Contemporary Museum - Past Exhibitions

FRIDAY, MAY 7th 6-8pm OPENING NIGHT at the Contemporary Museum and the Walters Art Museum

SATURDAY, MAY 8th 11am–4pm OPEN HOUSE PARTY at all venues including Maryland Art Place, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, the Carroll House Mansion and Shot Tower, the Contemporary Museum and the Walters Art Museum followed by a Q & A with the artists at Maryland Art Place at 3:00 pm. Our weekend ends in the galleries of MAP as Dr. Leslie King-Hammond interviews Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry.

For Part 2 of Project 20, we present the selection of the Contemporary Museum's founder George Ciscle. Rather than choosing an artist for inclusion in Project 20, he instead selected the 2010 Exhibition Development Seminar (EDS) of the Maryland Institute College of Art, a unique course and collective curatorial process developed by Ciscle in the years following his seven–year tenure at the Contemporary Museum. The twenty–student EDS team, along with professional mentors in the field, have in turn selected to work with Brooklyn–based artists Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry to organize a large-scale and multi–venue survey exhibition spanning over ten years of their compelling and provocative practice.

A husband and wife collaborative, artists McCallum and Tarry have produced an incredible body of work that possesses a potent combination of seductive, exquisitely crafted images and incisive content. Their art challenges audiences to reflect deeply on teen homelessness, gun violence in inner cities, homicide, the legacy of the civil rights movement and their own circumstance as an interracial couple. These works take the form of large-scale public projects, interactive sculpture, painting, photography, and video. Over the course of their careers, they have produced powerful civic-based projects with lasting impact in the communities they engage. This exhibition reveals their substantial contribution to the history and representation of race relations and the enduring influence that their community-based practice has had over the years.

Bearing Witness connects McCallum and Tarry's advocacy–based projects, which were initially displayed in public spaces, with their gallery-based video, painting and installation works. In presenting these projects together for the first time, this exhibition reveals the layered conceptual, aesthetic and historic threads in their work. It simultaneously makes connections between McCallum and Tarry's work and Baltimore's local issues, institutions, histories and communities.

The Contemporary Museum will be the primary exhibition site for Bearing Witness. Additional exhibition sites, serving as temporary homes for works by McCallum and Tarry that relate directly to those institutions' collections and missions, include the Carroll Mansion, Maryland Art Place, MICA, the Phoenix Shot Tower, Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture and the Walters Art Museum.

About McCallum and Tarry

McCallum and Tarry's recent exhibitions include Prospect 1, New Orleans, 2008; Legacies: Contemporary Artists Reflect on Slavery, The New-York Historical Society, 2006; and Witness: Perspectives on Police Violence, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, N.Y., 2000. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Caren Golden Fine Art, New York; Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles; and Kiang Gallery, Atlanta. In addition, McCallum and Tarry have been commissioned to realize large-scale civic and public works; most recently, they were awarded a commission to create a Malcolm X memorial at the intersection of Central Park and Malcolm X Boulevard in New York City.

About EDS

Under the guidance of MICA faculty member Jennie Hirsh, a historian of modern and contemporary art, the College's Exhibition Development Seminar offers a unique opportunity for student curators, educators and designers to organize a professional exhibition. Students are responsible for every aspect of the project, including curatorial and site research, design and production of print- and Web-based materials and educational programming. The goal of EDS is to explore new ways to engage artists, students, museums, galleries and the Baltimore community.

Thank You

Bearing Witness is made possible partially through generous support from the Friends of the Exhibition Development Seminar, the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, and the National Endowment for the Arts. MICA's exhibitions and public programs receive generous support from the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Special Programs Endowment, Amalie Rothschild '34 Residency Programs Endowment, The Rouse Company Endowment, Richard Kalter Endowment, Maryland State Arts Council and the generous contributors to MICA's Annual Fund.