Baltimore Museum

Slayer -- 9:30 Club / Controversial 1980s and '90s thrash metal band Slayer performs Tuesday at the 9:30 Club, 815 V St. N.W., Washington. Doors open at 7 p.m., and Unearth is also slated to perform. Tickets are $40; call 800-955-5566 or go to tickets.com. Chris Thile and How to Grow a Band -- Rams Head Tavern / It's doubtful that you will come across an instrument that vocalist/instrumentalist Chris Thile has not laid his hands on. The founding member of bluegrass trio Nickel Creek will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday alongside How To Grow A Band, which is composed of Gabe Witcher, Noam Pikelny, Greg Garrison, and Bryan Sutton.

Art Pissarro exhibit The Baltimore Museum of Art's newest exhibit, Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape, highlights the work of painter Camille Pissarro with a collection of 45 pieces that reveals his transformation from traditional landscapes to more bold works. The exhibit is at the BMA, Art Museum Drive at North Charles and 31st streets, through May 13. Go to artbma. org or call 443-573-1700 for information.

Judging by the sprawling yet solid show that opens today at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the seven finalists in this year's Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize competition are all such top-tier talents that choosing a winner will be a serious challenge. Selected from a field of 320 applicants, the finalists are sculptor Richard Cleaver, photographer Frank Hallam Day, animator Eric Dyer, artist/musician Geoff Grace, conceptual artist Baby Martinez, painter Tony Shore and video artist Karen Yasinsky.

PHOTOGRAPHY IN ART It will be a mix of art and education when the Baltimore Museum of Art welcomes eight internationally renowned artists to lead "Conversations With Contemporary Photographers," a series of discussions about the changing role of photography in contemporary art, today, March 21, April 12 and April 26. Acclaimed for their work in contemporary photography, James Welling, Thomas Struth, Jeff Wall and several other artists whose work has...

ART EXHIBIT MATISSE AND SCULPTURE Don't miss the last stop on the national tour of Matisse: Painter as Sculptor, the first exhibition of Henri Matisse's sculptures in 40 years. The Baltimore Museum of Art will host this collection of more than 160 sculptures, drawings and paintings from museums and private collections around the world that help explain how Matisse's skills in one medium influenced his work in another. The exhibit starts Sunday with ArtBlast, in which patrons can see it free, as well as get a taste of France with events including an Eiffel Tower-making contest, food and wine tasting.

Persona, the first of many fruitful collaborations between director Ingmar Bergman and actress Liv Ullmann, is the next scheduled film in the Charles Theatre's 13-week Bergman retrospective. The 1966 film stars Ullmann as a nurse who develops a strong identification with a mute patient. Said Bergman, "I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover." Showtime is noon tomorrow, followed by encores at 7 p.m. Monday and 9 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are $6 tomorrow, $8 other times for the show at 1711 N. Charles St. Information: 410-727-FILM or thecharles.

Updated `Ulysses' The lowdown -- Wartime. A woman longs for the return of her soldier husband. Talk about a timeless plot. It's the driving story behind The Return of Ulysses, an opera by Claudio Monteverdi that premiered in Venice in 1640. In a rare local staging by Opera Vivente, the work will be updated to the 1930s by director John Bowen to emphasize the lasting relevancy of this tale about the Trojan Wars. "It's a great piece," Bowen says, "that can appeal not just to opera-goers, but people who like spoken theater, since a lot of it is a form of heightened speech."

HARRIET TUBMAN DAY Celebrate the life of Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman in Annapolis tomorrow. State senators and delegates will present the Harriet Tubman Day proclamation and citation to the Tubman family at the State House. A walking tour of historic Annapolis will follow the State House ceremonies and will end in a tour of the recently restored Wiley H. Bates High School, once the only African-American high school in Anne Arundel County. .................... Events begin at 9 a.m. tomorrow at the Maryland State House, State Circle, Annapolis.

Remember back when you had to pay for activities like touring the Constellation, seeing the city from the Top of the World Observation Level, listening to a Peabody concert or watching a classic film at the Charles Theatre? Well, that was sooo last month. It's October now, and your money is no good at some 85 venues participating in the second annual Free Fall Baltimore. About 300 events, ranging from a Center Stage production of Arsenic and Old Lace (alas, sold out) to a mock discussion between the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, to showings of classic 3-D films at the Charles, are being offered free of charge.

