$5 Million Gift Will Establish Center for BMA’s Collection of 65,000 Prints, Drawings and Photographs

The Center will be Named for Longtime BMA Supporters Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff and Establish New Spaces for Exhibitions, Programs, and Individual Study

BALTIMORE, MD (September 15, 2020)—The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) announced today that it has received a $5 million gift from longtime museum supporters Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff to establish a center dedicated to the presentation, study, and preservation of the BMA’s 65,000-object collection of prints, drawings, and photographs. In honor of the generous gift to fund its completion, the space will be named The Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs. The approximately 7,000-square-foot center, which is being designed by Quinn Evans Architects, will live on the museum’s first floor, adjoining the previously announced Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies. The gift leads the BMA’s fundraising for the $10 million project, with additional funds provided by the State of Maryland, City of Baltimore, France-Merrick Foundation, and Institute for Museum and Library Services. Both of the BMA’s new study centers are slated to open in fall 2021.

“For nearly two decades, Nancy Dorman and Stan Mazaroff have been remarkable stewards of the BMA, bringing their passion, expertise, and leadership to support the success and growth of our institution. Their myriad contributions have helped the museum in enacting its vision to place on equal footing scholarship and accessibility, and today, we are once again inspired by their generosity and spirit. Their incredible gift to the Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs allows us to bring to fruition a longstanding museum priority, and we are honored to name the center for their unwavering commitment to the BMA and to the wider cultural fabric of Baltimore,” said Clair Zamoiski Segal, the BMA’s Board Chair.

Widely considered one of the most significant holdings of works on paper in the United States, the BMA’s collection features approximately 57,000 prints, 4,000 drawings, and 4,000 photographs from the 15th century through the present day. This includes the George A. Lucas Collection, an important resource for the study of 19th-century French prints with works by Eugène Delacroix, Mary Cassatt, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, among numerous others. The collection also features excellent examples of European graphic works by such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco de Goya, and Édouard Manet; modernist prints and drawings by Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and Joan Miró; experimental photographs by Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston; and important examples of 20th-century American photography by William Eggleston, Gordon Parks, and Carrie Mae Weems. As the BMA has actively sought to enhance its holdings by women artists and artists of color, it has added contemporary works on paper by Sanford Biggers, Julie Mehretu, Wangechi Mutu, Faith Ringgold, and Kara Walker, among others. Together, the BMA’s collection of prints, drawings, and photographs represents a wide spectrum of artists, whose work embraces a remarkable range and depth.

To make the collection more accessible to a wider audience, The Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs will feature dedicated exhibition spaces, study rooms, improved and more readily available storage, onsite conservation, and new offices. In addition to a changing roster of exhibitions that will increase the number of works regularly on view from the collection, the center will establish new teaching spaces for local colleges, universities, and post-secondary institutions, and create more opportunities to host visiting researchers and present both scholarly and public programs. The vision for the center supports the BMA’s broader strategic plan to invite more individuals, of varied backgrounds, to explore and engage with a collection that is important both to the BMA and the field at large. As part of the initiative to establish the center, the BMA also plans to digitize approximately 40,000 works from the collection and to make them publicly accessible for study and enjoyment online.

“We are committed to the BMA’s mission to make art more accessible for a broad array of audiences and excited that our support will help the museum realize this goal for a collection that is so vast in quality and quantity and yet so rarely seen,” said Dorman and Mazaroff. “We are delighted that the center also aligns with our interest in contemporary photography and my research on the George A. Lucas Collection with its more than 16,000 works on paper,” added Mazaroff.

The center will be helmed by Andaleeb Badiee Banta, the BMA’s Senior Curator and Department Head of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and programmed by the BMA’s curatorial team. Its inaugural exhibition, which will open in fall 2021, will explore ideas of transfiguration, metamorphosis, masquerade, and the fluidity of self-presentation through a wide selection of works produced across five centuries. Tentatively titled Shape-Shifting: Transformation on Paper and curated by Banta and the Prints, Drawings & Photographs staff, the exhibition will illuminate the multivalent expressions of identity and appearance through time, from depictions of conversion in the natural and spiritual realms, to the splendid deception of early modern masquerades, to the posturing and performance of costume, drag, and bodily reinvention that reflect the spectrum of modern subjectivity. Following its opening, the BMA aims to expand its curatorial team to further support the center’s program and activity.

“With the opening of The Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, we are bringing together in one space the core functions of the museum—preservation, study, preparation, and exhibition—and making them transparent to the public. This invites further engagement with us as an institution and creates new pathways for connecting with the collection,” said Christopher Bedford, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “At the same time, this dedicated center expands our capacity to serve both scholars and our wider community, who will have more access to this incredible range of works. We are very grateful to Nancy and Stan for their generosity and for sharing in our vision for the center, and we look forward to exploring more of the narratives held within this extraordinary collection at the BMA.”

Nancy Dorman is a longtime active supporter of the BMA, having served on the Board of Trustees since 2002, and is currently serving as Vice President as well as Chair of the Governance Committee. Prior to her retirement in 2004, she was Administrative General Partner at New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital firm specializing in early-stage investments in communications, technology, medical, and healthcare service companies. Prior to that she served on the Domestic Policy Staff under Stu Eizenstat in the Carter White House. Prior to that, she worked in the offices of Senators Walter F. Mondale and Joseph D. Tydings. She also serves on the board of the Enoch Pratt Free Library and is co-chair of the Art Seminar Group.

Stanley Mazaroff is a retired lawyer and an art historian. Recognized annually in The Best Lawyers in America, he was a partner in the law firm of Venable, Baetjer & Howard from 1971 to 2001, published a legal treatise entitled Maryland Employment Law, taught equal employment law as an adjunct professor at Maryland Law School, and served as an arbitrator/judge of significant employment cases in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. under the auspices of the American Arbitration Association. Earlier in his career, Mazaroff served as a Volunteer Leader of the Peace Corps in the Philippines and as a member of the congressional staff of Senator Joseph D. Tydings. In 2001, Mazaroff retired from his law firm in order to enroll full time as a special student in the art history department of Johns Hopkins University. Between 2001 and 2005, his studies in the U.S. and abroad led to the publication of an article in the Walters Art Journal, a chapter in a book about art collections published by the Frick Museum, and two highly acclaimed art history books published by Johns Hopkins University Press: Henry Walters and Bernard Berenson, Collector and Connoisseur (2010) and A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure: The Remarkable Lives of George A. Lucas and His Art Collection (2018). His public service has included past tenures as Chairman of the Board of the Baltimore Urban League, Vice Chairman of the Board of the Governors Employment and Training Council, Vice Chairman of the Contemporary Museum, a Trustee of the Walters Art Museum, and a member of several accessions committees for The Baltimore Museum of Art.

The Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs is generously supported by Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff, the State of Maryland, the City of Baltimore, the France-Merrick Foundation, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

About the Baltimore Museum of Art

Founded in 1914, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) inspires people of all ages and backgrounds through exhibitions, programs, and collections that tell an expansive story of art—challenging long-held narratives and embracing new voices. Our outstanding collection of more than 97,000 objects spans many eras and cultures and includes the world’s largest public holding of works by Henri Matisse; one of the nation’s finest collections of prints, drawings, and photographs; and a rapidly growing number of works by contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds. The museum is also distinguished by a neoclassical building designed by American architect John Russell Pope and two beautifully landscaped gardens featuring an array of modern and contemporary sculpture. The BMA is located three miles north of the Inner Harbor, adjacent to the main campus of Johns Hopkins University, and has a community branch at Lexington Market. General admission is free so that everyone can enjoy the power of art.