Biden’s Entry Into Washington 2021 (American Portrait as Landscape), 2021. Ink on canvas.
Gift of Michael Sherman and Carrie Tivador, Los Angeles
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) announced the acquisition of approximately 75 works, spanning time, culture, and geography and capturing a spectrum of artistic innovation. The acquisitions reflect the museum’s ongoing commitment to diversifying its collection with works by artists from the Baltimore region and across the globe, allowing for greater cross-cultural storytelling and reflecting a depth of creative ingenuity. Among the new acquisitions are a textile by Mary Ellen Crisp; paintings by Mark Thomas Gibson and Lubaina Himid; works on paper by Chitra Ganesh, Rania Matar, Natani Notah (Diné), Shahzia Sikander, and Lorna Simpson; photographs by Tamiko Nishimura and Gail Thacker; sculpture by Cheryl Pope and Lucia Hierro; and a new commission by Robell Awake—a rising star of the furniture world, who uses 19th-century African American chair making forms and techniques to create contemporary works that speak to the imagination of Black makers across time.
Mark Thomas Gibson identifies as an American history painter, bringing scholarly rigor to his research-based practice. Inspired by contemporary political cartoons and the carnivalesque mob in James Ensor’s Christ's entry into Brussels in 1889 (1889), Gibson has created a parallel scene of the early 2021 American political landscape, replete with incendiary symbols such as the confederate flag. As in Ensor’s magnum opus, Gibson reveals how significant events recede in the maelstrom of spectacle.
