Maryland Official Visitors Guide - 2018 Maryland Official Visitors Guide
Arts & Culture
2017-11-28 22:54:52
Arts Alive
Maryland’s vibrant arts scene and rich cultural history provide endless opportunities to explore visual arts, music, arts & crafts and theater.
Folk, Music and Arts Festivals
In September, Salisbury begins its three-year run hosting the National Folk Festival bringing tens of thousands of revelers to the Eastern Shore for music, storytelling, dance and Maryland traditional arts. Light City, the largest festival of light, music and innovation in North America, turns Baltimore into a twinkling wonderland of floating light projections, illuminated sculpture and electrifying free concerts. Outdoor enthusiasts flock to the Waterfowl Festival in Easton, dedicated to avian-centered art, including decoy carving. For fine arts & crafts, top-rated musical entertainment, and a few see-it-to-believe-it exhibits (yarn-covered cars, anyone?), head to Artscape in Baltimore, the country’s largest free art festival. The family-oriented African American Festival in Baltimore offers a mix of music, art, historical exhibits and educational activities.
Go west for DelFest, a festival created by bluegrass legend Del McCoury, held annually in Cumberland in late May. National, regional and local blues musicians jam in Hagerstown at the Western Maryland Blues Fest, while classic artists and up-and-comers rub elbows at the Capital Jazz Fest, a yearly celebration of jazz, soul, and rhythm and blues. Called one of the best amphitheaters in America by Rolling Stone and Billboard magazines, Merriweather Post Pavilion looks forward to bringing top-name performers to Symphony Woods for the next 50 years.
Brilliant Collections and Crafts
You’ll find dynamic and varied collections all over the state. Be taken in by local brothers Stephen and Lem Ward, Jr.’s extraordinarily lifelike decoys at the Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art in Salisbury. The Academy Art Museum in Easton hosts rotating exhibitions in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery and displays works on paper from its rich collection of American and European art. Wander the Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center where art and nature mingle. See works by portraitist Charles Willson Peale at the lovely lakeside Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, and then walk Hagerstown’s cultural trail after visiting the museum to see a cityscape adorned with large-scale installations by internationally acclaimed artists. Meet master artisans at the Spruce Forest Artisan Village and witness their work sculpting masterpieces, weaving wonders, and turning clay into crafts of incomparable beauty.
Marshmallows are the star at the Carroll Arts Center’s annual PEEPshow, where artists create life-size sculptures and mosaics out of the famous neon-colored candy. Located in a renovated 19th-century mill in Frederick, the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center features works from regional and national artists. Experience the beauty, history and complexity of a living craft tradition at the Fiber Arts Center of the Eastern Shore in Denton. And you never know what treasures you’ll find browsing through the Ocean City Arts Center’s gallery or at its annual Boardwalk Art Show.
Must-See Museums
Baltimore is home to amazing museums with world-renowned collections. Come face to face with Rodin’s Thinker, Degas’ Little Dancer, and the famous Cone Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art, home of the largest public holding of works by Matisse. The Walters Art Museum’s collection spans five millennia and includes Ancient Egyptian sarcophagi, medieval armor, a 17th-century chamber of wonders, and important works from the 20th century. For eye-popping creations by outsider artists, stop by Baltimore’s American Visionary Arts Museum. The African-American experience is rendered through oral histories, military artifacts, photographs, textiles and fine art at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture. The collections at the Maryland Historical Society are rich with art and objects from the state’s storied past, including an original hand-written manuscript of Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner.”
Art Takes the Stage
You’ll find plenty of drama (all of it staged) in Maryland’s historic theaters and contemporary music halls. Experience the work of the Bard at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, housed in the newly renovated, 19th-century former Mercantile Deposit and Trust Company bank building in Baltimore. Bring a picnic to the company’s atmospheric summer home, where the stage is built within the remnants of a 19th-century girls’ school in the wooded Patapsco Female Institute Historic Park in Ellicott City. Ian McKellen, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy and Gloria Swanson all once trod the boards at the Olney Theatre, and Toby’s Dinner Theatre presents theater in-the-round in Columbia.
Bethesda’s Round House Theatre produces musicals, classic plays, and new and cutting-edge drama. In La Plata, the Port Tobacco Players perform musicals and familiar favorites in a renovated 1940s movie theater. Hear the Annapolis Symphony perform at the Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. Visit the Weinberg Center for the Arts, dubbed “The Jewel of Frederick,” for concerts (some featuring the center’s historic 1920s Wurlitzer organ), dance performances and classic film screenings.
You can find the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in two places in Maryland. Its Baltimore residence, the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, also showcases other musical concerts, from Broadway to indie to rock. In North Bethesda, the Music Center at Strathmore hosts the BSO, as well as several arts partnerships including the National Philharmonic and CityDance. Artistic director Maestra Marin Alsop brings her dynamic style and musicianship to every BSO performance.
Visit Maryland’s 25 Arts & Entertainment Districts throughout the state to tour artists’ studios and enjoy events. VisitMaryland.org/article/marylands-artsentertainmentdistricts.
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