Visual arts best bet: BMA to reopen renovated wing

( Work by Morris Louis, Courtesy BMA / September 12, 2012 )

The 20th and 21st centuries have never looked so good.

On Nov. 18, the Baltimore Museum of Art will reopen its strikingly redesigned Contemporary Wing after a 20-month closure, marking the end of the first phase of a $24.5 million renovation. The 16 galleries in the 35,000-square-foot wing will feature works by such artists as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg alongside more than a dozen new pieces by some of today's most innovative artists.

Visitors will find two new interactive galleries and a black-box chamber created to showcase light, sound and moving image works, such as an 11-minute video by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. The film, titled "A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear," is set in a New Orleans leveled by Hurricane Katrina.

And there's more -- a site-specific installation by Sarah Oppenheimer that involves smashing through the museum's ceiling, walls and floor. It should be, quite literally, ground-breaking.

The Contemporary Wing reopens Nov. 18 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive. Free. Call 443-573-1700 or go to www.artbma.org.
-- Mary Carole McCauley