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Things to do in Maryland
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Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art was
started in 1914, next to the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore, Maryland, but the museum is not part of
the university. One of the featured exhibition is of the Cone
Collection with masterpieces by Renoir, Matisse, van Gogh,
Picasso, Gauguin, Cezanne, Degas and Manet. The admission is
free, and a great restaurant called Gertrude's sits inside,
owned and run by Chef John Shields. A fire occurred in 1904,
damaging most of the city, and while a city committee was
working on the city's future, Dr. A. R. L. Dohme, the committee
chair realized that one thing that Baltimore would need is an
art museum. Another committee was formed and led by art
connoisseur and industrialist, Henry H. Wiegand, who helped get
the museum started by 1914, as did Dr. Dohme, who donated the
first artwork to the fledgling museum, called Mischief, by
William-Sergeant Kendall. Since there wasn't a site or building
for the growing collection, the Peabody Institute said they
would house the collection until such time as a building could
be acquired. Henry L. Walters had just opened a Italianate
palazzo, for his beautiful collection, and they asked him if
their collection could be included, but Henry declined, and the
committee continued making plans for their own permanent museum
building. They bought a building in 1916 and hired an
architect to remodel the place, but it would not be occupied,
since the Johns Hopkins University gave them the land where they
now sit, in 1917, and before they could move in, the collection
was moved temporarily to the Garrett House in 1922, with the
house being offered for a permanent home for the collection and
some place for the directors could meet. The Garrett House would
be purchased by an art group in 1925, wanting to keep the
collection together, and offered the building for art
associations and a hall where meetings could be held, although
the space was limited. At Wyman Park, where the new building was
to be constructed, architect John Russell Pope starting
designing the museum's new home, and cornerstone was laid in
1927. The structure has three floors with many rooms copied from
six Maryland historical houses, and even though there was some
controversy about the locale, the quality of workmanship and
cost, it was opened in April, 1929. The first visitors would be
welcomed by Rodin's the Thinker, in the new sculpture court,
with the majority of the collections being loaned by Baltimore
and Maryland collectors. During its first month of being opened,
it had almost 600 visitors coming in each day, and the library
on the ground floor was fixed up with shelves, chairs, and
reading tables. The library was moved to the third floor of the
Cone Wing in 1983. Quite a few of the opening collections were
eventually donated to the museum, with the donors including;
Jacob Epstien, Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone, Blanche
Adler, Edward J. Gallagher, Jr., Elsie C. Woodward, Dorothy
McIlvain Scott, Saidie Adler May, John W. and Robert Garrett and
Alan and Janet Wurtzburger. The collection had three growths
spurts, in the 1950s, with the Saidie A. May wing being added in
1950, the Woodward wing in 1956 and the Cone Wing in 1957; with
all of the additions being designed by Wrenn, Lewis and Jencks
so that these new wings would complement the initial Pope
design. Currently, the museum's permanent collections house more
than 90,000 pieces, so that it is the biggest art museum in the
state. It welcomes more than 300,000 visitors each year, and has
created an area for travelling exhibitions and major art center
by these many art programs. It was one of the first museum's in
the nation that acquired an African art collection, with the
majority of it coming with the Janet and Alan Wurtzburger
collection that was donated in 1954. It houses over 2000 objects
that come from the ancient Egypt period to the contemporary
Zimbabwe and contains numerous varieties of art from pottery,
masks, ceremonial weapons, royal staffs, headdresses, figures,
jewelry and textiles that came from the cultures of Yoruba, Kuba,
Ndebele and Bamana plus others. Many of these pieces are well
known for their use in performances, religious contexts, and
royal courts; some internationally known. Some of the main
features includes works by carvers Sonzanlwon and Alan and a few
marvelous figures by the legendary brass modeler Ldamie. There
is a Lozi throne from 1900, carved in the court of King Lewanika
of western Zambia, a 2006 video work by Theo Eshetu and a 20th
century Hausa Koranic prayer board. The museum contains one of
the finest collections of American artworks in the world that
range from the colonial period to the latter 20th century. There
are magnificent works of sculptures, decorative arts and
paintings; with works from the early Baltimore area that
includes portraiture by Rembrandt Peale, Charles Wilson Peale
and other family members, American Baltimore album quilts,
painted furniture by Hugh and John Finlay, silver from the
city's finest silver manufacturing company Samuel Kirk & Son.
The American painting collection spans from the 18th century
portraits and 19th century landscape paintings to American
impressionism and modernism, containing the beautiful works of
John Singer Sargent, John Singleton Copley, Thomas Hart Benton,
Thomas Sully, Childe Hassam, Thomas Eakins, Georgia O'Keefe,
Thomas Cole and Theodore Robinson. These excellent works are
complemented by gorgeous prints and drawings, with modern
photographs that have come here with the Gallagher/Dalsheimer
Collection; with artists like Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand,
Imogen Cunningham and Man Ray.
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USS Constellation
The USS Constellation was
built in 1854, a modern sloop-of-war and the second naval vessel
to carry the famous name, with the first frigate disassembled in
1853 in Norfolk ship yard, the same yard that built the sloop;
maybe with some of the materials from the frigate being used in
the sloop's structure. It was launched in 1854, and commissioned
in 1855, becoming the final sail-only warship that was designed
and built by the US Navy. During the period from 1855 to 1858,
the sloop would be used for mostly diplomatic duties in the Med,
leaving to become the flagship of the African Squadron in 1859
to 1861, disrupting the slave trade by capturing three slave
ships and freeing the African slaves. During the Civil War, the
Constellation would be used to deter the Confederate cruisers
and commerce raiders in the Mediterranean Sea, and after the
war, she would be used to contribute to various efforts of the
government like the duty of carrying famine relief supplies to
Ireland, and displays to the Paris Expo Universelle of 1878. For
some years, the sloop would be used as a floating naval
barracks, and then a practice ship for the naval academy
midshipmen, and finally a training ship for the Naval Training
Center in Newport, Rhode Island in 1894. During WWI, she would
train over 60,000 recruits, and then be decommissioned in 1933.
President Franklin Roosevelt would recommission her in 1940 to
become a national symbol, and during the second World War, the
Constellation would be used as the relief flagship of the US
Atlantic Fleet. Finally, in February, 1955, the Constellation
would be taken off the Naval Vessel Register in August of 1955,
a full century plus a couple of weeks after she was first
commissioned. May 23, 1963, the Constellation would be taken to
her final berth at Constellation Dock in the Inner Harbor at
Baltimore, Maryland and made a National Historic Landmark. This
is the last American Civil War-era naval ship and the last
sail-powered warships that was constructed by the United States
Navy. In 1994, the ship became condemned as being unsafe, and
so, she was towed to the drydocks at Fort McHenry, in 1996, with
a $9 million reconstruction project taking until 1999 to be
completed. During October of 2004, the ship would take her first
voyage since coming to the dock in 1955, and it would travel to
Annapolis and the Naval Academy which lasted all of six days.
They have started taking tours of the ship which are either
self-guided or guide led, with almost all of the vessel being
accessible.
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