eastern Ave., [410] 276-1651, creativealliance.org) and the Load of Fun Studios (120 W. North Ave., loadoffun.net) offer a wide variety of visual art, performance art, theatrical productions, music, and febrile combinations of all of the above in their multifarious year-round programming.

Baltimore's biggest theatrical company also had to navigate the economic downturn. Center Stage (700 N. Calvert St., [410] 332-0033, centerstage.org) is producing only four full-length plays for its 2009-'10 season, ranging from classics such as Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest to the American premiere of Kwame Kwei-Armah's Let There Be Love, and is augmenting its season with a series of fully produced hour-long plays, a series of concert readings in its smaller Head Theater, and a cabaret series featuring familiar singing and acting guests such as Judy Kaye and E. Faye Butler.

Everyman Theater (1727 N. Charles St., [410] 752-2208, everymantheatre.org), on the other hand, is actually mounting a rather daring 2009-'10 season. In addition to presenting the Baltimore premiere of David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole, Everyman's season includes theatrical force of nature Charles Ludlam's lively, satirical penny dreadful The Mystery of Irma Vep and an ambitious tackling of an American theater workhorse, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, produced in partnership with the Baltimore School for the Arts.

Some of the most exciting nights onstage in Baltimore, though, happen in the city's smaller out of the way theater spaces. Veteran community theater companies such as the Fells Point Corner Theater (251 S. Ann, [410] 276-7837, fpct.org), Vagabond Players (806 S. Broadway, [410] 563-9135, vagabondplayers.org), the Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre (817 St. Paul St., [410] 752-1225, spotlighters.org), and the Mobtown Players (3600 Clipper Mill Road, [410] 467-3057, mobtownplayers.com) mount a wide array of productions throughout the year, from small-scale musicals and dramatic classics to new and experimental works to cabaret-style entertainments. And every summer, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival (3900 Roland Ave., [410] 366-8596, baltimoreshakepeare.org) produces lavish, outdoor productions of the Bard on the sumptuous grounds of the Evergreen Museum and Library in North Baltimore and the Baltimore Playwrights Festival (baltimoreplaywrightsfestival.org) produces a series of plays from local playwrights throughout local theaters.

Young, upstart new theater companies, though, more consistently deliver adventurous productions. Run of the Mill Theater (3600 Clipper Mill Road, [410] 796-1555, runofthemilltheater.org) started in 2003 and has matured into one of the more forward-thinking young companies in the city. It helped paved the way for Single Carrot Theatre (120 W. North Ave., [443] 844-9253, singlecarrot.com), which arrived in Baltimore in 2005 and has quickly become the most consistently inventive company in town, the Strand Theater Company (1823 N. Charles St., [443] 874-4917, strandtheatercompany.org), which puts an emphasis on producing plays written by women and/or featuring compelling roles for women, and the LOF/t (120 W. North Ave., loadoffun.net/LoadofFun/TheLOFt.html), an avant-garde home base for performance art, experimental theater, poetry, and any number of off-the-map activities that could happen on a stage and, perhaps, migrate into the audience.

All of these emerging, younger companies and multi-platform performance schedules, owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Theatre Project (45 W. Preston St., [410] 752-8558, theatreproject.org). This experimental space has focused on local, national, and international theatrical performance for more than 40 years on a modest operating budget, and the recession has hit it the hardest. Nevertheless, its 2009-'10 schedule is no less daring than years past, offering an impressive array of music, drama, movement theater, and various hybrids of all three that few other stages program at all.

Opera lovers in Baltimore faced a crushing blow in early 2009 when the long-running Baltimore Opera Company filed for bankruptcy and closed its doors. Fortunately, a few other opera options remain in the city. Chief among those is Opera Vivente (811 Cathedral St., [410] 547-7997, operavivente.com), which mounts visually alluring productions-sung in English-inside the rectory of Mount Vernon's lovely Emmanuel Episcopal Church. Members of the shuttered Baltimore Opera started Baltimore Concert Opera (11 W. Mount Vernon Place, [443] 844-3496, baltimoreconcertopera.com), which produces intimate performances featuring vocalists and a smaller musical accompaniment in a casual setting. And over the course of the academic year the Peabody Concert Opera (1 E. Mount Vernon Place, [410] 659-8100, ext. 2, peabodyopera.org) stages impressive productions of both classic and new operas.

But don't just take our word for it. A wealth of information about Baltimore arts can be found online, from the Baltimore Theatre Alliance's (baltimoreperforms.org) highly informative lists of what's playing to blogs such as Bmore Art (bmoreart.blogspot.com) and There Were Ten Tigers (thereweretentigers.blogspot.com) that track what's in galleries, from the latest museum show to the most interesting DIY space. The main thing to remember is that everything contained here is but a glimpse of Baltimore's vibrant and invaluable arts community. The best way to experience it is to poke around and discover it for yourself.