James DuSel makes photographs of parts of architecture, sometimes of well known buildings like the Baltimore Museum of Art and sometimes in obscure places like the arches under a bridge or an expressway. They're very grabby, these pictures, in a way that yet another picture of a familiar facade wouldn't be.Because he's showing aspects that most people wouldn't have noticed, they stop the viewer and make him look again -- and probably make him look again at the building the next time he sees it.A group of DuSel's palladium prints (printed on paper that has been coated with a palladium emulsion)

This schedule will be in effect Monday. Anne Arundel County offices: open Courts: closed Libraries: open Public schools: open Trash: regular pickup Annapolis City offices: open Courts: closed Transit: regular service Parking meters: feed Trash: regular pickup Baltimore City City offices: closed Courts: closed Libraries: closed Parking meters: feed Public schools: open Trash: no pickup; landfills and transfer stations closed Baltimore County...

SUNDAY 'EDGAR ALLAN POE: A BALTIMORE ICON': The master of the macabre might have inspired future suspense writers for generations, but he also inspired many visual artists. This exhibit of 30 prints and 35 illustrated books includes works by Paul Gauguin, Edouard Manet and Rene Magritte. The free show opens at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, at 11 a.m. Sunday and runs through Jan. 17. Call 443-573-1700 or go to artbma.org. TOUR DU PORT: Be part of the solution by opting to walk, bike or use mass transit, even if it's just for one day. One Less Car's annual fundraiser allows thousands of bicyclists to take to the streets of many of Baltimore's historic neighborhoods to support the alternate transportation movement.

This schedule will be in effect today. Anne Arundel County offices: closed Courts: closed Libraries: closed Public schools: closed Trash: no pickup Annapolis City offices: closed Courts: closed Transit: no service Parking meters: feed Trash: no pickup Baltimore City City offices: closed Courts: closed Libraries: closed Parking meters: free Public schools: closed Trash: no pickup; landfills and transfer stations closed Baltimore County...

This schedule will be in effect Monday. Anne Arundel County offices: closed Courts: closed Libraries: closed Public schools: closed Trash: no pickup Annapolis City offices: closed Courts: closed Transit: no service Parking meters: feed Trash: no pickup Baltimore City City offices: closed Courts: closed Libraries: closed Parking meters: free Public schools: closed Trash: no pickup; landfills and transfer stations closed Baltimore County...

Two wax statues at the heart of a dispute swirling through the nation's oldest African-American sorority are sitting in a Baltimore museum - and they apparently cost nowhere near as much as the outlandish sums cited by critics alleging malfeasance by organization leaders. Joanne M. Martin, co-founder and CEO of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, seemed perplexed yesterday at the attention the museum has gotten in the wake of a lawsuit filed by members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, America's first black sorority and one of its most prominent, against the current president.

BMA names new curator for contemporary collections The Baltimore Museum of Art has a new curator for its collection of contemporary paintings and sculptures. Kirsten Hineman, 36, who currently is associate curator for the Smithsonian Institute's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, begins her new job in Baltimore on Nov. 2. She's replacing Darcy Alexander, the BMA's former curator of contemporary art, who resigned earlier this year to accept the top arts curating job at Minneapolis' Walker Art Center.

The last shirt Stringer Bell ever wore. Detective Jimmy McNulty's gun. Avon Barksdale's prison jumpsuit. For more than a year, those and about 150 other pieces of The Wire, the extended HBO morality play that spent five seasons exploring Charm City's meaner streets, have been on display at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. But just as the HBO show ended in March 2008, the BMI exhibit has reached the end of its run. What better excuse for a party? "Disconnecting The Wire ... What's Next?"

On July 4, 2009, E A memorial service will be held Tuesday, July 21 at 11 A.M. in the chapel at St. David's Church, 4700 Roland Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21210. In lieu of flowers contributions in her memory may be made to St. David's Church at the above address or to support the Cone Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Contributions to the BMA may be sent to Development Office, Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218.

The Baltimore Development Cooperative, a four-year-old organization that blends art and urban activism, received the $25,000 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize Saturday night in a ceremony at the Baltimore Museum of Art. "I think the jurors were attracted to the socially engaged nature of our work," said Scott Berzofsky, who, along with fellow Maryland Institute College of Art graduates Dane Nester and Nicholas Wisniewski, co-founded the cooperative in...

Edward Gerard Novak, a retired banker who had served as the chairman of the boards of the Baltimore Museum of Industry and the Maryland Food Bank, died Sunday of prostate cancer at University of Maryland Medical Center. He was 55 and lived in Baldwin. Mr. Novak, the son of a Westinghouse Electric Corp. worker and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and spent his early years in Violetville. In the 1960s, he moved with his family to Eldersburg and graduated in 1973 from South Carroll High School.