DUKES FANS:
“I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore. You can look far and wide, but you'll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay.” John Waters, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste
A few weeks ago I wrote about being ready to do some more traveling and to visit some of my favorite cities. Yes, I m a birdwatcher and I love camping and hiking and nature. But I am also the consummate urbanite; I love cities and what they offer. I especially love downtowns, museums, the diversity of city life and the varieties of neighborhoods and foodstuffs. Last week I got out of Philadelphia for a few days and spent some time in one of my favorite cities.
I had been familiar with Baltimore in an historic sense for most of my life. It was the setting during the War of 1812 for Francis Scott Key, Fort McHenry and the Star-Spangled Banner. It was a major port in colonial American trade, including the slave trade, and it was the port in whose shipyards Frederick Douglass worked and from which he escaped to freedom in 1838. It, along with New York City, was also one of Philadelphia’s main rivals for shipping traffic, both nationally and internationally, for much of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. But none of that got me going to that city. I started going to Baltimore in the mid-1990's, spurred by my favorite regular network series, Homicide: Life on the Street. The series was filmed in Baltimore, and my wife, son and I watched that show regularly and loved it. One day, after having watched the show for several seasons, my wife suggested a trip down to Baltimore to do a “Homicide tour” and visit the places featured in the show! We did that for a day and loved it. We went to the Fells Point Market, The Daily Grind Coffee Shop, the fire station that served as the police headquarters on the harbor, and some of the seafood restaurants where the characters ate. That became part of our regular yearly trips, even after the show was cancelled. We explored new ares in the city and we discovered several museums that we loved. We visited that city at least once a year from 1995 until 2018, and we never had a bad time
The most exciting museum we discovered was The American Visionary Arts Museum on Francis Key Highway. We first visited it in 1997, two years after it opened, and it immediately grabbed us. Originally one building, it has since expanded to three buildings with exciting architecture, mosaics on the outer walls, 2 sculpture plazas, a wildflower garden and classroom space for its intensive works with Baltimore schools. It has an incredibly large permanent collection of outsider art, and it is never boring to see some of it again. it also features special thematic exhibits take over the mina building such as The Science and Importance of Play; YUMMM’-the History, Fantasy and Future of Food; Storytelling; All Faiths Beautiful, and many, many more incredible special delights. The exhibits are always colorful, multi-media, amazingly arranged, and thought provoking. This is one of my favorite places I have ever been, and it has always surprised, challenged and engaged me and helped/led me see the world in different, more complex ways.
The special exhibit that is there until Sunday, September 4 is titled, Healing and the Art of Compassion (and the Lack Thereof!) It is an unbelievably moving and powerful exhibit that examine the power, science, spiritual and poetic, culturally specific and nuanced ways that this simple word has resonated and been a force throughout human history. It is mutli, multi-media. There is a series of designed plaques and quotes from religious, artistic, political, literary and other people on what compassion can do and the hope it can hold. There are medical charts showing the effects and health benefits research has shown that living a life filled with compassion can bring to human beings. There are photographs of children, the Dalai Lama, parents, and war-torn places. There are sculptures of essential workers, animals, paintings of mystical places, and postcards. And there are looks at what a lack of compassion can do as well. There is an video of former members of Neo-Nazi groups talking about why they initially were drawn to such beliefs and why they felt they needed to be in those groups. There are quotes, displays, and articles showing how medical and psychological professions in earlier times exhibited, and can still exhibit, cruel, insensitive, and inhumane behavior. There is an incredible mural-mosaic about the sufferings of Job from the Bible and the power of faith and hope. And there is a moving video of a TED Talk by Kevin Briggs, a former Golden Gate Bridge police officer who has had 92 encounters with people attempting suicide from that bridge. The talk examines how he has tried to help them find their way to a little bit of hope, and what he has learned about the power of simply listening to another human being. It is a four-story examination of much of the human condition, shown and arranged in ways that caused me to stop in my tracks, think, pause, cry, sit in exhaustion, nod and speak quietly to other museum goers, and feel that combination of hope, love, disappointment and joy the keeps us as humans going and striving in spite of some of the things we do to each other. Healing and Compassion; we are both capable of and need plenty of both.
There were two other exhibits in the main building that I did not get to see. The Healing and Compassion exhibit left me too thoughtful and exhausted. I left the museum, had a good meal at one of my favorite seafood lunch spots, then had a great, though sweaty, walk around the Inner Harbor and the Fells Point neighborhood. It felt good to be back. I need to visit places that engage and challenge me, and make me feel fully alive. I am so glad that that TV show hooked us and got us to visit Baltimore. No, it is not home to me as Philadelphia is. But it is a place that always brings me joy and satisfies me in deep ways. I will visit again soon. I do not want to stay away.
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The American Visionary Art Museum
https://www.avam.org
Past exhibits at AVAM:
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