9 Baltimore women. A half-century of friendship. The art it inspired.
By Mary Carole McCauley
Photo by John Dean
The MacArthur Award-winning artist Joyce J. Scott and eight of her best buddies are getting together this week for an exhibit that’s as much about the urban families we create with other like-minded adults.
That isn’t to imply that the nine painters, photographers, curators and multimedia artists are art world slouches. Far from it … as highlighted in “Side by Side: The Gurlz of Baltimore,” a free exhibit running Tuesday through Sept. 26 at Goya Contemporary Gallery, 3000 Chestnut Ave. in Hampden.
The roster of women — several of whom have been friends for more than half a century — includes some of the most distinguished artists and scholars shaping the region’s visual arts scene.
Consider Scott, who picked up a 2016 MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. Or Leslie King Hammond, an artist and the founding director of the Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Or photographer Linda Day Clark, whose moody black-and-white photos chronicling Black American life have been exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Or Oletha DeVane, whose imaginative installation transformed the Baltimore Museum of Art’s Spring House (a historic 1812 structure on the museum’s grounds that now houses new media) for four months in 2019.
In addition, the show features the creations of Linda DePalma, Patti Tronolone, Ellen Burchenal. The exhibition was co-curated by Lowery Stokes Sims and Amy Raehse.