museums : Buzz

The Brandywine River Museum in Pennsylvania will be hosting an exhibit of art inspired by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, who lived for a time in Baltimore.

Antiques and Arts Online describes how Poe inspired abstract expressionist artists after his death.

“Poe's popularity soared in France shortly after his death, especially with avant-garde French writers and artists who appreciated his emphasis on the psychologically dark, perverse and strange.” The article also highlights two works from the Baltimore Museum of Art: Antonio Frasconi’s “The Raven IV” and Horst Janssen’s “Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe”.
 
Edouard Manet, Gustave Doré, Paul Gauguin, James Ensor, Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham, Harry Clarke, Barry Moser and Robert Motherwell are among the artists featured in "Picturing Poe: Illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe's Stories and Poems,"   which runs Sept. 8 to Nov. 15. Read more about the exhibit and Poe’s take on illustrations here. 

Charm City residents know that Baltimore gets a bad rap on the small and silver screens. 

But someone who writes for a national newspaper and doesn't ?live in Baltimore has come to the city's defense. 

Joe Queenan cites numerous examples of Baltimore's harsh treatment, starting with the most recent, The Raven. Starring John Cusack Edgar Allen Poe, the movie depicts innocent Baltimoreans getting murdered in the most gruesome manner. 

"Can the entertainment industry please stop picking on Baltimore?" Joe Queenan writes. 

Shows like the Wire and Homicide didn't do the city any favors either. In fact, the only time the city ever gets a break is when John Waters shows off the city's quirky characters, Queenan writes. 

The writer takes a yearly day trip Baltimore to visit the National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the National Museum of Dentistry (hey, wait, we've never even been there) and other sites. You can read Queenan's entire ode to Baltimore here. 

Open Table has selected 100 best brunch spots in the country. And on that list is Gertrude's, John Shields restaurant at the Baltimore Museum of Art. 

It's one of two Maryland restaurants on the list. The other is Mrs. K's Toll House in Silver Spring. 

You can see the entire list here. 

The Washington Post has called the Evergreen Museum & Library a "Gilded Age beauty" in a recent review. 

"The cozy warmth of the reading room didn’t prepare us for the jaw-dropping elegance of the Great Library, a stunning room with floor-to-ceiling walnut bookshelves, reading areas and statuary," the Post writes. "I half-expected to see Lord Grantham from “Downtown Abbey” reading his newspaper there."

Children's museums are increasingly focusing on social outreach, and not just playful activities, writes the New York Times. 

The newspaper cites several children's museums that are using exhibits to target everything from childhood obesity to homeless students. Port Discovery Children's Museum in Baltimore has adapted exhibits to accommodate kids with special needs, the Times writes. 

You can read the story here. 

The American Visionary Art Museum has gotten plenty of national attention for being one of Baltimore's cool, quirky and offbeat attractions. 

But the Washington Post has also declared the Federal Hill site a great museum for kids, citing pieces like a dinosaur made of trash, carved plastic foam cups and a sculpture made of 100,000 toothpicks. 

"The American Visionary Art Museum has a sense of humor," the Post writes. "Kids wouldn’t want to miss some of the non-art elements at the museum, such as the flatulence machine by the restrooms downstairs, the fun-house mirrors upstairs near the restaurant and the wacky and inexpensive gift shop where someone is almost always walking around doing magic tricks."

You can read the rest here. 

Construction began this month on the nation's largest museum devoted to African American history. 

And the $500 million Smithsonian museum will feature a number of Maryland artifacts, writes the Baltimore Sun. This includes a Harriet Tubman's silk shawl and a long house built by freed slaves from Montgomery County. 

"These are among 20,000 objects collected by the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which will open on the National Mall in 2015 as the 19th Smithsonian Institution museum," the Sun writes.

"Local experts on African-American history say it's appropriate that Maryland will be featured prominently, since many key figures come from the state."

You can read more about the museum here. 

Port Discovery, a children's museum in downtown Baltimore, has gotten national recognition from Forbes magazine. 

Forbes named it one of the 12 best kids' museum in the nation. 

"This 80,000 square foot facility resides in a renovated fish market and is one of the anchors of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor," Forbes writes. "Both the permanent and temporary exhibitions are heavily thematic, so when kids enter Adventure Expeditions, they travel back in time to 1920’s Egypt and search for a Pharaoh’s lost tomb, decoding hieroglyphics along the way in an educational detective puzzle of sorts."

