Refocusing on a New Constituency

Revitalized Baltimore Museum of Art Broadens Its Scope

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For decades, a large bronze cast of Rodin’s “The Thinker” greeted visitors to the Baltimore Museum of Art as they ascended a grand staircase into the luminous columned lobby that was the museum’s heart. Yet when Doreen Bolger became the B.M.A.’s director 16 years ago, this impressive entrance to John Russell Pope’s Classical Revival building had long been sealed off. It was not accessible to people with disabilities, Ms. Bolger explained, nor was it buffered for proper climate control. In 1982, when it was shuttered, the maintenance of two entrances was a cost Baltimore could not afford.

The story of the B.M.A. is not unusual among encyclopedic museums in America’s Rust Belt cities, many of which opened during the Industrial Age but fell on hard times because of a pattern of poor attendance and changing demographics during the latter half of the 20th century. At the B.M.A., whose crown jewels are a trove of some 700 works by the early 20th-century French master Henri Matisse, the question for Ms. Bolger became immediately obvious: How does one transform what has long been viewed as a remote temple on a hill into a dynamic nerve center in an emerging local art scene?

The museum claims 90,000 objects, among them the swirling masterpiece “Rinaldo and Armida” (1629) by the Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck; precious prints by Dürer, Rembrandt and Goya; collections of African and Asian art; and locally made furniture that incorporates an unusual reverse-glass painting technique. But presenting such a wide swath of art in a city with enormous economic divisions, and a population that’s diverse in terms of race, culture and religion, is no easy task. And particularly not if your goal, as Ms. Bolger said hers has been, is “to make everybody feel welcome.”

“This is something that I’ve thought about a lot,” Ms. Bolger said in a recent interview.

The reopening of the B.M.A.’s historical entrance, and the reinstallation of its American Wing, both of which coincide with the museum’s 100th anniversary in November, are significant milestones in a $28 million face-lift that began in November 2012 with the reconfiguration of the museum’s Contemporary Wing. “The Thinker” has been moved inside, for conservation reasons, but a redesigned East entrance and museum shop will welcome visitors in November. The reinstalled African and Asian galleries open in April. And the museum’s final unveiling, a new center for learning and creativity, is scheduled for October 2015.

As part of her mandate for the museum, Ms. Bolger advocated free admission, which was established in 2006. “There should be no barriers to anyone coming here at any time,” she said.

She has also pushed collaborations with local arts organizations and artists. “In an urban context like Baltimore, where we’re all densely packed together shoulder-to-shoulder, each person’s success supports another, whether the organizations are large or small, or whether we’re talking about institutions or artists,” she said.

One subject local leaders have been thinking about a lot lately is the role designated arts districts can play in the revitalization of blighted neighborhoods. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake hopes to increase the population of Baltimore by 10,000 households this decade. “I know that the creative class is crucial to having a diverse city, and it’s going to help us grow,” she said.

Persuading college graduates to set permanent roots is also known to help population growth. And with Baltimore’s increasingly arts-friendly community offering graduates a wider range of entertainment and lifestyle choices, the number of students in the area expecting to stay after graduation is up to 38 percent in 2012 from 19 percent in 2003, according Baltimore Collegetown Network, a consortium of 14 nearby colleges.

Baltimore in recent years may be less likely to conjure images from “The Wire,” the popular crime drama shown on HBO from 2002 to 2008, depicting a city racked with corruption and drug trafficking. Raymond Allen, vice president for Academic Affairs and provost at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, said that although the city would always have “that wonderful John Waters legacy, that edgy, blue-collar, in-your-face sensibility,” things have changed. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all situation anymore,” he added. “It’s varied.”

And Mayor Rawlings-Blake said: “We don’t have a monolithic arts culture. We don’t have a snobby arts culture. We have a very organic, grass-roots, accessible arts culture here in Baltimore.”

During Ms. Bolger’s tenure, exhibitions featuring local artists have become a B.M.A. mainstay. For the last few years, she has also spoken at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s graduate convocation. “She does this marvelous job of encouraging students to stay in Baltimore, and talks about what it means to be an artist here,” Mr. Allen said.

Compared to the 1970s — when, Mr. Allen said, “one of the prime criticisms local artists had of the Baltimore Museum of Art was that it cared not a whit about them” — this may seem like major progress. But some members of the Baltimore art community feel that Ms. Bolger has courted local artists at the expense of collecting art of national and international importance.

“The Baltimore Museum has a tradition of having groundbreaking exhibitions,” said Constance R. Caplan, a collector, and former board member at the Dia Art Foundation, who has recently joined an acquisitions committee at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum.

“We had Barnett Newman,” she added. “We had Frank Stella. We had Gilbert and George, way before they were noticed or taken seriously on the New York scene.”