Contemporary Art

The awesome heads appeared out of the night, looming 10 feet or more above the ground. Their fierce, painted faces glinted in the flickering light of a bonfire as hundreds of villagers sang and danced to thundering drums. The spectacle so impressed Drid Williams, an American dancer who visited Africa in the mid-1960s, that she commissioned a pair of the masks -- one female and one male -- then kept them for 30 years as prized possessions. Now the objects, the only matched pair of Bedu masks known to exist outside Africa, are about to become the most recent additions to the Baltimore Museum of Art's collections.

A conceptual art scholar with a flair for communication has been hired to oversee the contemporary art collections at the Baltimore Museum of Art and to develop exhibitions attractive to broad audiences, museum administrators announced yesterday. Chris Gilbert, an associate curator at Iowa's Des Moines Art Center who has organized shows on topics from Scottish painter Chad McCail to an exploration of identity in sports and spectacle, will step into the post in August. He replaces Helen Molesworth, who resigned last November to become chief curator for exhibitions at the Wexner Center in Ohio.

Walking with three hungry companions and a pizza he has just made for them toward a table in Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art's cafe, the chef makes eye contact with a table of elderly women and cannot avoid stopping to greet them. "Hello, I'm Wolfgang. Do you want a slice of pizza?" he asks. "We do," they respond. Less than a minute later, all the pizza slices are gone. The chef turns to his companions with a boyish grin and says, "I guess I'll have to make another." And he does, effortlessly preparing another personal creation.

Baltimore's contemporary art scene seems in a bit of a doldrums right now, with the departure last fall of the Baltimore Museum of Art's contemporary curator, Helen Molesworth, and the failure of the Contemporary Museum to name a successor after last summer's abrupt exit of director Gary Sangster. But things appear to be looking up. BMA director Doreen Bolger and her search committee could select a candidate to replace Molesworth as early as May, museum administrators say. They're looking for someone who is engaged with contemporary art and who has a rapport with the artists.

From the outside, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's The Paradise Institute at Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art looks like a small mobile home or construction site trailer. As soon as visitors pass through a small door at the side, however, they enter the artists' clever optical illusion of an old-time movie palace, complete with sculpted balconies and rows of tiny seats. There are only a dozen or so full-size chairs in the trailer, each equipped with a set of stereo headphones.

Helen Molesworth, the Baltimore Museum of Art curator who reinterpreted the museum's contemporary art galleries and presented shows that provoked and challenged audiences, is leaving next month to become chief curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. During her three-year tenure, Molesworth reinstalled the BMA's contemporary art wing and organized adventurous and imaginative exhibitions that included this year's Looking Forward/Looking Black, an examination of how African-Americans are portrayed in art and mass media, and last year's Body Space, an exploration of the body as a mode of understanding the world.

The executive director of the Contemporary Museum will step down in September, as the Baltimore institution that has struggled to build an audience and financial support begins a transformation aimed at broadening its appeal and strengthening community ties. Gary Sangster, who has headed the museum since 1996, will stay two months beyond the end of his contract, which expires this month, museum trustees announced yesterday. "We are thrilled to have this opportunity to determine the best strategy for the Contemporary's future," said Steve Ziger, board president.

What motivates the passionate collector? That is a question even the experts can't answer completely. Every collector is unique, and people collect artworks for widely varying reasons. But one thing they all have in common is an intense interest in the world around them and a desire to engage it through the objects they collect. Over the past 25 years, Eli and Edythe L. Broad of Los Angeles have assembled one of the finest collections of contemporary art in the United States. Like most collectors, the Broads were motivated as much by their passionate involvement with people and ideas as by their love of art. The commitment they made to the art of our time reflects their belief that artistic creativity is a vital element of any thriving civic community.

A few weeks ago, artist-publisher Martha Macks and her Goya-Girl Press packed up their best fine arts prints and headed off to New York for the annual Armory Show, one of the world's premier venues for contemporary art. But this weekend, Macks and Co. won't have to go anywhere - because the art world is coming right here to Baltimore. The Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints and New Editions opens today at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The two-day event will bring to town nearly two dozen galleries, dealers and publishers from across the country that specialize in the fine art of printmaking.

"The danger remains that he'll get out of the valise we put him in." -- Composer John Cage on artist Marcel Duchamp He did get out, of course, and all hell broke loose. Those roaming through contemporary art exhibitions have, knowingly or not, probably seen what happened when Marcel Duchamp emerged and ran amok through other artists' imaginations. Celebrate these happenings or mourn them, but the fact is that once they occurred there was no barring the door. Under Duchamp's influence, anything might be considered "art," and was, and will be, and much of the credit or blame sits in that little valise.