BMA Announces Launch of Major Environment-Focused Initiatives, Fostering Dialogue and Modeling Change in Museums

The BMA is working with the Baltimore-based sustainability consulting firm Lorax to assess and make recommendations regarding water and energy efficiency, indoor environment quality, and needed structural upgrades and changes to achieve green building certifications, among a range of other environmental improvements. Lorax is also developing sustainability goals for each department in the museum. Additionally, the BMA is convening a community advisory panel comprised of artists, academics, activists, and city leaders to guide both in-gallery presentations and out of gallery work. Together, these evaluations and recommendations will result in the creation of a sustainability plan that will allow the museum to establish real benchmarks for achieving a more environmentally friendly museum over the coming years. The BMA anticipates that the sustainability plan will be completed by the end of 2024, with efforts to realize the recommendations beginning in 2025.

In 2023, Maryland Governor Wes Moore announced the goal of achieving 100% clean energy in the state by 2035. To support this critical and ambitious goal, the BMA is establishing a citywide eco-challenge, which invites civic and cultural leaders throughout the Baltimore region to commit to making one sustainably driven operational change and developing one program to raise environmental awareness in 2025. To foster dialogue and support engagement, the museum will host two convenings for partners, allowing participants to share information about fieldwide protocols and experiences. The vision behind the eco-challenge is to harness the expertise, voices, and resources of a wide range of partners to spur real citywide action in 2025 and well into the future. The National Aquarium and Maryland Zoo in Baltimore, both leaders in the field with their own sustainability plans, have already signed onto the eco-challenge, with many more organizations in conversation about participation.

From November 2024 and through 2025, the BMA will open 10 exhibitions that engage with ideas and themes related to the environment. Exhibition subjects range from examinations of both exploitative and sustainable techniques and materials used to create artworks to the influence of pollution on the emergence of European Modernism, and to the study of cultural differences in considering humanity’s role and position within the broader ecosystem, with a focus on the art of China, Korea, and Japan. Exhibitions will be augmented by a broad selection of public programs to further engage audiences and encourage active dialogue.

Among the exhibition highlights is Black Earth Rising, a group exhibition guest curated by British writer and curator Ekow Eshun that explores the complex ties between race, colonialism, and the climate crisis. Opening in spring 2025, the exhibition will bring together compelling works by African diasporic, Latin American, and Native American artists to consider and address questions regarding social and environmental injustices as fueled by the European settlement of the New World and its ongoing legacy. Another highlight, opening in February 2025, is the recent acquisition of Justen Leroy’s three-channel video installation Lay Me Down in Praise, which poses melisma—a form of Black musical utterance—as a rallying cry for environmental crisis. The film features slow-moving footage of geological events like volcanic eruptions, glacial melt, and turbulent seas that melds with a transfixing soundtrack informed by blues, R&B, gospel, and jazz music. In November 2024, the BMA opens LaToya Ruby Frazier’s More Than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland 2021-2022. Featuring a series of portraits and related interview excerpts, the acclaimed installation captures the tireless efforts of community health workers in Baltimore during the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine and sets their advocacy and self-determination amidst harmful environmental and soci0-political factors resulting from historical disinvestment in Black communities.

The BMA will also reinstall its Contemporary Wing with works that address environmentally related subjects such as social protest, ecology, and migration. Artworks will include collection cornerstones as well as recent acquisitions on view for the first time, such as Nari Ward’s Peace Keeper (1995/2020) and Jowita Wyszomirska’s The Light That Got Lost 1 (2020). Additionally, the BMA is commissioning new works for the Contemporary Wing by two artists whose practices speak to environmental and political conditions: Lebanese artist Dala Nasser and Baltimore- and New York-based artist Abigail Lucien. The commissions will debut in February 2025.

A selection of artworks in every BMA collection gallery will receive interpretive interventions with new label copy and audio entries that draw visitors’ attention to the links between creative forms and environmental change. The artworks with new environmentally focused interpretation will be identified by a special brand, establishing opportunities for engagement across the whole of the museum. More information regarding upcoming exhibitions and updates about the BMA’s sustainability plan and eco-challenge will be announced over the coming 12 months.