Children's museums in Indianapolis, Boston and Brooklyn also made the cut. 

If you're an art lover, you are probably used to getting the occasional stern warning from security guards when you step a little too close to the Monet.

Well, at the Walters Art Museum's new exhibit, you can get as close as you want to the art. You can even touch it.

The Huffington Post previews the exhibit, which runs January 21 - April 15, 2012.

"The Walters Art Museum is merging the tactile pleasures of art with the neuroscience of how our brains respond to tactile stimuli," the Huffington Post writes. "The museum is teaming up with the Johns Hopkins University Brain Science Institute to invite viewers to touch works of art and meditate on why this physical contact is so appealing."

You can read the rest of the story here.

Ever wish you could see more public sculptures on display in Greater Baltimore?

Well now you can, if you drive out to Howard County. The Howard County Arts Council has selected 12 sites that will feature public sculptures in 2012, according to Broadway World.

The spots include the George Howard Building in Ellicott City, which will feature "Daddy Longlegs" by Carl Billingsley, and Howard Community College, which will feature Hanna Jubran's "The Cycle."

Read about the other sites and selected artwork.

Work being done at the Walters Museum on "The Archimedes Palimpsest" has drawn the attention of the New York Times.

From the source:

The Archimedes Palimpsest has precisely this history. It really does begin with a 10th-century copy of Archimedes’ third-century B.C. writings. Three centuries later they were scraped off the parchment, which was reused — creating a “palimpsest.” And while there aren’t enough dead bodies or secret cabals to support a full-fledged thriller, there really is a sense of excitement in the account of the book’s history, restoration and meanings, at an exhibition at the Walters Art Museum here: “Lost and Found: The Secrets of Archimedes.”

Almost nothing about the tale is banal or ordinary. In a companion book, “The Archimedes Codex” (Da Capo), William Noel, the museum’s curator of manuscripts, describes how the saga was brought to its conclusion. In 1998, after reading about the Palimpsest’s sale at a Christie’s auction to an anonymous purchaser for $2 million, the museum’s director, Gary Vikan, suggested to Mr. Noel that he discover who bought it and whether it might be exhibited at the Walters.

Read the full story here.

Baltimore's Edgar Allan Poe House remains in danger of closing.

From the source:

But the city that named its NFL team after his poem "The Raven" may soon lose a key physical connection to Poe. The Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, where the writer lived for four years in the early 1800s, is in danger of closing next year, due to budget cutbacks by the city.

"Everyone is tightening their belt," said Jeff Jerome, the museum's curator and only employee, who also works for the city's planning department.

Read the whole story.

It's official: the National Pinball Museum -- previously located in DC -- will open in Baltimore.

From the source:

The National Pinball Museum, forced out of Washington after losing its lease earlier this year, will be moving into the Power Plant Live complex.

Trucks began moving owner David Silverman's vast collection of flipper-type pinball machines into a building at 608 Water St. Wednesday. Silverman, a Silver Spring-based landscape designer who has been collecting the machines for some 40 years, said he hopes to open for business by the end of November.

"We're moving in now," he said early Thursday morning as he drove into Baltimore.

Read the whole story.

A new exhibit chronicling the "Great Migration" of African Americans from the South to the North will make a stop in Baltimore's Penn Station following a stint in DC.

From the source:

Amtrak is opening a new exhibit at Washington's Union Station to recount the history of the "Great Migration" of Southern blacks moving to the North early in the 20th century.

Between 1915 and 1970, about 6 million African Americans moved from the South to the North. Many left behind rural farm lives for job opportunities in industrialized cities. Many made the journey by passenger or freight train, which provided the connection for Amtrak.

Read the full story here.

Funding woes persist at Baltimore's Edgar Allan Poe House, as the Washington Post recently reported.

From the source:

For a second year city leaders have chosen not to subsidize a museum in the tiny house where the impoverished Poe lived from around 1833 to 1835, a decision that means it may have to close soon.

Since the city cut off its $85,000 in annual support last year, the house has been operating on reserve funds, which are expected to run out as early as next summer. In the coming months consultants hired by the city will try to come up with a business plan to make the Edgar Allan Poe House financially self-sufficient, possibly by updating its exhibits to draw more visitors.

But the museum sits amid a housing project, far off this city's tourist beaten path, and attracts only 5,000 visitors a year.

Read the full story.