BMA to launch Baltimore artist Joyce J. Scott retrospective
By Aliza Worthington
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) will open a retrospective on the 50-year career of Baltimore-born artist Joyce J. Scott.
The exhibit, entitled “Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams,” opens March 24, and will feature nearly 140 of her works from the 1970s to the present. Visitors can enjoy and study her sculpture, jewelry, textiles, artwear garments, performance compilations, prints, and mixed-media installations. There will also be a new large-scale commission.
This retrospective will encompass “the full range and depth of her prolific and genre-defying practice,” according to the press release announcing the exhibit. “The astonishing virtuosity and ingenuity of Scott’s work in every medium seamlessly coalesces with her lifelong vision to confront racism, sexism, classism, and ‘all the ‘isms’ society offers’ through impish and audacious humor, expressions of beauty, and a humanistic engagement with global events.”
Scott, who was born in 1948, comes from a long line of artists and makers. The BMA has a companion exhibit that opened in November of Scott’s mother’s work, “Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds, and Candlebugs: The Art of Elizabeth Talford Scott” that is running until April 28, 2024.
“Joyce J. Scott: Walk a Mile in My Dreams” is a collaboration between the BMA and the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). It will be in Baltimore as a special ticketed exhibition from March 24 through July 14, 2024, then in Seattle from Oct. 17, 2024, through Jan. 20, 2025. Visitors to the exhibit will receive a fully illustrated 288-page catalog containing new scholarship, reflections by the artist herself, and a selection of out-of-print resources.
“Joyce J. Scott is a living legend and a pillar of Baltimore’s artistic community. Her multidisciplinary practice is in a word, magnetic, distinguished in its ability to conjure moments of beauty and awe, while also bringing people into conversation about challenging subjects in a way that is open and embracing. Her work is deeply rooted in both local and global contexts, vibrating with a resonance that is utterly and uniquely Joyce,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director, in a statement. “The BMA has had the honor of engaging audiences with Scott’s work for many years through exhibitions, public programs, and acquisitions. We are thrilled now to present this comprehensive exhibition that highlights the remarkable range of her career.”
The BMA is located at 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD.