In a city like Washington, with its iconic museums, halls of great art treasures and galleries at every turn, it would almost seem presumptuous to suggest a short trip north to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Still, devotees of internationally renowned collections of 19th-century, modern and contemporary art may wish to walk marbled halls that house more 90,000 works of art, including the largest holding of works by Henri Matisse in the world.
And then, as creamy icing on the cake, the BMA presents an extraordinary exhibition of 16 works by artist Paul Cezanne alongside 80 works by more than 30 American artists, including Marsden Hartley, Alfred Stieglitz and Man Ray. All represent Cezanne’s profound influence on American Modernism through paintings that initiated a worldwide revolution in art.
“The [Cezanne] exhibition has been very well received by visitors, museum members and art critics,” said Katy Rothkopf, the BMA’s senior curator of European painting and sculpture. “This is the first exhibition to examine the influence of Paul Cezanne on American art in the first part of the 20th century. He has been credited for decades for his profound influence on European modern art, but this is the first close look at his transformative effect on American artists.”
Indeed, this exhibition (which runs only through May 23) is spellbinding. Moreover the BMA’s many diverse collections provide hours of intense, thrilling scrutiny to hundreds of visitors daily.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: The Baltimore Museum of Art
Distance: Approximately 46 miles from D.C.
On the web: artbma.org
The granddaddy of permanent collections, however, is the renowned Cone Collection of approximately 3,000 objects that were housed in the Baltimore home of collectors and sisters Etta and Claribel Cone. The highlight here is a group of 500 works by Matisse, whose Paris studio the sisters visited. Other pieces in their collection (exhibited in a roomlike setting close to what the sisters would have experienced) include works by Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. The Museum Store features thousands of art-related items and books, including those relative to the current exhibit, such as “Cezanne and American Modernism.”
“New and noteworthy in paperback is ‘Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model Wives of Cezanne, Monet and Rodin,’ ” said Jessica Novak, communications specialist and writer at the BMA. “[Readers can] discover the virtually unknown stories of well-known female faces.”
