God gives you a gift, you’ve got no right to neglect it*—a single-minded philosophy that’s driven many a man and woman, for better or worse, to great heights. Moses on Mount Sinai, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Michelle Bachmann on the steps of the Capitol. But how  ...

Would you recognize a loved one’s eye—singular—without any other context? No hair, no mouth, no decolletage? More importantly, would anyone else—like her spouse? Opening May 16 at the MIA is “The Look of Love,” a fascinating and quirky exhibition that reveals a forgotten trend among the royals and upper class of England in the late  ...

Would you recognize a loved one’s eye—singular—without any other context? No hair, no mouth, no decolletage? More importantly, would anyone else—like her spouse? Opening May 16 at the MIA is “The Look of Love,” a fascinating and quirky exhibition that reveals a forgotten trend among the royals and upper class of England in the late  ...

Washburn-Fair Oaks Park, across 24th Street from the MIA, was once the estate of William Washburn, a flour magnate. He dubbed it Fair Oaks after the grove he cleared to build an incredible castle of a home on the 10 acres, transforming the remaining grounds into a lush park of ponds, fountains, and a lagoon.  ...

Etta and Claribel Cone, the Baltimore sisters whose Matisse collection is on view at the MIA for just a couple more weeks, weren’t exclusively Matisse fans, of course. Though that collection, some 500 of his paintings, drawings, illustrated books, and more, would have been enough to fill their shared apartments. They also had 17 paintings,  ...

Etta and Claribel Cone, the Baltimore sisters whose Matisse collection is on view at the MIA for just a couple more weeks, weren’t exclusively Matisse fans, of course. Though that collection, some 500 of his paintings, drawings, illustrated books, and more, would have been enough to fill their shared apartments. They also had 17 paintings,  ...

Art in Bloom, the MIA’s preeminent event for patrons, pairing fresh floral displays with art in the galleries, runs May 1 to 4. But there are thousands of floral-related artworks in the MIA collection, the great majority of which are not currently on view. So here’s a quick tour, an armchair Art in Bloom of  ...

On a recent afternoon, the staff in the MIA library set out several boxes of archival material and invited employees to peruse, an initial fact-finding foray in advance of next year’s 100th anniversary. And what could have been an allergy-inducing trip through mouldering grip-and-grin photos and self-congratulatory newspaper clips proved far more interesting for reasons  ...

Save for the occasional children’s book authors who can write as well as they draw—Maurice Sendak, Eric Carle—the disciplines are generally kept separate by a matter of competence. Yet artists have blended pictures and words, if not usually their own, since the very beginning of art. The current MIA exhibition Matisse: Masterworks from the Baltimore  ...

In the current MIA exhibition Matisse: Masterworks from the Baltimore Museum of Art, running through May 18, there are quite a few examples of “odalisques,” semi-nude images of women reclining in exotic, vaguely North African garb. It was a popular genre in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, particularly among French painters. But what  ...