Museum Overview
The Baltimore Museum of Art was founded in 1914 with just one painting. Over the period of nearly a century since then, it has flourished. Located near Johns Hopkins University's main campus in the Charles Village area of Baltimore, the museum is an integral part of a cultural center of Baltimore. The museum features prints and drawings from the 15th to 19th century, and is known for having the single largest collection of works by French artist Henri Matisse, known as the Cone Collection. The Museum features two landscaped gardens that showcase 20th century sculptures. In 1994, the Baltimore Museum of Art opened the West Wing for Contemporary Art with sixteen galleries to display art from 1945 up to the present. Since 2006, admission to the general public has been free. Both of the sculpture gardens and the museum itself are fully wheelchair accessible.
Plan Your Trip
The Baltimore Museum of Art is located on 10 Art Museum Drive, which is at North Charles and 31st Streets. This is three miles north of Baltimore's Inner Harbor and located in the Charles Village neighborhood.
For hotel rooms near the museum, we recommend Baltimore Hotels, the leading hotel booking site in Baltimore.
The Museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Wednesdays-Fridays, opening hours are 10am to 5pm. Saturdays and Sundays, the museum is open 11am to 6pm. During inclement weather, the gardens are closed. Parking in the museum lot is $6 daily. Museum admission is free, although there may be a charge for special exhibits.
The Museum's Collection
The Baltimore Museum of Art has a collection containing the works of many well-known artists such as Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh. For those interested in more contemporary pieces, there are works by Andy Warhol and other lesser known names in Pop Art. The Museum has many different departments, including American, Ancient Americas, and Native American in the America region. There is a European collection, an African collection, an Asian collection, and a Pacific Island Collection. There are also many genre collections.
The Antioch Mosiac Collection comes directly from the Museum's participation in excavations in southeastern Turkey in the modern city of Antakya. The collection showcases 34 pavements from the excavation. The mosiacs date back to the period of the second to fifth century, beginning at the time of the emperor Hadrian. 28 of the pavements are viewed in the Museum's atrium court, and can be viewed by natural sunlight.
The contemporary collection is housed in the West Wing for Contemporary Art, and showcases both well-known artists and some emerging artists from the 20th and 21st centuries. Among the styles showcased in this collection are Abstract Expressionism with works by artists such as Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell, There is Minimalist and Conceptualist art. There is a gallery of projected art which showcases works by Lorna Simpson and Peter Campus, among others. The front room of the West Wing for Contemporary Art is a working environment and exhibition space for new projects. Much attention is given to the artist or artists in exhibitions presented in this space.
Generally, art museums do not give much attention to textiles, which makes the Textile section of the Baltimore Museum of Art particularly impressive. With over 5000 textile samples, including everything from needlework and quilts to costumes and accessories, the collection shows the diversity of textile work around the world and the art of different places and times. Visitors can see 400 different samples of lace from a period of five centuries. Among the clothes displayed are Chinese dragon robes and the hand-made robes of Japanese Buddhist priests. Also on display are samples of the Baltimore Album Quilts.